Design of your business website is very important. You want to get across a couple of things - important things. What is your business all about? A new visitor should be able to answer that question in the first 5 seconds. Where can they contact you? What products or services do you sell?

These 10 tips will help you create a website that is fun and easy to use for visitors. These are time-tested techniques to help your business website be the best it can possibly be.

1. Fonts - Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica - these are all easy to use fonts that are more recent than Times New Roman. A site still using an old font like that, or worse, courier - which is like type written characters, is an eyesore to look at. Font size should be 12 or 14 point for general text. You might use size 18 or 20 point for headings and subheadings.

2. Include Images - sites that have no images or graphics are very boring and a new visitor will likely just click off very quickly and go to another more "GUI" (Graphical User Interface) site. A GUI site is one that has a lot of eye-candy and can grab a viewer's attention and hold it for some amount of time. Photos of people using your products are especially effective in helping you sell online.

3. Include Video, PDF, images, MP3, FLASH - and all kinds of multimedia files to grab attention and keep visitors on your business website. Video in particular is the ultimate way for businesses to present information to potential customers online. Invest some time in producing some video for your website - it is all time well-invested.

4. Blue Links - originally all hyperlinks on websites were blue. This was back in the mid to late 1990s. THe color has stuck in our minds and to most of the online world the bright blue color of text signifies hyperlinks. This color is more easily noticed than other link colors. If you do not want to use bright blue for your links, use another color of blue or bright red. Black for links is difficult to discern, so if your body text is black, you should not use black for your link color.

5. White Space - is necessary. Break up huge conglomerations of text with copious amounts of white space to give eyes a break.

6. Sales Page Optimization - a quality sales page has a number of features. Primarily, your goal is to answer every question about your product as possible so your potential customer does not click away and visit another site. Your sales page should have images, sound, video, or other media to highlight all the positives you can about the product. Describe who your product is for, why it is necessary, how to use it, and why the price is worth it.

7. Template Format - your header, columns, footer, the entire website should have some structure to it - and look professional as a result. If you keep the links in the same place, the articles in a set format, it becomes natural and easily remembered. If it is easy to remember then your site is easy to use. Strive to make your site very easy to use.

8. Remove Mandatory Downloads - websites or pages that start with a FLASH or other mandatory download can be a horrible user experience and may lead to potential customers clicking away before they even see what you have to offer. Large downloads of FLASH or video should be optional at all times - never mandatory. Though most of the USA has broadband internet there are buyers that do not. Even among broadband users, few enjoy being forced to wait even a minute to download something they are not sure is pertinent to them.

9. Substantial Content - business websites with less than 10-20 pages are not taken very seriously by Google or other search engines. You should be able to make 50 pages for any business website. If you cannot fill your site with 50 pages of great information about your product or service then you probably are not going to make a big impression in Google. It is possible, it is not likely.

10. A-Level Graphics - there is nothing that gives your business the impression of being amateurs as having weak graphics on your website or for your promotional materials. Spend the extra money to have graphics developed professionally and you will present a better impression of your business.

There are many areas to optimize when you start your new business. Make sure you are building a business based on fundamentals that are proven and work, not a house of cards that can fall over at the first sign of trouble.

Vern Lovic has built a number of online businesses over the years, as well as designing over two hundred websites for himself and others. Current he occupies himself with creating business content for incorporation sites like, "Start Georgia Business" ( StartGeorgiaBusiness.com ).