Customers visit your company website for one thing – to get information. More importantly, they want it ASAP, for they can switch to your competitors in just one click of a mouse. Make sure you have the following essential information easily accessible to your online visitors:

In-depth information about your products or services offered and your corresponding rates. You can also include some product samples, credible reviews, and testimonials from your existing customers.

Product support like FAQ and troubleshooting guidelines.

Press Release section so your online customers are updated about new products launched or any changes in your company. Also, press releases help increase the ranking of your site, according to Internet Marketing with Matt Bacak.

Background info on your company including history, management team, mission and vision, affiliations, and list of accomplishments. This is very relevant among professional service firms to establish their credibility to potential clients.

Detailed contact information such as e-mail address, landline and VoIP number, fax number, and office address.

Sitemap or a collection of hyperlinks that outlines a website’s structure, to simplify navigation.

In every communication, it is very important to have both form and content. Likewise, it is not enough that you have the best product in market. You must also create a compelling visual appeal so your customers will stay longer on the site. Visit our sister Design Blog, to get some highly effective and practical tips about design, infographics, blogging, and site analytics.

Good news to all entrepreneurs! I read in Kiplinger, a personal finance and business forecasting company, about Congress’ initiative to develop an easy-to-understand federal regulations guide for small businesses. Apparently many federal regulatory agencies do not pay attention to the growing needs of small businesses.

Regulators will get called before Congress each year to defend their guides. It means, for example, that representatives from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or the Internal Revenue Service will have to prove to lawmakers that they’re producing these guides and writing them so businesses can understand them. The 1996 had no such enforcement provision.

If this will push through, we can kiss goodbye those confusing legal jargons and other nonsense technical terms that make a simple process too complex for ordinary people.

More importantly this new initiative has some financial implications. With user friendly regulations guide, you need not hire lawyers as often like what we’re doing today. I’m not saying that we no longer need lawyers, we still do!

So you’ve started up a small business and you need some branding, some corporate identity. You want a logo designed, some business cards, maybe even a website theme. You want to hire a designer and can provide them the specs they’ll ask for.

Question is, after that, can you manage not to interfere, not to tell them that you could get it cheaper if your nephew did it. Most designers know what they’re doing. (Though if they give you the London 2012 Olympics logo, maybe you chose the wrong designer.)

If you’re inclined to micromanage, you need to watch this small compilation of YouTube videos about logo design and graphic design. Some are even funny, and most will shed a bit of light about what graphic designers do - including the variations in the logo design process. Enjoy. (Hover over the SplashCast player to see the navigation arrows - in case you want to skip a video.)