You don’t have to be an economist to know that things are slow. Gas prices are up, consumers are being cautious, and business owners are feeling the crunch. So what is a home business professional to do? One of the ways that consumers are battling the rising costs are to turn to Internet shopping. So one of the things that entrepreneurs and small business owners can do is to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your website and online efforts. There are many steps you can take to make sure you are maximizing sales, and so in this series, we’ll take a look at suggestions offered by Dotster, Inc., a provider of Internet business services. According to Dotster, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) need to provide customers with a dynamic, yet simple to use, online identity. Here are the most important tips when it comes to designing a successful SMB site: 1. Simple navigation is an essential SMB Web site design element. Is your website navigation easy for users to understand? Is it prevalent on the page? If not, a simple update to the design of the navigation can help users better access an SMB site's content and information. It is also very important to properly group the navigation and content on a SMB Web site. Too many navigation items can be challenging for users to understand. It is often better to group common pages together into a sub-navigation model. 2. Page word count is crucial. It is important to limit the number of words on a web page. Pages that are 10,000 words long are not very user friendly when it comes to finding content. Dotster recommends analyzing the existing content and creating a structure that best organizes the information. 3. Key word usage is critical to SMB web design success. SMBs should identify key one- to three-word phrases relevant to their business and incorporate them into the content of the site. This helps search engines to identify the website when consumers are searching for relevant businesses. SMBs must ensure the key words are focused to their type of business, target audience and include a local niche. 4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great way to increase exposure for an SMB website. Reviewing the keywords and descriptions used on each page is essential for keeping the site listed in the major search engines. Proper page titles are also of major importance and are often overlooked. Creating meaningful page titles allows for better indexing by all search engines. 5. Images really are worth a thousand words -- when used correctly. SMB websites must optimize the images used on the site. Optimizing the images will help drastically with page load times. Shaving off a few 100kbs will save users' bandwidth while allowing the website to open faster. By adding text descriptions to the images, search engines will have more data to index on an SMB site. In the next part of this series, I’ll share with you the remainder of the top ten tips to make sure you’re utilizing your company website. | 
