Get fit, stop smoking, eat fruit, develop a website... Did your list of New Year’s Resolutions read something like that? If it did and your well-intentioned aspirations have now well and truly fallen by the wayside, here is some practical advice on websites.

"Everyone else has one" is not why you should. You must carefully consider why your company should have a web presence, what you intend to achieve with it and how you will measure its success.

For example traditional retail outlets use the Consumer Purchase Decision Model to support their Internet Strategy. This claims a consumer goes through a five stage process when deciding to purchase an item:

1. Recognition of Need
2. Information Search
3. Evaluation of Alternatives
4. Purchase
5. Product Delivery

A study of your client base can offer some interesting alternatives. If your clients are increasingly looking to you for a professional, efficient service that suits their lifestyle, perhaps a website is the answer. If you have a product to promote and need a visual representation past the 2D explanation, then a website will also save you.

Be warned, by definition, the World Wide Web means a global presence. Despite your best intentions however you cannot hope to be all things to all men. It is vital to the success of your website therefore that you identify who the site is targeted at.

Once you have justified the business case for a website and decided who it is targeted at, you must then begin to conceptualise the structure and design of the site. Jackob Nielsen has written about what he calls The Seven Deadly Sins of Web Design. These seven common sense ideas are useful to bear in mind as you progress through the development stages.

:Click here to see the 7 Sins: