Many business owners still believe that a website is a website is a website.

Although some may look better than others, simply having a site somewhere out there on the Internet isn't sufficient to be seen as dynamic and 'up with the times.'

With this thought, many businesses have ended up with websites that do absolutely nothing to generate business or revenue.

How can you avoid this? Here are 10 things to remember when taking your business to the web.

1. The "If I build it, they will come!" syndrome

This is probably the most common mistaken belief regarding the Internet. Except in the minds of web designers who want to make a sale, this could not be further from the truth.

The Internet embraces the whole world every country, every state, every city. Is it in any way reasonable to assume that out of the millions of businesses on the web, with probably at least hundreds selling an identical product or service, a buyer will find you?

Websites take hard work and a great deal of time and ongoing commitment. Search engines are crucial if you want to make a single sale on the internet, and they take a lot of patience. In a great many cases, it can take between six months to a year to reach a position toward the top of the search engines.

2. No name gets you nowhere!

In order to save money on hosting, some businesses opt to place their sites with one of the many free web space providers, such as Tripod, MSN or Geocities. This practice, while it may save $10 a month, does not help the business image. With a free host, your web address is something like:
http://geocities.com/heartland/garden/7210/speedomatic3/.

Not only is this a lot to remember, but it does not give as legitimate an image as would http://www.superspeedycleaning.com.

The same is also true of e-mail addresses. Always match your e-mail address to your domain name. For instance, info@superspeedycleaning.com gives a far more professional and consistent feel than spcl0896@aol.com.

3. Feel the Need for Speed!

It is far too common these days for websites to take ages to load, especially on a dial-up connection. If your site takes longer than 30 seconds on a 33.6k modem, you are seriously running the risk of losing prospective sales. Rather than dragging your site down with 50 pictures on a page or that Flash intro that takes two minutes to load, get your designer to keep things simple and fast-loading.

Also, make sure that your site can be seen by all visitors. It is extremely easy to get caught up on just Internet Explorer on the PC and forget about the people who use Netscape, Firefox, AOL, or Safari on the Mac. These are only the most used browsers, there are many other smaller ones out there, and each shows your site's pages slightly differently.

4. Don't hide your information!

How many times have you wasted time looking for a way to contact a company? Always put a telephone number on your site. Put it, along with your office address, on every single page of the site. That way, someone who wants to reach you can do it within a few seconds.

5. Banners, Banners Everywhere!

Although your web designer may suggest that you join an affiliate program to get some passive income from your site, don't do it!

Banners and pop-ups will more likely damage your small business website than help it. Even if a prospective client finds you, there is no bigger turnoff than being barraged by advertising, especially in pop-up form.

Unless yours is a site where people would expect such advertising, for example, a listing or directory site giving links to useful resources, this will do more damage than good.

6. Less is More!

Smaller business tend to want to go into great depth about every single aspect of their business in order to look like a larger company.

This is totally unnecessary.

Because the Internet is such an impersonal place, all in-depth information will do is make the viewer think they now know everything about you, causing them to move on to the next site. As with any type of advertising, you want to give only  the information necessary to stimulate the person's curiosity so they will call you for more information.

If you are a business selling a physical service, such as roof repair or interior design, a picture can speak a thousand words. Before-and-After photos and one paragraph of text will have more impact than 20 photos and 10 paragraphs.

You know it took you weeks to develop that backyard into an oasis, but your visitors don't need to see any more than the start and the finish.

Keep image numbers low, only showing your best work. If you sell basically one type of service, do not overwhelm the visitors with 20 pages of what appear to be similar before-and-afters. They will get bored and leave.

7. Keep it current!

It is very easy to have a website created and then not touch it, sometimes for years.

Whether it is because the designer charges too much for even small changes, or simply because you kept meaning to but never got around to it, nothing on the web says, "These people aren't doing anything," more than out-of-date content.

The main offending items in this regard are the copyright dates, out-of-date news and invalid phone numbers. Even if you only make updates once a year, these things must be current, or prospective clients will think you are out of business and go to one of your competitors.

8. Counters can kill!

It is all very well to have a little counter at the bottom of your page, but nothing puts a person off more than seeing that they are visitor 00102 when the site was created in 1997.

Some site owners try to deliberately fool visitors by setting counters at unbelievably high numbers, but this can be even more detrimental, especially if the person revisits your site a week or two later and sees that the counter that previously said 10,000,000 now says 10,000,002. They will know you are trying to cheat them, and go elsewhere.

If you are interested in tracking the flow to your site, an alternative to a counter would be a hidden traffic monitor. From there you can see details about how many people have visited the site, where they came from, which keywords they used to find you on the searches, and even what time of day most people visit.

9. Busy is not your friend!

Many sites seem to have busy textured backgrounds on the pages and several different colors in the text.

These are really not good and can make your page content very difficult to read even for a visitor with 20/20 vision.

Some color schemes and textures simply do not belong together on a web page.

How many times have you visited a site that has for example a dark blue background and purple text, and it looks fuzzy?

Keep colors basic and clean if you don't want to lose potential clients.

10. Here today, gone tomorrow!

There is nothing worse than a visitor going to your site only to get the dreaded "page cannot be displayed" message.

With some hosts, especially smaller ones, servers can be up and down on an almost minute-by-minute basis. This is not good.

Even if your site only gets 100 hits a month, you can bet your life that, just like the phone ringing when you're in the shower, that one huge "set you up for life" deal client will choose to visit your site ten seconds after your host server fails.

If you have doubts about server reliability, have your web designers install a monitoring script, which will alert them or you if the server stops working. If server problems do frequently beset your site, move your host.

This is easy to do, and is a minor inconvenience compared to potentially lost income, especially if you sell a "high-ticket" item or service.