How crowded is the web? Well, according to Royal Pingdom, a global Internet tracking and statistics company, there are over 234 million unique websites. Many of these sites are expensive to create and costly to maintain while only being mediocre and containing no consistent theme or message.

According to web design experts, there are several critical components of leveraging a website as a successful business tool. These tips will help ensure that your website attracts the right visitors, encourages them to browse and entices customers to buy:

1. Aesthetic Design. Your website represents you — it’s your ambassador on the World Wide Web. Therefore, it needs to be clean and professional, and generate the right vibe and reaction from your visitors.

2. Message and Branding. The purpose of a website is to broadcast your company’s brand and messages to a wide audience of consumers, businesses, employees and other stakeholders.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the process that seeks to ensure that your website ranks high in search engines for its relevant key phrases. This process improves the volume and the quality of hits (traffic) to your website from the search engines. The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that it will be visited by users, which helps companies to build brand awareness and grow revenue.

4. Interactive Capabilities and E-commerce. Whether you want people to purchase goods and services directly through the website via e-commerce, or have someone from your company contact them, make sure the website is intuitive. Encouraging visitors to participate in some form helps develop a stronger bond with your company.

Finding the right firm that can combine web design with branding, marketing, business consulting, and a tight budget can be a tall order. One such firm that has generated tremendous success with this combination is Northeast Web Design. They have developed a client-friendly process and platform that treats every minnow-sized customer as though it was a whale. “What makes us totally unique,” stated Company Executive David Landon, “is that we are willing to invest serious resources in new clients, and demonstrate to them how we can help them improve and grow their business, on a free consultation basis.” He added, “We provide a full suite of services, ranging from aesthetic design and branding to website construction and e-commerce integration to Search Engine Optimization.” Regardless of whether the company is small or large, Northeast Web Design works closely to achieve that company’s goals.

It’s nice to know that in today’s challenging economic environment, with the help of web designers such as Northeast Web Design, companies can become big fish in a big pond without spending a lot.

(This guest article was provided to DPS Computing by Northeast Web Design ).