1) It must meet a minimum standard of professionalism: the layout must be tidy, the navigation clear, the content itself should be well-written and properly spelt. When visiting a website myself, poorly written and badly spelt content is guaranteed to put me off. I would not want to do business with anyone who did not take the trouble to meet basic standards of spelling and copy writing.
2) The site needs to be search engine friendly. These days getting a good search engine placement can be worth the equivalent of hundreds or even thousands of pound of advertising spending. Yet I have seen many examples of business sites that could not even be crawled by search engines. These are usually the result of using the kind of software that promises to create a professional site for you in minutes with no knowledge of web design required. I really advise avoiding this kind of software, I have yet to see any that produces results that I would consider 'professional', and using it can lead you into all sorts of pitfalls that you are likely to be unaware of.
The fact is that creating a good website does actually require time and expertise. There is no good substitute for knowing at least the basics of what you are doing. If you want a good business site you either need to learn some of the basics yourself, or employ a professional web designer.
3) The site needs to reflect your business. Both the site content and the design should reflect the unique character of your business, through well-chosen content, perhaps a business logo, as well as graphic images of your business or your product. For this reason I suggest avoiding the use of templates to create your site design. I think that I can always spot a website that has been created from a template, they tend to have a rather 'generic' quality.
Personally I would prefer a slightly 'home-made' looking site that is friendly in tone and which gives clear information about a business over one created from a template, however 'professional' looking it may be.
4) It must encourage customers to contact your business. Contact details should be clearly displayed (though be careful about displaying your email address otherwise you may end up receiving a lot of spam). Also a webmail form can be a great asset, people do use them, because it is such an easy way to get in touch. This is something that a professional web designer should be able to set up for you.
The really important point is that a great business website is one that brings in customers. If your website is not getting visitors it is likely that it is failing in one or more of the areas listed above.
Strategies
For anyone thinking about setting up their own business site, I strongly suggest spending some time thinking about the content of your site. Do some research by looking at competitors' websites. Imagine that you were a potential customer - what information would you be looking for? Then write down the main information that your website needs to carry. Remember that you do not need to overload your site visitors with information: about 4 or five pages is more than adequate for a small business site.
When you know what you want, find a professional designer who specialises in producing custom website design for businesses. Employing a professional designer need not be prohibitively expensive - and can pay for itself many times over. I am often amazed at businesses who will pay hundreds or even thousands of pounds on advertising, yet object to paying for professional web design, though a good website can be a far more effective marketing tool than an advertising campaign.
Don't just set your website up and then forget about it. Remember to update it, at least occasionally. This will improve your search engine rankings. Promote your site by developing good quality links to it. There are many business directory sites that will allow you to list your business for free.
