Ten years ago, when the World Wide Web was just a small e-village of geeks, nerds, and early adapters, it was possible to have a no frills vanilla website. Nothing special necessary, just throw up your contact information, some catchy phrases, and perhaps a logo drawn by your neighbor’s art student son. Now days, everyone from here to Estonia has a website. You’re not just competing for customers with the folks in your town, your battling people all over the world. Every website needs to fly, pop, and explode off the screen.

Check out any brokerage house, insurance company, or drug manufacturer’s website. Usually they are pretty staid and businesslike, with few bells and whistles. That’s fine – if you’re a brokerage house, insurance company or drug manufacturer. They are great – but they aren’t always “kickin”. If your Internet schemes extend beyond these three classes, you will probably want to make your site a bit more exciting. Nobody’s suggesting naked dancing girls (or boys…We don’t judge…), but a little sugar and spice might not hurt your site. A memorable website is the first step into imprinting your organization’s mission on the net surfer’s mind. People have the attention span of mayflies, so to get the attention of the ADD generation, you have got to reach off the monitor and grab them by their retinas. Look at us! Look!

The basic tenant in all Web development is to avoid boring your visitors to tears. If people are only using your website as an Ambien substitute, you might have some issues. Don’t be afraid of bright colors, animation, music, blogs, interesting content, pictures, bios, links to images or clips of your work, or even videos. The Internet is a rapidly evolving place, so adapt, change or die. We aren’t suggesting you detract from your base business or idea. If you’re developing a site for your dog walking company, then make it THE site for dog lovers. Make it something people will forward all over the web. Cute puppy pics? Easy! A page/tab for FAQs on mutt lover’s best dog food pics? Why not! Debbie the Dog Walker’s video doggie-diary! Holy Youtube Yes!

Perhaps this sounds overwhelming, and way beyond your capabilities. That’s fine; I can’t change my car’s tire to save my life. Thankfully for both of us there are great people out there who you can hire to do it for you! Don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s a cost you can’t afford. Your website is oftentimes your first chance to make a good impression to the world. Don’t make the public cringe they find your site, make them want more.