One of the main key to attracting and retaining visitors to your site and getting them to stay long enough to absorb your messages is to have an attractive web site design. But herein lies the key to a successful web design, that is affordable web design that does not require the webmaster to pay through the nose and yet superior compared to all the other websites that are out there.

This may sound like a rather daunting task, with a lot of research, time, and energy involved, but actually, a few tweaks to an already good quality site can make all the difference when it comes to grabbing someone's attention. For example, one of the most common and effective ways to snag someone's attention right off the bat is to change the font size of your headline in your ecommerce web site design.  Make your main headline short and sweet, in a very bold, quite large font.  If you have more to say in your headline than can fit in five or six words, then create a main attention-grabbing headline, and then create a sub-headline that is a bit smaller, and that fills the reader in on the rest of what you'd like to say in your content's title.

Although adjusting the typography to attract the attention of readers is nothing new (in fact it is one of the oldest tricks in the book), nonetheless it is a tried and tested formula which has been proven time and time again. Some important guidelines to remember when playing around with the headlines of your website to get the job done properly are :-

- Use fonts that are appropriate to the message you are trying to put across. Don't super-size fonts unnecessarily. Use fonts that go well with the message a 10% sale advert should not have a size 60 font headline. People don't like to be bullied into seeing something so be careful.

- Proportion your font size of your headline to the approximately the right size of your content fonts. As a rule of the thumb, generally increase of the headline to an extra 6 points as compared to the content font size. So lets say for a content font size of 10 the headline should be a font size of 16.

- Do you have a standard across your website for your font sizes?  When you decide to make font size changes on your pages, then you should try to be consistent throughout your website.  This decision is best done before you begin building your website so that you can simply work it into the overall design, but if you already have a site, then you'll need to make the changes across your site.  Designate different font sizes depending on the importance and significance of the event or information being announced on the page, so that you will always know automatically which web design goes with what type of situation.

Of course, font size isn't the only way to get the attention of your site's visitors.  You can also work with the type and style of font you're using.  For example:

- font family - there are many different styles of fonts (or letterings), using a different lettering to emphasize certain words will often be able to focus attention on those words.

- color - Adjusting the colors of the fonts used can also attract attention, hot colors such as red and yellow are often used as they are more visible to the reader. Choose your font color in accordance to your web page background, different color backgrounds go well with different color fonts. For example red lettering on an orange background won't show up well.

- style - the style of the font can also be adjusted to suit the text of your webpage, bolding or italicizing words will make them stand out in a crowd of words.

All these techniques may be useful to create a winning site, but as the creator of a website one must be careful not to overstep the boundaries of moderation. People generally are turned off by what is deemed as a tacky or gaudy custom web design usually boasting loud beeping music, flashing lights and loud colors. This excess is sure to backfire. Don't overdress your site as this will probably be your undoing. Go for moderation and Zen in design for that winning touch.