A 2007 New Years Resolutions List for Your Website: 11 Standards Are a Must:

The days when you Cousin Vinny could do your website on the family plan are over; in 2007 only the most professional websites will convert traffic to money because even the oldest of our citizens spend a lot of time online looking at web pages now. This means that everybody is fussier, as they are used to a lot of very clean, professional graphics and automated sites that they use for banking, stock trades, searching, and purchasing online.

The days of the cheap website are over. The do-it-yourself days are over if you want to make money.

Even for myself, who has been involved in the industry for nearly 20 years: I finally built my website that will pass for professional; but it took me over 100 hours - when a professional could have done it in a fraction of that time! Here are ten of the new standards:

1. You must have automation: people expect to log-in and be recognized: they are no longer afraid of this - so it is becoming a standard; you must offer some automated features for members only to give visitors a reason to give you their information.
2. You must accept credit cards; this has become the accepted way to pay online: and, for the most timid, you should offer to accept Pay Pal payments also!
3. In order to accept payment (if your business requires this option), you must have a secure server certificate (fortunately, the cost of these has been reduced: and many servers offer it as a feature of hosting)
4. Professional graphics: with the broad use of broadband, websites look more like professional magazine pages than ever - Internet surfers expect a very professional look you will not achieve without a background in graphic arts and page layout - sorry, I am a do-it-yourself hacker from way back, but the professionals are enough faster than the rest of us as to justify their pay!
5. Flash intros are dead: sorry, but even if you have invested a lot in a flashy intro, nobody wants to wait; we want the page and relevant information immediately, or we will move on: and, with the search engine robots overloaded like never before, this includes them: they will not wait! If you want flash, have a tasteful, minimalist flash banner somewhere, done by a professional so that it is not overdone.
6. Your code must parse; sorry, I liked the do-it-yourself days too: but if your code will not go through the free HTML valuator at http://www.htmlvalidator.com/, your webpage will not rank on the search engines: and that means that a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor is not good enough; your page will not parse if you do not know the actual code standards: and the only way to keep up on them (they change all the time) is to spend countless hours fixing code that these programs wrote - again, the professionals are worth what they charge if your time is worth anything: go ahead, run your page through the parser; but prepare to be disappointed!
7. Get to the point; everything on the Internet happens fast: nobody is going to read wordy text with your favorite stories built into it: tell us what you offer, how it will benefit us, and provide an easy to find link to the prices in the first frame! (Or else: goodbye!)
8. Page weight still matters: don't be fooled by the lazy designer who tries to convince you that you can have as huge of graphics as you like: the search engine robots are overloaded during peak times, but they do not crash: instead, they automatically will wait shorter times for the page to return, giving light pages the advantage, even with the advent of widespread broadband.
9. Streaming video is here: we like it if it is formatted to skip the waiting, but skip the music unless we ask for it; if my browser starts doing anything on it's own without warning, my pop-up blockers and/or anti-spy anti-virus software will shut it down: I must choose to hear the music: and, unless it is a music site, most of us will not.
10. Get over yourself: I had to learn it, nobody wants your picture to follow them around the page: as handsome as you are, someone (a professional model, perhaps, or even you kids) is more pleasant to look at online!
11. Give me a chance to tell you what I think on your Blog, and read what others have said: that is right, the newsgroup or knowledge base of old has been renamed, and this time it has become a convention - it seems the geeks had it right all along, they just didn't know what to call it: it is official; it is called a Blog, add it to your Microsoft word dictionary: and you really do need one! Here is an online definition courtesy of: www.bytowninternet.com/glossary:

Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.

Read it and weep! And welcome to 2007! God only knows what we will need by 2008!

Israel Rothman is a well known online author: see RothmanMarketing.com