People who spend a small fortune building web sites do it because they want their target audience to return time after time.

Sadly, many manage to repel visitors with their overall lack of finesse.

Images and text take too long to download and the audience gets bored and clicks away to something more interesting.

So what can be done to make those visitors stay longer and return more frequently?

In the first instance, stand back from your web site and take a long hard look at the way you have laid out your offering.

Remember the object of the exercise is to make your web site work better and not to make you feel good or clever.

Good solid criticism can hurt, so grit your teeth and get on with the process. Because we all think differently, an outsider's opinion could be invaluable.

So get half a dozen web savvy friends to assess the site and obtain their feedback.

Ask for honesty and not platitudes and reassure them this is what you really need, as they might see something so dreadful they might not want to tell you about it for fear of upsetting you.

Ask them to test each part of the site and evaluate its usefulness. Find out what they think could make the site better and then act on the information.

According to web design and usability guru Jakob Nielsen, companies should spend ten per cent of a web project's budget studying how customers will use the site.

Doing so, he insists, can improve a site's usability by 99 per cent.

Look at the processes you have set up. Look closely at the way the user is offered information and make sure you have made it as simple as possible to find whatever he or she is looking for.

If you are planning to sell goods over the internet, you should be very careful how you arrange the payment process. Sixty-five per cent of sales are abandoned because the payment process is seen to be too laborious or convoluted.

Traditional vendors have a much easier task when it comes to customer satisfaction evaluation.

They can simply watch their customers handling the goods to know how happy they are. The web vendor relies on feedback forms and a host of other intrusive or obscure methods to determine the effectiveness of his web site.

The web presents some unique challenges to vendors.

Most of these challenges are concerned with perception.

The vendor may see things differently to the customer and the result is misery. The only way to make sure you are delivering what the customer wants is to ask for his or her experiences.

Run evaluation days and act on the responses you obtain.

The vendor needs to reflect changing trends in his online offering. The internet is dynamic and web sites need to change as demand shifts.

Look at the search facilities you offer. More than 30 per cent of web shoppers find the goods they want by using on-site search engines. Many like to search by key word but others prefer price and age of user as a guide to suitability.

Maybe you need to offer a site map where users can see what is available and click through to the information they need without entering any search criteria.

Perhaps you need to make more information available than you first imagined.

Perhaps you need to open a shop and forget web promotion completely. Ask your friends and hope they tell you the truth.