What gives a website owner fuzzy feelings inside is not the same thing that makes the site sell. In fact, it has been proven and shown over and over again that UGLY, but functional sites outsell fancy looking websites designed to win creative awards.
Think about the most popular e-commerce sites online: eBay, Amazon, MySpace and Skype, and youll see that they are not big on design. But they are simple, clear and very intuitive for the visitor to use.
So skip the Flash introductions (or your visitors will!) and all those slide show graphics because they are just distracting at best to what you want to accomplish. When a prospect comes to your site you dont want to try and win their attention because you ALREADY have their attention. Instead you want to GIVE them attention by making their task easier.
Speaking of tasks, people come to your website with a certain aim in mind. You have to build a site that would facilitate the accomplishment of that aim. So if you are promising a free report then show them CLEARLY how they can get the report in the least steps.
One characteristic that mark web surfers is that they are impatient. If you website doesnt...