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To begin
Will your site be informational only (brochure-style site) or do you want your visitors to be able to make purchases (e-commerce)? If you are selling your own products, you will want an e-commerce site (also knowing as shopping carts) so that your visitor can quickly and easily become a customer.

Many 'start-up' business opportunities have a website that you are given as part of the package, but I would consider that a gateway only. You need to have a site, even if it's just a single page, that you can optimise for the search engines. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a big business and incredibly important to the success of YOUR business. We'll talk about that more later.

If you have some knowledge of HTML, you can buy a WEBSITE TEMPLATE and add all the content yourself. Check out our source for website templates here. I've included a few good tutorials and informational articles below, that may help you get your template up and running:

• What is HTML? - http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/
• Basic FrontPage tutorial - http://edwebs.org/learning/software/frontpage/basics/
• Free Dreamweaver training - http://www.learnthat.com/courses/viewlets/dreamweaver/

You're getting your site built - now you need those little extras that make your site unique. Images, clipart, etc., will help create an impression on your website visitors. A few words of warning, however: Just because you CAN does NOT mean you SHOULD.

Things to avoid on your new website

• The Sound of Music - unless music helps make your point on your website, leave it off. If you MUST have it, do not have it loop. Let it play once, and maybe give your visitor the option of playing it again. Don't make your visitor leave your site to turn off the sound.
• Animations - One is more than enough. Enough said.
• Animations/movements attached to the mouse - yes, they are kinda neat, but your site is meant to represent your business. 'Kinda neat' does not sell.
• Any combination of the above - if you cannot restrain yourself from adding one of these things, only choose ONE. You want your visitors to see what you are SELLING not jumping images or rabbit mouses.....