So how's your website looking? Yes, we're making the assumption that you have one by now. The net has matured enough so that all but the start-ups who haven't yet had the chance to establish a web presence, and the laggards who aren't going to, and the extremely small local businesses who may never need to, have some sort of internet presence.

And the good news is that websites are getting better. New research from e-commerce specialist Actinic indicates that 71% of sites are currently profitable, that companies whose sites are profitable value their customer relationship and service and that bespoke design doesn't increase profitability. Bearing in mind who commissioned this report, that last point is perhaps unsurprising. Other information worth noting is that no site with an investment of less than £1,000 was profitable but that investing more didn't necessarily produce better results. So far, so good, except that there are still many sites out there that don't do much for their business, particularly at the cheaper end of the market. There are numerous reasons for this, but one of the most telling is a company's attitude to its website in the first place.

"Stupidly, we still regard click-throughs and hits as a good thing," says Patrick White, founder of the Web Design and Marketing Association (WDMA). "If someone's in Addis Ababa they're not going to buy from you. If you're in Birmingham you're more likely to be selling to someone else in Birmingham, so the thing is to build up a sense of local community."

This can be achieved in a number of ways. The first is to make your site "sticky", to use the industry's terminology. In other words, to keep people coming back. One way of doing this is through a newsletter; get people's e-mail addresses and communicate with them at least monthly.

"Don't tell them it's a newsletter, ask them to sign up for hints and tips or something," says White. "And look at the positioning of your invitation to join. I don't go to the web to sign up to a newsletter, I go to buy or research something, so if it's on the first page only I'm blind to it. It's like Mars bars in petrol stations; it's an impulse buy and needs to be in the right place." John Lyons, interactive director at web design company Egovision, agrees with the points about visibility and says that what people can see isn't always the same as what the search engines see when they're compiling their listings.

"Small business owners should beware of web designers who don't optimise for search engines," he says. "They sometimes like to put a flash front door on with animations and all sorts of stuff, but it won't get you into the search engines because the content isn't right." Content is king, according to the cliché and nowhere is this more true than in cyberspace, except that the sort of content you might be in the habit of presenting to your customer might not be the correct way of getting them to buy from you. Think of the number of sites you've seen that start off with a picture of the MD and a mission statement, then ask yourself how many products you've ever bought because the head honcho's a looker and they promise to deliver what you've paid for. Unless you're mightily peculiar, the answer is probably none.

The keyword that normally applies to websites is "usability" and it's surprising how many people, some quite prominent in business, get the basics of making their site accessibility wrong. The days when companies lost sales because their site didn't accept credit card numbers with spaces in them are mercifully gone, but there are other daft reasons for losing customer interest. Marty Carroll, director of usability practice at The Usability Company, did some research on Amazon.com and found that even a major internet brand like that was losing people: "Amazon calls its homepage 'welcome', which is fine; the thing is a lot of customers will use the homepage as their base while they're on the site and we found people were pressing the 'back' button up to 30 times trying to find it just because of the new name."

The other trap to avoid is what Carroll calls the "disease of functionality" or making the mistake of assuming that everyone knows what the hell you're talking about. "People use language that means something to them and it's difficult for them to understand that it might not mean much to the customers."

Essentially it's a matter of old-fashioned marketing principles. Business managers will be familiar with the "Kiss" principle; keep it short and simple. Robert Stevens, commercial director at the consultancy firm Bunnyfoot, has a number of ideas to help small businesses that can't afford formal consultancy. Firstly, forget any idea of your customers being sophisticated people with loads of time to understand your site and instead regard them as starving rabbits looking for carrots. Second, forget the idea of selling to everyone; consider who is most likely to buy and offer them the biggest carrot you have. Remember: they don't care about your company, these are fans of carrots and nothing is going to persuade them that something else tastes better. "Don't ask me for stuff you already know," adds Stevens. "Don't ask my address; ask my postcode and auto fill the rest. Use cookies to remember my details." Software that does this auto-filling isn't difficult to attain. Allow for mistakes occurring and have some sexy carrot pics around for when your site is down, so at least they don't get a 404 error (the one you usually get when a website's not working).

In essence, getting a website right isn't difficult as long as you keep it in proportion to the size of your business. As Egovision's Lyons suggests, keep your branding consistent but don't just put a brochure on the web. Research indicates people skim-read rather than read in depth on screen, so remember that bullet points are good and reams of articles aren't. And as the WDMA's White adds, don't forget that your commitment to marketing your site has to happen in the outside world.

Your website address, once you've got the content right, needs to be on your letterheads, business cards, carrier bags; anything that represents your business.

You do want people to find it don't you?

Disability Discrimination Act

There will be people thinking: 'OK, it's nice to have a clear website but if mine's a bit clunky it doesn't matter.' And, of course, they will be entirely wrong, partly for commercial reasons but also because the Disability Discrimination Act covers the online world as well, and the relevant commission is currently auditing 1,000 websites to see if they comply. If they don't then their owners will be liable for legal action if they fail to remedy the situation.

Robert Stevens, the commercial director at the consultancy firm Bunnyfoot (www.bunnyfoot.com, where you will find a user-friendly guide to the Act) explains some of the simple things that can be done to allow people with minority needs to use a site fully. "Don't use fixed font sizes," he says. "If you go to many websites, say the BBC's sites, and hold down the control button then move the wheel on your mouse, the font size changes. If you use fixed fonts that doesn't happen."

There are even simpler ways of improving usability for some sections of the community, he says. "If you look, say, at the Abbey National site they have some of their small print in upper case. A dyslexic person will struggle with that more than with lower case, and it adds nothing to the design or the look." The rule is if it looks bad, it is. The answer is testing, and not the costly sort. "Everyone has family and friends, just ask them."

Help panel: things to bear in mind

· Don't get carried away being a 'website owner'.
· Watch out for designers who want a big, flash opening page on your site. The search engines hate them.
· Don't mistake a visitor for a customer.
· Change your website often.