TOP 5 Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to designing your website, extra attention should be paid to every tiny detail to make sure it performs the best that it can do in serving its purpose. Here are five vitally important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

Rule 1: Do not use splash pages
A splash page is the first page that you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter", and that's it!  They are just pretty doors with no real substance.  All websites have one purpose and that's to get people in looking at your content - don't make your visitors come to a door first and don't give your visitors have a reason to click on the "Back" button!
Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

Rule 2: Have a simple and clear navigation
You MUST provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child would know how to use your site.
Definitely stay away from complicated Flash based menus or complex multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

Rule 3: Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to ensure that they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site with the utmost of ease. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion usually leads to "abandon ship"!

Rule 4: Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine, better still if you like the idea of using audio place a 'Play Music' option/link/button somewhere prominent so that they can play it of they want to.  Similarly with video, there is nothing more annoying that video starting before I've clicked the 'Play' button!.

Rule 5: Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Some form of advertising is perfectly fine and is acceptable to most browsers and visitors; anyway, most net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate.
A different approach would be to provide easy access to your most valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.