While personal Web sites aren't the rage they were back in the early days of the Web, they're still popular. And more and more small businesses are embracing the Web as a marketing tool and as a virtual office. In either case, the Web can be a powerful and efficient way to present your ideas, sell your goods and services, and to distribute information.

You'll notice that I wrote "can be". In the drive to create a Web presence, the execution rarely matches the vision. Many peronal and small business Web sites leave much to be desired. But with a little planning and work, you can build a site that is an indispensable resource.

The Problems with Web Sites

Personal and small business Web sites tend to fall flat in these areas:

1. The misuse of HTML
2. Content
3. Design

The misuse of HTML

There are two common ways of dumping (literally) content onto the Web. One involves linking to a non-HTML document which will either be opened in a Web browser or in the application that created the file. The second way is to build a file in a word processor, export it as HTML, then to post it to the Web.

Neither option is the way to go. The first option does have its appeal: documents retain their original formatting, which often cannot be translated into HTML. But to view the document, visitors to a site must download it, then open the file in another application. The files will take time to download or render. On top of that, the files can take a long time to download and open. Sometimes the process will crash your visitor's browser.

With the second option, the results will need heavy editing. Don't believe me? Save a Microsoft Word document as HTML, then open the converted file in an HTML or text editor. If you're using Word 2000 or XP, the top portion of the file will consist of gibberish that controls the look and feel of the Web page. And it often makes up a huge chunk of the file. In Word 97, headings will often be replaced by tags like <FONT SIZE=+5>, and any tables and indents will be mangled.

HTML It Properly

It's the Web, remember? As Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the lingua franca of the Web, why not use HTML? While HTML can be intimidating to the uninitiated, but it is fairly easy to learn. It's worthwhile to have at least one person in a department learn how to properly format Web documents. Classroom and online courses abound. If you're on a tight budget, buy a book. I always recommend HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide, from O'Reilly and Associates.

Content

No matter what you're told or what you see on the rest of the Web, remember that content is more important than than design. Most people who visit your pages are coming not to admire your Web design skills, but to get information or to buy goods and services.

Writing Style

One of the cardinal rules of wordsmithing is "write tight." Most people break that rule, often unintentionally. They use too many words and passive sentences. Jargon and acronyms are rampant. You don't have to be a Norman Mailer or Joyce Carol Oates to craft your copy, but you should have a grounding in the basics of writing.

Establishing this foundation is easy. Take a course, or read a how-to book. Two excellent guides are Strunk & White's Elements of Style and William Zinsser's On Writing Well. Also, try to find a copy of the book Hot Text by Jonathan and Lisa Price. You can learn just about everything you need to know about writing for the Web from that book.

Aside from writing tightly, there are a few other tricks you can use to make your documents more readable:

• Whenever possible, use bullets and numbered lists to break up long sentences or paragraphs
• Use tables organize data
• Minimize the use of bold and italicized text

Design

Don't put design above content. Web publishing seems to have become a race to put more graphics and fancier elements (like frames and dynamic content) online. More often than not, the results are visually unappealing and are slow to load.

Try to control your artistic urges and keep things simple. As I mentioned earlier, people generally won't surf your site for its aesthetic qualities. They want information and want it quickly. This doesn't mean that your pages have to be bland or boring. A simple page design is far more effective than anything fancy.

That's not to say that making an attractive site won't help. But if you don't have the Web design skills, try to enlist the aid of someone who does in order to implement an ambitious design. Otherwise, keep it simple.

Getting Fancy

When authoring for the World Wide Web, you should strive to make your pages accessible to all browsers. Control your urges to write pages that can only be viewed in the latest version of the browser. While it's tempting to use technologies like Java and Dynamic HTML (DHTML). But unless they add something to your site, don't use them. Stick with plain HTML instead.

If you plan to add complex formatting to your site, use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS allows you to precisely specify fonts, margins, text attributes, and more. If properly crafted, CSS-authored pages can be viewed in the latest browsers, as well as older ones.

Break It Up

There's nothing worse than having to scroll through a long document to find what you're looking for. If a Web page is weighs longer than two or three screens, consider breaking it up into several smaller documents.

Proper Navigation

After usable content, good navigation is the most important aspect of a Web site. However, it's the one that's most often neglected. It doesn't take much time to add links to a page, and it's simple to do. Navigation doesn't have to be fancy. A simple navigation bar (pointing to the next and previous pages, as well as the top level document) will do. Also, you're site's main page shouldn't be more than two or three clicks away from any location.

Conclusion

Putting together an effective personal or small business Web site involves more than simply cobbling together a main page and dumping content online. It takes planning and work. Build your site properly and users will come and, more importantly, will keep coming back.