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Websites are an integral part of the modern business. For an increasing number of customers, the internet now takes the place of the phone book, and often times it takes the place of the phone. A website is a cheap, easy and effective way to spread your name and gain new customers, and to better serve your current customers by offering an expedient, all-hours source of information on your company.

However, a poorly done website can turn away more customers than it brings in. Here are some tips on how to make your website work:

Use a short, sensible address. Long, segmented addresses and addresses with punctuation marks like hyphens in them are easy to forget and easy to mess up, even if a customer thinks he or she has written it down correctly, and they're impossible to find intuitively. What's more, such an address will make you look small-time. Preferably, your URL should be your company name, so customers can find it even without having ever heard the address. So, your address should look like this: www.joeshardware.com; not: www.aspd.com/js~tool_pgk.htm.

Keep the load time short. People are impatient, especially on the internet. Few surfers are willing to sit and stare at a blank screen for more than a few seconds while your page loads. This means you might have to reduce the graphical content of your site.

Update your website often. If the last date a customer sees on your site is two years old, they'll doubt the validity of the rest of the content (hours, merchandise in stock, contact information), and they may even assume you're no longer in business. And the more often you update your site, the more often customers will return to it.

Display your contact information prominently. The effectiveness of your site will be severely limited if customers can't find your address and phone and fax numbers quickly and easily. They should be clearly displayed on your main page, even if your site offers online ordering and customer service.

Make an effort to appear trustworthy and credible. Things on the internet are often not what they seem, and fraud on the web is a serious problem. To combat uncertainty in the minds of your customers, add things like customer "blurbs" or testimonials, photos of you and your employees, credentials and a privacy policy. Credibility is another reason to prominently display your physical address.

Respond to email in a timely manner. These days customers expect near instantaneous service, especially online. Always respond to queries or complaints within 24 hours, if at all possible.