The days of being able to succeed in business without an effective online presence are rapidly disappearing - and even if it's possible to survive that way, any company that does is missing out on a potentially significant boost to business. For even the smallest company, putting the business online offers both a cheap form of advertising and a direct link to the consumer; what's more, not having a website can be a serious disadvantage if rival businesses do have one.

However, it's understandable for the smaller business to not have done so. It can seem daunting, a choice between creating something through complex computer code and paying through the nose for a professionally designed site. Put that way, neither of the two will seem terribly appealing, so the online presence for the organisation, though useful, remains impractical and unrealistic.

Yet that choice isn't as clear as it seems. It is possible to give your business an appealing and engaging online presence with neither great expense nor technical expertise: using Microsoft Expression Web, you can build the website yourself without entering a single letter of code. Everything can be designed visually, choosing colours and fonts from a menu, positioning and aligning text however and wherever you need it, and dropping images, video, animation or forms right onto the page. Without any prior knowledge, anyone can make their site appear just how they'd like it to appear, and work just how they'd like it to work.

Unfortunately, here we come across a potential obstacle, a little snag that might not be obvious in the design process, but whose problems start to unravel after the site is already online and in use. When you design a website with Expression Web, it creates the necessary code for you. You don't have to do anything with this code - you never even need to see it - but when you upload the site to the internet, it's the code that actually gets uploaded and sent to browsers (this is true, it's worth pointing out, of any web design software, and doesn't change even if you write all the code yourself - it's just how the internet works).

The browser's job is then to interpret the code and display the website based on those interpretations; fundamentally, the site will be the same, but some details - such as the alignment or formatting of page elements - might be a little different. It's much the same as two chefs making the same recipe, but having a slightly different approach, with different spices or preparation.

So, what does this mean in practice? It means that if your site looks perfect on one browser, it won't necessarily look just right on another browser - particularly where mobile devices are concerned, with a much smaller screen to reproduce the page on. Yet you can't be sure what software and what technology anyone's going to be using when they access your page - so it's vitally important that the site works as it should across the board.

This is where Expression Web's SuperPreview comes into its own; not only does the tool show how a page will appear in different browsers, but where an element of the page doesn't appear or work as it ought to, Expression Web automatically highlights the error and what needs to be done to address it. With this simple tool, you can be confident that everyone who accesses your business's website gets the very most out of it, and in doing so, sees your business in the best possible light.

It can be hugely beneficial for any smaller company to have its own website without the expense of hiring outside expertise - and ensuring that the site is accessible to all can make a real difference, giving your business a headstart over rivals without this advantage. It's certainly worth considering a short training course, to utilise Expression Web to its fullest, and with an appealing and universally accessible website your business can really feel the benefit that Expression Web brings.