When considering a website design there is one rule of thumb that you have to have in mind, simple is better. You don't want to get you visitors lost with a too complex layout, or with a too complex website design. It's also very important to understand the market and how you want your company to be perceived. The design of your website will leave an impression to your visitors, make sure it's the right one.

Your company and website will have to have a logo. As many colors as you wish can be used in the logo design but a maximum of four are recommended to make the printing on business cards easier and inexpensive.

Think if entertaining the website visitors improve the success of your website, by entertaining I mean moving objects or pictures, floating text etc. This decision depends on your audience and on the purpose of the website. There are a lot of tools that can be used on your website, the hard part is choosing the ones that fit with the audience and goal of your website. Flash is one example of a commonly misused tool, while a flash website design or layout might be cool, it might not be best for your website goals.

You'll have to be careful when choosing the person that will design your website, you might get along a lot of designers that claim to be qualified but with no real experience, you should ask to see some examples of previous work. You should also ask your website designer about the following: possibility to manually write HTML code, if he can work with JavaScript or such languages, create and optimize META-tags for search engines, create forms and other interactive content and if he can work with websites in a secure environment. Your website might not need all these features, but any decent website designer should have these skills. Lacking any of those skills might mean that they are not sufficiently qualified.

If you want a professional looking website design you'll have to hire a good designer that will work with you on the website from start to finish and will also be available if you'll need changes or updates to your site in the future.