A letter every ethical web designer wishes he had the stones to write to his clients

Most of our clients are able to get their web sites up and running in a matter of a couple of weeks, and in some simple cases, a few days. This is the way it should be because the web site itself is not the key element in Internet marketing. It's about 5% to 10% of the effort at best.

If your site is not getting up this fast, you've got a problem. 999 times out of 1000 the problem is you haven't taken the time to think out what you want. We've provided a literal mountain of guidance on how to do this, but we can't read and assimilate it for you. Ad agencies that charge $100,000 and up for simple web sites will do that for you.

Anyway, there's no substitute for thinking. Eighteen different versions of your web site with numerous insignificant aesthetic tweaks is busy-ness, it's not business. Business is getting your web site up and then promoting it.

You can always tweak your web site later as you learn more about your market. In fact, that's the way it's done by the industry's most savvy people. Sweating over inconsequential design issues is an absolute waste of everyone's time.

My best advice: Plan it out, put it up, and stop screwing around with irrelevant side issues. It will save you huge amounts of time and money.

By the way, you don't have to have computer or Internet skills to plan out your site. Paper and pencil and some time are all that you really need. If you get stuck, show us what you've got and we can help.

Given the value of your time, the cost of Internet production services, and the cost of lost opportunity, an hour or so of focused thinking and planning today could be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars to you down the line.