It isn't enough to just have a great web design.

Your web site exists for a purpose. It exists to market your product or service, make a favorable impression, and induce people to come back regularly. Unfortunately, a lot of web sites (and advertising in general) falls for what we call the "beauty myth". We've all seen ads on television that have been stunning, innovative, brilliant pieces of cinematography. An example is the Honda "Cog" ad, which can be found on YouTube.

Now, if you're a nationally recognized brand (like Honda), simply getting brand reinforcement can be enough of a goal from an ad on television. On the other hand, if you're reading this, you're probably not that big of a company.

At which point, you need to focus on the function of your ad (your web site) over its form and beauty and innovation. Now, we're not exactly the zealots of Jakob Nielssen, and pushing for ugly, text only web sites that assume everyone's stuck in 1995, but still simple and attractive and understated is far better than flashy (or, for that matter, Flash-driven).

Most visitors to your web site came there because of a link from a search engine, or from a link from some place referring to your web site, via a blog, an article directory, or a conventional advertisement. These visitors can be at radically different phases of the purchase cycle. One may be looking to Buy Right Now. Another may be looking just for information on a product. A third may be in their active Hunter Gatherer Shop Comparison Mode. Your web site needs to provide venues and avenues for all three of these types of visitors. Most web sites really only try to do the first. I'd say this is a shame, but it means you can do better and win out in comparison.

Understand that people are going to be referred to your web site either from links on a social networking site (like FaceBook or Digg), or by a search engine term (and thus, by paid keywords). More than 90% of the traffic will be from the latter, though social networking sites are gaining rapidly as the second most effective form of traffic generation.

The benefit of hiring someone else to do this is simple: You're getting the benefit of the mistakes they made earlier on. Now, finding horror stories about Yahoo! And Google Ads That Turned Out Badly is fairly easy. Finding people who've analyzed those stories, and found the patterns and common elements is not. Finding people who've succeeded is also doable, but even better is finding someone who succeeded, and knows why and knows what not to do. This can be the difference between a revenue machine and an ad budget that looks like a chest wound.

The other thing to keep in mind is that your time is valuable. It is absolutely worth your time to hire someone to do this for you. Pay Per Click advertising, and landing page building, have a lot of subtleties as much or more so than an eye-grabbing web site does. It's worth it to find someone who's trained and certified on the ins and outs of the Search ad products that both Google and Yahoo! give. Google calls these folks Google Certified Professionals, and Yahoo calls them Search Advertising Ambassodors, but they both have the same job: They recommend ad words, look over landing pages, and help you find ways to tune up your ad presence to get the job done, while building a relationship with visitors to your web site.

Remember, the internet is littered with stories of beautiful, creative, or original web sites that had to close down because they could not run a successful advertising campaign. If your web site has been designed with a focus on these things and you are struggling to make your site profitable, it is time to hire a professional. Look for those experts who have been awarded Google's and Yahoo's professional seals of approval.