The great website myth

'Give a man a £10,000 marketing budget and the first thing he will do is blow £9,500 on a website'

I think I am being gender-specific here. This is partly because we are all a bit geeky but far more so we do it on the principle that if we build a better website, the world will beat a path to our door. Sometimes this takes an extreme form - such as a local tradesman with a fully-functional Flash site - not only will this not help your business, it will actually turn business away.
 
I (rather smugly) like to tell people that a website can be one of 3 things:

1. A shop.
2. A source of information and reference.
3. A millstone.

The third case happens when you over-invest in a site then fail to keep it clean and current (a bit like having a store in a fancy precinct with dead flies in the window). 

Only once you have decided on the function of your site should you decide what you want it to look like and what the content should be. In the course of my job I generally look at a site to find out about more about a prospective client's business. Drawn below is my own personal list of observations on how to get the best front-end results on a site.

• Download speeds. Things like Flash animation and over-use of graphics slow your site down. In certain sectors these are relevant and necessary, but otherwise there is no need to burden your site with them.
• Images / pictures. A purely personal viewpoint - but I have no time at all for boring, generic library pictures (almost every money-based website I visit seems to have a picture of someone in a suit looking up at a tall building and a pile of coins at a jaunty angle. Why?). Try wherever possible to use interesting and personalised images of your people, your products or at least something relevant. A lot of people don't agree with me on this.
• Rolling content. Can there be anything more moribund than a news section whose only entry reads 'Oct 2008 - We are pleased to announce the launch of our new website'. If you are going for rolling content, then there must be a commitment to keep it current, relevant and interesting. 
• Gobbledygook. If you are only interested in attracting visitors with commitment to Nuclear Fusion, then it might be appropriate to fill your home page with jargon; however the majority of sites are designed for a mixed audience, so the core information should be comprehensible to all and not riddled with superlatives and management-speak. There is other opportunity on the site to connect with the technical crowd. I kid you not, there have been many occasions where, having visited a website I have had to go back to the customer to ask what they do. (I accept this is partly for SEO, but that shouldn't preclude a clear statement).
• Who are you? It is essential somewhere on your site to say who you are - legal company/partnership/sole trader details and a form of direct contact other than an auto-email. Not only is this a legal requirement, it also builds a lot more confidence in your business.
• Spelling & grammar. The focus of much recent press, visitors to your site will judge you on spelling and grammar. OK, if you are a local tradesman it might not be a big problem, but there are only 2 safe assumptions: first no-one will think badly of you for using good spelling and grammar and second, your web designer will not correct it for you.  We all make typos and many of us can't claim to have perfect grammar, which is why your content should be critically checked by several sets of eyes before going live.

There is a lot of material available about web content - this is based only on my personal experience, but I hope it helps..