Have you ever found yourself trying to follow a television chef, doing as he does, adhering to his instructions, mixing and chopping and whisking and frying and grating and baking in harmony with your onscreen guide? And have you ever watched as he pulls from the oven with a flourish a finished meal full of art and elegance whilst you set an unidentifiable morass on your table? Well, don't worry. After all, he's able to practice that every day, when most people are out working; realistically, his dish is bound to come out looking that bit more perfect than yours.

All this is true of so many things: if you want something done to the highest standard, call in an expert. They'll be able to do more, and better, than we can. Trouble is, expertise comes at a cost, and there's often a need to balance the expense of the more professional result against the impact of our own limitations - so, for instance, we might hire professionals to knock through a wall at home if we want to extend our lounge, but perhaps we'd choose to decorate the room ourselves. We want the room to be well decorated, but all things considered, we can probably do a good enough job ourselves - and instead spend the money on making sure the structural work is done properly.

Why differentiate between the two jobs? If a home's decor isn't of the very highest standard, it isn't quite as pleasant to live in as we might desire - but if there are structural flaws, it isn't safe to live in at all. When it comes to building a website for your business, it makes sense to ensure that it's not merely structurally solid but also decorated most engagingly; you can expect your company's competitors to have an attractive and effective online presence, and will run the risk of losing significant business if your site isn't up to scratch.

But if it were possible to give your site a professional and appealing look without bringing in outside expertise, surely that would be the ideal solution, like having a renowned interior designer in your family and happy to do up your home without charge. Of course, such connections are something that very few of us can benefit from - yet the website equivalent is widely available and easy to use. It's called Adobe Flash, and can transform dull and text-heavy pages into interesting and involving consumer experiences.

You'll probably have visited websites with animations on the page, often simple but eyecatching designs, such as a retail site having a number of its best deals cycling on the front page, or a little animated figure to catch your attention or make the site more interesting. Any kind of animation you find on a page, even a simple bit of text styling, will almost certainly be powered by Flash. As for videos and audio - often an essential tool in bringing a company's products or services to life - well, they'll most likely be Flash too. You might have come across sights that carry a little game to promote the business, and yes, they'll have been created using Flash technology too.

And the best thing about Flash is that you don't need a huge amount of programming experience and knowledge to get the best results; in fact, you don't need any. All Flash objects can be created visually in Flash Professional, using the straightforward graphical interface. So, for instance, an animation can be constructed from just a couple of images - you provide the start and end, and Flash can automatically fill in the transition between the two (known as 'tweening'). It can also create 3D transitions from 2D objects, add animation to video, and give animated objects a natural spring and bounce - all from simply adding an image or two and clicking a couple of options. Furthermore, even if you don't have an image ready to use for the animation, Flash Professional gives you a range of intuitive and easy-to-use drawing and design tools to form the perfect look with ease.

When your creation is ready, you can place it into any webpage, wherever you want (and if you use Flash in tandem with Adobe Dreamweaver, it really is as simple as dragging and dropping into place). It's the same with video, or audio, or any Flash content - just position it and go. It's certainly worth considering a short training course in using Flash, so that you can get the most out of all that this powerful tool has to offer. And it won't just be yourself gaining from your new Flash skills, but your company - a company that will soon have a website to compete with the very best.