Let's face it! Any 12 year old can throw together some HTML or use Frontpage and call it a Web Site. In fact, sorry to say I see a lot of businesses that have sites that look exactly like a kid designed it.

When I search for a company on the web, their web site makes an impression with me. If it is nice and well designed, I think the business is probably well organized. When I visit as site that has a horrible design, I tend to think if the company does not have the time or small amount of money to invest in a professional Web Designer, then I probably don't want to business with them.

That is the reality of the Web. I got into the Web Design business years ago when other companies where charging an arm and a leg to make good looking websites. I was creating the same types of the sites for a fraction of the cost so my demand went up and it has kept me busy since.

When designing sites, you have to keep in mind that while you might have a super fast broadband connection, over half the country still uses a dial up. Some of the fancy sites on a dial up can take several minutes to load. I personally will not wait more than 10 or 20 seconds for site to load before I leave.

So here a few tips for those just starting out in Web Design:

1. Never make a site entirely in Flash. Flash is to be used as images to help enhance the appeal of the site. Large flash sites do not perform well in dial up connections so you have lost 50% of your possible traffic if you decide to design entirely in Flash.

2. Compress your images down to the lowest point without losing sharp focus and do not place to many or large images on one page. Again, great for broadband users but dial up users will leave in a hurry if the page take to long to load.

3. Learn the basics of HTML and do not rely solely on a WYISWYG editor such as Frontpage. (Which in my opinion is one of the worst you can buy). I suggest using Dreamweaver in conjunction with your own coding knowledge. DW will out put the basic stuff saving you time so you can go into the code view and really do the meat and potatoes of the site.

4. Do not plagiarize other peoples stuff. While it is certainly ok to look at other sites and develop you own concepts of a site based on the layout or presentation of another site, it is not OK to just source view and copy and paste other peoples work. It is illegall and may come back to haunt you.

5. In the beginning, be prepared to work for very little while you establish a name for yourself and get your work out there. If your good enough, referrals will keep you busy. I can remember working for literally pennies per hour because I did not know what I was getting into and quoted projects to low. If you know your going to have a learning curve with a particular project, quote it accordingly.

These are just a few basic tips for Web Designers who are just starting out.

Remember any problem you encounter has been solved by someone at some point and if you surf some of the Web Master boards like SitePoint Forums you can pick up a lot of great tips.