Designing a Web site is like designing a shop. It must attract visitors and retain them.

A few days ago, I came across a Web site hosted in Angelfire, one of the oldest hosting platforms. I was surprised it still existed after the dotcom busts, when even a company such as Yahoo couldn't afford to continue with Geocities.

It suddenly occurred to me that I too had a site in Angelfire. To my surprise, I found it still existed but was caught in a time-wrap. I had updated it years ago and it looked like an antique newspaper. It was full of links and a few pictures, nothing else. At that time (almost a decade ago) almost all sites had just links and pictures.

Today too there are sites such as drudgereport that appear less bothered about design but are right on top, but such sites are exceptions.

A friend who lives abroad once said he could easily point out Indian sites because of their design and gaudy colours, but things are changing.

Of course, sites that can hire expensive designers or Indian versions of e-commerce sites such as eBay manage to get it right.

But a small site that sells only one product shows it too can do things. The site is getsolmate.com . It sells only two versions of solar battery chargers and their accessories.

When I told my colleague he could buy a solar battery charger online from the site, he opened it, navigated around and closed it. The site's design made him think the company was based in the US and hence the product delivery would be delayed. He was pleasantly surprised when I told him it was an Indian site.

Having presence in the Web is easy, but making your site attractive is not.

Indian companies are getting savvy about the distinction.

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