Jay Lipe wrote a shortlist with 12 points for a successful Web site.

If you want your small business website to stand out from the crowd, follow these practical website design tips. If you do, you’ll harvest more traffic, higher conversions and more sales from your site.

• Know your site’s objectives.
• Make your on line identity sync up with your off line one.
• Identify the key three tasks for your site.
• Draw visitors in with your first two paragraphs of copy.
• Consider including a search box.
• Use a tag line.
• Keep the web page layout consistent throughout your site.
• Keep text short.
• Provide a FAQ section.
• Hang sales tools off your site.
• Provide contact information on every page.
• Increase media access to your company with a press room.

Via Usabilityweb.