When creating a website from scratch, it is best to make a custom website outline before you begin the design process. You must determine 3 things before you begin. Who is your target audience, why should they buy from you and what will your visitors be looking for when they arrive on your web site. I challenge you to start on a blank sheet of paper and write down these three things.

Knowing your target audience is key, this will help you to figure out what motivates your audience and how to design your website around their specific desires. If you are selling a service to a successful business audience, maybe low costs aren't needed as a focus. If you are selling ipods to the college student demographic, it is time to take pricing in to consideration. A successful custom website design is only as successful as the visitor deems it.

Next, you must offer something that sets your company apart when a visitor lands on your web site. With the internet, shopping around is so incredibly simple - so you must set your self apart. Unfortunately offering free shipping is no longer the fix-all solution to obtain a visitor's order! Think of other things you can do to motivate your consumers to purchase. For example, if a customer is buying an Ipod, why not offer $20 in free sound downloads? I am sure you can work out some sort of deal with a music store to get those credits for half or a third of the price! If you are selling shammies to wash a car, offer your visitors a free car freshener or something like that (this would often times only cost $.50 or so bought in bulk).

Next, you need to find out what a visitor wants to see immediately when they land on your web site. Are they looking to find a specific product fast, and if so - how will you sell that consumer within the next 15 seconds. Literally internet shoppers give about that much time to be sold on a product. If your visitors are landing on your home page looking for Ipod's, they need to find out instantly that you are offering something special to that visitor, and that is the reason they should buy from you. Don't be afraid to make bold statements that are extremely noticeable to your consumers.

Next lets talk about getting visitor's to your web site and gaining top search engine rankings. This is not an easy task, however there are many things you can do to begin becoming a successful internet entrepreneur.

Google will often times sandbox a new website to the internet and not allow top rankings immediately. So you must figure out a strategy to bring extra visitor's to your web site without organic search rankings. Try to consider paid advertising through companies like google, yahoo and msn. Paid advertising campaigns allows you to buy clicks for certain key terms you believe your consumers would be looking for.

You must also implement a search engine optimization strategy to start improving organic search engine results. Work hard to gain links to your site by exchanging links with other web sites, composing articles for submission and other tactics. You can also get ecommerce web sites in to google shopping and many comparison shopping websites rather easily these days - which can drive business your way. This takes time and persistance, plan on writing an article every saturday morning talking about your products and linking to your web site. Make sure to include good key words in the article title and description that relate to your web site. Also make sure to include your main key words in the link to your site.

Hopefully this synopsis helped, best of luck with your custom web site design.