In working with our clients over the years, we have put together a list of observations about websites and small businesses. These observations have become a philosophy that we follow.

Cognizant: The "look and feel" of a website should represent the company. A conservative company should have a conservative looking website. A company selling items to kids should have a website that looks kid-friendly.

Purpose of technology: Every piece of "cutting edge" technology on a website should support the company's business in some way and earn you money . Otherwise, we will advise against putting it there in the first place.

Interactive: The web site should give the visitor the means of contacting you; requesting more information from you; submitting feedback about your site or your products, services, or messages; or ordering your products or services.

Functional: Visitors will leave a site if it takes too long to load. Good website designers will design a site so that it is easy to find the information that users need in easy-to-understand terms .

Professional: A website should look professional, for visitors to want to do business with that company. This is often a fact that business owners forget when they ask their friend�s son to build them a website.

Benefit: On Internet, there is no reason that a small business cannot benefit as much as or more than a large company -- for a fraction of the cost.