The number one mistake in web design is to create your website using Flash technology. Although Flash sites are often very sexy and have very good graphics, you have to consider what your visitors are searching for. They want information about your products and services and most couldn't care less that you have a Flash site - many will leave without even seeing what you have to offer.

Not all of your visitors will have mega broadband connections and what will appear quickly to some will take an age for others and will more than likely have them clicking the back button through frustration. Internet surfers are used to instant answers and don't appreciate delays so why make them wait?

Flash web sites also take a lot of time and money to create and provide next to no value to visitors who are simply looking for information about your company. No matter how fancy and professional your site looks, nobody will wait for your site to load.

The second mistake is trying to make your website look like a catalog with hundreds of links to different products on the front page and subsequent pages. People do this because they fear that they will miss out on that sale if they don't display everything prominently. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many Internet marketing studies have revealed that where the visitor is presented with too many choices they end up making none. This has been linked with information overload which you want to avoid at all costs. A better solution is to create categories for your products and a good search facility so that your visitors can find what they are looking for.

Make a page for each product and ensure that once visitors land on that page they only have two choices - buy or don't buy. This means no links to other products etc. If you adopt this strategy your sales will increase for sure.

The next big mistake is not to have your site optimized for search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. There are a lot of people who will tell you that you need just write for visitors and not for search engines. This is true but it is still very possible to have a good sales message in your page and ensure that it is optimized too.

Let's look at an example. A fictitious company Allbridge and Son operate a plumbing business in New York. They want a web site as they know it is the way to go to get more leads for their business. So they hire a local firm to produce them a website and convey their message to the world. The website is delivered and it is wonderful with a great message. The problem is that nobody will ever find it because it is optimized for Allbridge and Son and unless people know of the company it will get very few visits.

The smart thing to do is to see what people are typing into the search engines when they are looking for plumbers in New York. Assume that most people are typing in "Plumber New York". Well the web site needs to be optimized for this term. It needs to be in the title, description and mentioned a few times in the main content. That way Google and the others will understand that the company is a plumber in New York.

Putting too many graphics on your site is mistake number four. If you have too many graphics it will distract your visitors from your sales message and also increase the load time of your page on the Internet. Google are now penalizing web sites with slow load times. It is well known that you have around 7 seconds to engage your reader. If your site takes longer than that to load they will hit the back button faster than you can say "too slow".

And the final mistake in web design is to have your site design and content produced by people with no online marketing experience. The point of having a web site is to get your visitors to take action such as buying your product or service, joining your email list or picking up the phone and calling you. You can get your web designer to produce a fancy design but write the content yourself or hire a good copywriter to do this.

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