To avoid missing out on substantial new business through your website, make sure it's:

1. Easily found & accessible
If your target market doesnt know about your sites existence, or simply can't find it, whats the point in investing in it in the first place? Its vital you have a programme of web promotion and search engine marketing. Take measures also to ensure that your website is cross-browser compatible and that it meets statutory requirements for accessibility.

2. User-friendly & visually appealing
Peoples attention spans are short. Even if your website is easy to find, if its even slightly frustrating to use, your users will abandon your site and take their business elsewhere. You can however prevent most abandonment through usability testing and making the resulting improvements to your site. In order to pull in new business, its also important to evaluate your web users browsing statistics on an on-going basis to make sure that youre delivering exactly what your users expect.

3. Useful, engaging & up-to-date
Content must meet your visitors expectations by being genuinely captivating and useful. What seems interesting to you is not necessarily what your customers want to hear. Invest in professional search engine optimised copy and plan your sites content with direct input from your target market. Monitoring your website statistics will enable you to gauge which pages are pulling in traffic, and a programme of ongoing web maintenance will ensure that (i) your content is fresh enough to encourage visitors back again and again, and (ii) a good search engine ranking is maintained.