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Designing Your Website
 Many website owners think of their site as a single entity; one navigation system, one ideal visitor, one look and feel. Possibly holding one persona in their minds eye and sticking with that MSN Emoticons when they are thinking through website decisions. Now, if a site is selling one product with no variants then that might be the right thing to do. However, if the site has multiple products or many on-page visitors, it could be wrong.
As a website owner you need to balance a range of issues when deciding whether a site is finished enough and when comparing it with the opposition. It involves both objective and subjective issues such as what the visitor likes, what that particular business needs and what makes a site easy to maintain. The factors include content, technical quality and appearance and while they are easily seen by the savvy visitor but are often overlooked.
 It is actually very easy to get something published on the web and unfortunately it shows. Much of the information you come across is not exactly useful even with all of the advancements that have been made in search engine design. For instance, how many times have you come across cluttered websites that have unusable printed pages, columns that are longer than the content and pages not fitting in your browser? If done correctly from the beginning designing the site is not difficult, but trying to correct or add to it later might result in more time and effort being spent than you intended.
Remember that your website is much like a brochure online, even if the idea is not to sell your services or products directly from the website it does get the name of your company out there. This type of branding gets the potential customers to look at you, not your competition when they are looking for the things that you provide.
Believe it or not, your site does not have to be all business with no “fun”, inserting a little levity into your site actually has positive results. So, by adding something like one of those smileys or emoticons shows that you do not take yourself too seriously and can relate to the average consumer.
Your website is always working for you, wherever you go or whatever you do, all day, every day; much like having your own personal salesman that never goes on vacation or calls in sick.
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