deas are the beginning of any project. The following short articles outline a few basic proven principles of the art and practice of designing successful web sites. I hope these ideas help you to have a more successful web presence.

Give your customers the convenience of visiting your store 24 hours a day and they will thank you with low-overhead sales -- and tell their friends. Remember it's not just 24 hours a day -- it's 24x365. How much would it cost you to keep your physical business open 24 hours a day? Try adding up the additional salaries, utilities, overtime, and even more late-night phone calls. It's far more than the one-time cost of even a very sophisticated web presence.

For those who live (as I once did) on the Oregon Coast, let me speak this little song: This year, smile when the cold gray fog of winter descends onto Cannon Beach. Even your ice-bound customers will keep right on coming. The Internet doesn’t have that "seasonal slump."

Regardless where you live, with a well-designed website you can expand your business worldwide for far less than the cost of a downtown storefront.

We have created a new tool, Keep-It-Current, that allows you, the web site owner, to instantly modify your own site, as often as you wish, from [virtually] anywhere in the world. No more FTP, HTML, or consultant’s fees will ever again prevent you from keeping your web site up-to-date and current.

For the technically curious, Keep-It-Current is a series of custom PERL/CGI programs, designed and written by us. Utilizing preprocessor technology, Keep-It-Current supports site editing via hidden, password-protected URL’s. Site changes can be made anytime, from anywhere in the world.

People will return to your site if you keep it current.

Getting visitors to return to your site is as important as bringing customers back into your store. Many of the same principles apply: use eye-catching displays, present a unified theme, and, of paramount importance for this discussion, keep your displays changing. Customers want to see something new, whether they walk into a physical store, watch another glorious Cannon Beach sunset, or visit your web site.

In the past, changing the contents of your web site meant hiring an expensive professional who would get to it "as soon as possible," or trying to do it all yourself. Both of these approaches make it so difficult to update your web site that most people have just let their sites lay fallow. And then they wonder why nothing ever happens.

The solution is Keep-It-Current, which we now offer with all of our web site projects.

Yes! If you want your Internet business to grow you must have your own domain name. A domain name gives two wonderful benefits. Since most domain names are relatively simple to remember, your customers will find it easier to locate you on the Internet. More importantly, a domain name is advertising insurance.

With a domain name, you can confidently publicize your Internet address with the assurance it will not change. Without a domain name, someday all of your efforts to advertise your Internet presence will instantly disappear.

Don’t settle for a so-called "tilde" account (the little squiggle "~" character). It may seem a cheap way to get started. They’re often free. But someday you’ll change ISP’s and all of your advertising will be wrong.

"Tilde" accounts also have another annoyance. It's quite difficult to communicate the concept of a tilde. When printed it often looks like a dash instead. When you tell people about it, you find no one knows either how to pronounce it (think "Waltzing Matilda"), or what the real name for the "squiggle" is (tilde).

Finally, a domain name adds an air of credibility to your site. People do pay more attention to unique domain name sites.

• How will a website enhance my business?
• How can I keep my site current?
• Do I really need a domain name?