The quality of our web design is "fundamental to us", says Ally Gavigan, partner in Antonio Pacelli, a London-based manufacturer of Irish dancing shoes established by his parents.

Despite the company's longevity, and the traditional nature of its product, he took seriously the stories of a web paved with gold and the promise of a global storefront. "A well-designed site means people will come, actually use it on their visit, and come back and stay," he observes. "It gives you credibility."

Since launching the site, turnover at Antonio Pacelli has increased considerably. They have even realised unexpected marketing benefits due to the quality of the photographs on the site. "A lot of fanzine sites have asked if they could use them, which has raised our profile a lot", Gavigan reports.

The value of well-considered design is tangible for non-retail organisations too. "We have always been strong on design", says Juliet Tizzard, director of the infertility information charity the Progress Educational Trust. "The way our organisation presents itself makes us look bigger than we are."

Companies are losing out if they are using the web to assist their business without investing in design. With online retailing in particular, this loss becomes quantifiable. According to the New York-based customer experience consultancy Good Experience $19bn was lost by US companies in online sales during 2000 "as a result of online shopping carts not working or being unusable, poor search, and cluttered home pages".

While the nature of good design is a hotly contested issue, a well-designed website should meet the organisation's goals and utilise its resources to deliver a high quality of experience.

The internet is a new medium and there is an inevitable learning curve for companies wanting to exploit the web. Having grown up in a technology-infatuated age, design for the web has been confused with the process of creating a website. Most companies would not ask a printer to design their corporate identity; neither should they expect a programmer to design their website .

Although web design serves a company's goals in the same way as other kinds of design, there are more design considerations. Unlike two-dimensional print, a website has a third dimension of depth, created by a hierarchy of pages. It then has a fourth dimension of time, most vividly - and often irritatingly - demonstrated by Flash animations, and also a fifth dimension of user interaction.

Most frustratingly for those familiar with print, the appearance of a website will vary widely depending on many factors including the operating system and browser on which it is viewed and the speed of the connection.

Web design is not mystical and the design process has a lot in common with other business processes (see left). It combines a logical process with lateral thinking and creativity, which itself can be evaluated and tested.

Ultimately, to ensure the design of a website is effective and of high quality, there is a need to frame and evaluate the design in the context of overall objectives, and of audiences and their goals.

For example, retail websites that make it difficult for customers to view the range of products or make a purchase are not effective.

The value of good design isn't just in getting people to the checkout. The quality of the experience is also important, as is the overall impression of the organisation that the customer leaves with.

Unless companies can learn to manage web design effectively they will continue to squander the opportunities the web offers their business.