So where does that leave you?

Well you can either try and create one from scratch yourself, or you can buy a package that gives you everything you need – all you need to do then is insert your own information or products as and when prompted. You might want to grab free items such as free website counters for example as well, but all in all you will get everything you need in these packages.

You do need to be aware of the pros and cons of this kind of deal though, because if you go into it thinking it will solve all your problems you may be disappointed. That’s not to say there aren’t several benefits however.

For example, if you cannot afford to go with a web designer and you want to get a website up and running fairly quickly then a ready made package will be the best way to go. It will get you started and if you want to switch to a professionally designed individual website later on when you have the funds to do so then you can.

One of the downsides about some of these packages is that your website runs the risk of looking very similar to a number of others online today. It’s obvious that while the better packages offer a wide variety of different templates you can use, there is a limit to what can be achieved with one and you may end up being frustrated at not being able to get the exact look that you want.

It’s clear that you should do some research into the various options available to you in the area of website packages, otherwise you could end up making your choice based purely on the amount of money a package costs – and of course you do get what you pay for.

The cheaper packages may not allow you to add a shopping cart for example, and if your idea is to sell home made products via your website (or anything else for that matter), you will end up with a website that is practically useless if you go for this option.

Make sure that you can look at a range of existing websites that have used the package you are considering before buying anything. It will enable you to see whether this option is the best one for your needs. You should also ensure that the makers of the package are readily available to answer any queries you may have about the product once you have bought it.

In the end, you should be able to use website counters, shopping carts, guestbooks and anything else you need on your website. If the package you have in mind doesn’t let you do that, you may need to keep looking for something else instead.

So why would you give something away for free?

It might sound odd but in reality it is the best way to make more sales later on. Most webmasters find that the website counter on their site will soon start to reflect more sales when they make it clear on their home page that they are going to offer people a freebie of some kind. That’s because many different people will go for the freebie with no intention of ever buying anything else from you… and yet many people will end up becoming future customers, provided the freebie you give them is worth having.

The key to building a good quality mailing list is to give your potential customers something of value that is closely related to the theme of your business. The easiest freebie to give away from your point of view (and also the one that is seen to have a high potential value) is a report or eBook of some kind.

Now you might be wondering whether your business is ideally suited for that type of product, but with some thought it is relatively easy to come up with something suitable. For example, let’s suppose you run a home wine making business that sells all the wine kits and necessary equipment for making your own wine at home.

That might not sound like the easiest business to create an eBook or free report around, but bear in mind that a lot of people visiting your website will probably be thinking about making wine for the first time. So why not provide them with an eBook about do’s and dont’s they will need to bear in mind?

Once they have downloaded the eBook directly from your website (using the double opt in method to protect you and your business) you can then send them an email once a month which lets them know about the latest products and deals your website has on offer. You know they are interested in wine making so there is every chance that you will receive a good response to every email you send out.

But let’s go back to that freebie for a moment. Should you stick to the same one all the time, or vary it occasionally to get the best response?

It’s a good idea to keep an eye on how your rate of sign ups is going, because if it does start to drop slightly you can swap your freebie for something different. Until that happens though it is usually best to stick with what’s working.

You should also think about striving to get more traffic to your site in the first place, since the higher your hit counter goes the more chance you have of attracting more sign ups for your mailing list in the first place.

But you could also consider monetizing your site in some way. There are many ways to do this and depending on what kind of focus your website has this may be your sole aim, or simply an additional way to make money. For example if you are selling products on your site then monetizing it in some other way – such as through Google ads – will provide an extra income stream. If you are simply providing information and not selling anything then you will need to employ methods such as Google Adsense to make any money from your site at all.

Google Adsense is free to join and it allows you to insert adverts on your website that are directly related to the subject of your site. It stands to reason that these should get a better response and click through rate because they will be for exactly the kind of product and service that your visitors will be interested in.

The Google Adsense program allows you to be quite free and in control of how the adverts look when you insert them on your site, which means you can enhance their performance even more. Google takes care of making sure the right type of ads are shown, and it’s your job to ensure they look as good as possible.

It’s important to experiment with where you put the adverts, as you will find that some page positions will do much better than others when it comes to a good click through rate. It can also work well to opt out of a border around the edge of your adverts, since this helps to point them out as adverts. Google lets you do this so it is perfectly legal within their terms and conditions; it is advisable to read through their do’s and dont’s however before you start getting your Google ads up and running.

You will also find that if your website has a distinct colour scheme you will be able to use this for your adverts as well. This will help them to blend in nicely instead of sticking out awkwardly, which doesn’t do them any justice.

However you start off with your Google adverts, it’s important to keep an eye on how your revenue is doing. Sometimes even the smallest change to an advert or where you place it can make a big difference to the amount of money they bring in, and of course the more visitors you get in total the more your revenue will go up, as there will be many more people to click on those ads.

So as your web counter records even more traffic, your account will record even more cash as a result.

While not everyone will arrive on your website via the home page, it’s safe to say that a lot of people will – and even those who don’t are very likely to go there once they have studied the page they arrived on.

So does your home page make just the right impression on people? Does it make them want to stay on your site and explore a bit further? Or does it turn them off completely and send them elsewhere?

A great home page should without doubt be welcoming and enticing. You can of course have add ons such as a web counter to tell people how well visited the site is so far, but you should focus on every single aspect of the home page, from the most important aspect to the least important, in order to make sure you don’t leave anything out.

It should make it clear exactly what the website is about and what visitors can expect to get from it. A clear navigation system is crucial for making sure people can easily get beyond the home page and into other areas of the site which you will no doubt want them to explore. Choose your wording for each section of the menu carefully so as to make it absolutely clear what people will find there. It can be tempting to be clever and choose words which could be perceived as having a double meaning, but if you do this you might confuse people – and the main thing you should be aiming for here is clarity.

Another area to consider on your home page is the balance between images and content. Words are the most important factor on the page since they can be structured to pick up valuable search engine traffic and also evoke emotions and excitement in the reader if they are put together with the aims of the website in mind.

Images can be valuable and they will enhance the home page when used properly, but make sure they don’t overshadow the content, since that is what will keep people on the page and encourage them to explore further.

It can be difficult to arrive at the ideal solution for a home page at the first time of trying. Some elements, such as the main heading of the page, the website counter and the navigation bar, may stay the same but you could end up altering and tweaking everything else for a number of weeks or even months before you finally end up with the exact combination that really brings in the results.

So what is an interactive website? Put simply, it is a site which employs a variety of ways of engaging with the visitor. Many of these techniques are constantly changing, to provide a website with more depth and importance as it develops. In its simplest form you could say that the inclusion of a free hit counter is a step in the right direction; it tells the visitor how many people have already visited the site and it changes constantly as more people discover it.

It’s clear that the more interactive features you can include (or at least point to) on the home page, the better the reaction will be from visitors. They will be tempted to think, “Hey, there is plenty to do here. I can really get involved with this site.” And that is much more enticing than realising that all they can do is read the information you have given to them and not even have a chance to respond to it.

It can be daunting to start developing your current website into a more interactive one if you don’t have any experience of doing so. The best way to begin is by thinking about a simple way to engage with your visitors to see how it develops. This can also give you some great ideas for developing your site and your business in the future as well.

For example, you might want to put a questionnaire or opinion poll on your home page. It doesn’t need to be too big, but it could just catch the eye of anyone who sees it and if it does, that could be all you need to keep them on your site for a bit longer.

At the other end of the scale there is the opportunity to add a forum to your website. This can be reached via a link on the home page, and it allows visitors to take an active part in how they interact with your site and what your business stands for. Furthermore, if you keep tabs on what is going on in the forum you can get a good idea of what people want from your business in the future – enabling you to expand and become more successful as a result.

Finally there is the chance to add a blog to your site as well, to allow people to respond directly to your comments on particular subjects related to your business. You should soon see that your hit counter starts to reflect the increased traffic you will experience, which is definitely a step in the right direction.

Certain elements of a website will stand alone as practical and worthwhile additions – such as a hit counter for example – but when it comes to the words you need to make sure you do the research to choose the right ones that will attract the right audience.

Some people are somewhat misguided when it comes to writing the content for their website. They assume that because the visitor has already found their site they can write whatever they need to write in order to attract them and create a stunning image of what their business is about.

But while this certainly has its benefits, you also need to ensure that the content has just the right keywords scattered within it. This will ensure that those visitors will be able to find you in the first place.

Search engines love good content, but they will not give preference to those websites which concentrate on keywords above all else. Indeed you can be banned from the search engines for excessive keyword use that detracts from the quality of the website. The search engines will however be attracted to those websites which use keywords strategically and helpfully to give their site meaning, and so this is something you need to think about very carefully.

The stats from your website counter should tell you how successful your attempts are at pulling in the visitors with clever use of keywords, but good research will certainly help your cause.

Think about the subject of your website and ask yourself what the typical visitor will be searching for. For example, if you have a website that sells toys you should make a note of the different types of toys that you sell. This will give you clues as to how people find your site.

You should also use keyword tools to help you discover the most popular keyword phrases that people are searching for. But beware that if you just stick to the top performing keywords you will be competing with all the top performing websites. By setting your sights a little bit lower you can ensure that you stand a better chance of ranking highly in the search results whenever someone searches for that phrase or word.

If you have a business that concentrates on a specific area of the country, then you should also incorporate the town or city into some of your search terms as well. This will make sure that you pick up the right kind of visitors who are looking for your type of business in your area. If you didn’t include the name of the town or region your business was based in, you could miss out on a lot of potential customers that way.

In short, keywords are vitally important. If you include them you stand a much better chance of attracting the right kind of people to your site.

One good way of making sure you have a good structure is to plan it out on a huge sheet of paper before you try and put your website together (or revamp your existing one, if that is what you are planning on doing). This enables you to scribble notes, cross things out, and generally experiment with what information works well in which area of the website.

Some people get confused with their structure because they will have a piece of information which could equally well belong on two different pages. In this case you could choose the best place for it to go, and then link to that page from the other page that seems to be a good bet for it too. Internal linking between different pages of a website is a good idea anyway, because it will encourage the search engine spiders to explore and find other areas of your site to be found in their search results.

Generally speaking, the bigger a website is the harder it can become to get the structure right. That’s why it can help enormously to do some research by looking at other websites you like yourself which are of a similar size to the one you want to do. Look at how they have broken everything up into sections, and how those may be subdivided into sub-sections to make life easier for every visitor.

You can also learn a lot from those websites that clearly get it wrong and are very confusing to navigate. By writing down what does work and what doesn’t you can get your own website positioned nicely in the middle, with a structure that works and a hit counter that keeps on rising as a result.

The main thing to remember is that even if you are going to have sub-sections on your website (probably because you have a lot to fit in), you should make sure that the main structure is clearly visible on the home page. If visitors find it hard to figure out where things are or how to access them, they won’t hang around for very long.

Incidentally if you do opt to have lots of different pages within a single section, it can work well to have a drop down menu which lists all the different options available within it when someone clicks on it to indicate they have an interest in that section. If you can make life easier for your visitors in any way, then you are better off doing it.

In short, make sure your structure is given the attention it needs – otherwise your website could fail miserably.

So how should you promote your website offline? The main rule is to put your website address anywhere and everywhere you can. So for example, it should definitely go on your business cards if you have them – and if you don’t, it doesn’t cost much to have some professionally printed for you. Some people don’t bother with business cards if they don’t have a proper bricks and mortar shop, but in actual fact you can still put them to good use whenever anyone asks what you do for a living.

Another part of promoting your site offline is to tell people about it! You don’t always have to have business cards to hand; just make sure you always have a pen so you can write the website address down for them if anyone should ask. Word of mouth has launched many a successful product and business, so don’t underestimate the power of what talking can do for you.

Some people have also advertised their business very successfully by promoting it on the side of their car or van. Even if you don’t want to go for a special paint job or even a decal applied to the boot, you can get specially made magnetic signs that you can take on and off whenever you like. These allow you to use a good advertising message along with your website address, so you can promote your business to everyone as you drive along.

Another method worth thinking about is advertising in magazines and newspapers. You will need to research and identify your target audience here, so that you can match them up to the type of publications they are likely to be reading. If you can do that, you stand a good chance of seeing your hit counter go up even more as people read the advert and decide to take a look at your website to see what else you have to offer. Display ads often work better than classifieds as they are seen more easily, but they will also be more expensive as a result.

The key to successful offline advertising is to experiment with all the different methods you can think of and see which ones work best for you. But some are worth trying anyway, because after the initial cost you can advertise them indefinitely without paying any more.

A great example of this is to get your website address printed on a baseball cap. Then every time you wear it you will be promoting your business as well as keeping the rain off.

But if you are thinking about treading this path yourself, there is the tiny question of whether your site is secure enough as it stands to accept payments over the internet. There has been a lot of talk in recent years about how safe your personal information is when you go online, and there is no area more pertinent to this discussion than the safety of your credit or debit card details.

The bottom line is that if you pay the money to make your site secure, you will get more business. It will cost you money to do it, but the level of perceived professionalism that your customers will see – not to mention the fact that they know their data is safe with you, since they are ordering over a secure connection – has the potential to bring in far more orders and send your hit counter spinning as a result.

But there are disadvantages as well. If you only have a basic site that you have put together using a free template from the internet, then there is every possibility that you will be unable to update it in this way. By far the best bet is to get a professional to design your website for you, so that it has a secure server connection and all the relevant order pages already built in.

But are there any alternatives if you can’t stretch to the cost of getting this done, and you still want to sell items from your website?

Certainly – and they are known as external payment processors. Instead of taking the payment through your own website, you direct your customers through to a secure connection provided by an external site such as PayPal or WorldPay. You will need to have a business account with one of these providers, but it can be a good way to solve all your problems, satisfy your customers’ need for security and keep the costs down as well.

If this is the way you want to proceed, it’s a good idea to compare the different payment processors before you decide which one will best meet your needs. The fees involved can be very different and there may also be some difference in how much you can customize the payment pages. Some providers allow you to integrate your own business logo into the pages your customers see, which helps to blend them in with your own website.

In the end the decision you make comes down a lot to budget. You just have to make sure you go for the best – and the safest - solution you can afford.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to this, and the best way forward is to sketch out your ideas for your website before you make the decision itself. How do you want the website to look? Would a basic design be good enough, or do you want something more flash? Do you want to include a hit counter so you can see how many visitors you are getting? Maybe a handful of pages will be enough for your needs – or perhaps you are thinking of dozens of pages instead?

Whatever the answers are, they will help you to decide whether you should get an expert in or not. The big advantage of doing so is that you can simply tell them what you need and they will discuss the best ways of achieving your aims and presenting them in a well thought out and designed website. Unless you are a web designer yourself, your skills at putting a website together won’t be as good as those offered by a professional, so think about what you are getting for your money.

This does of course bring up one of the main disadvantages of getting an expert designer in – the cost. Depending on the size and complexity of the website you have in mind, this could range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. There are do it yourself website builders available that are becoming increasingly easy to use, and if all you want is something simple to start off with, you could probably get by with one of these instead.

There is no doubt that certain aspects of creating web pages are easier than others, such as putting a hit counter on your site or making small edits to what is already there. But how confident would you be to make any bigger changes?

You also need to consider how often you will need to change or update the content on your site. If the site is designed by someone else you will need to make sure you can access it to make any changes as and when necessary. Make sure you get proper instruction on this before the time comes.

This is one advantage of using a do it yourself website builder, or simply designing it yourself using some basic skills. You will learn it all as you go along, which makes the ongoing process of having a website much easier to cope with.

In the end a lot will depend on how skilled you are and how complex you want your website to be. Sometimes there is no alternative than to get the experts in to solve all your problems for you.