http://www.internet-tips.net/Webmaster/navigation.htm

Linking

Ensure from first day that all of links within your own site work perfectly. There is no excuse for broken internal links - these are a sure sign of an amateur. As far as external links go, accept fact that these will break occasionally. The web is a rapidly changing environment and you will virtually never be notified when someone moves a page or closes their site. Just check occasionally and update your links as needed.

http://www.internet-tips.net/Webmaster/gooddesignexternallinks.htm

Site Map

A site map is similar in concept to a table of contents. This is a great way to introduce your visitors to whole picture of your site in all of it's glory. It also helps drive visitors (and spiders) to pages other than few that they happen to find via search engines.

http://www.internet-tips.net/Webmaster/gooddesignsitemap.htm

What's New

Keep your visitors coming back by including "What's New" sections on your home page and in a special section.

http://www.internet-tips.net/Webmaster/gooddesignwhatsnew.htm

Frequently Asked Questions

Since idea behind your web site is to communicate, why not create a frequently asked questions section? This answers more common questions and helps prevent you from getting overwhelmed with common, everyday requests for answers.

http://www.internet-tips.net/Webmaster/gooddesignfaq.htm

Provide A Guestbook

All good web sites provide a guestbook function for their visitors. This gives people a way to communicate their feelings about site to webmaster and rest of world.

http://www.internet-tips.net/Webmaster/maintguestbooks.htm

There are many, many other things you can do to create a good web site design. Just remember your ultimate goal is to communicate something. If you are selling a product, you are trying to communicate about that product in such a way that your visitor wants to purchase it. If your site is about your cat, than that is what you are communicating. The better your design, better your message gets across.

No Easy Contact Method - Behind every web site is a person, and behind every PC is a face. I wonder sometimes about webmasters who make it difficult to contact them. The larger websites are famous for this - try communicating with someone at Yahoo, for example.

Just place a link to a contact page on every page of your web site. Make it obvious and easy to get to. Personally, I prefer using a form instead of an email link due to huge number of email spiders which seem to be appearing all over web. It doesn't really matter how you do it, just be sure your visitors have an easy way to get hold of you.

What About Those Without Graphics? - Believe it or not, many people surf web without graphics. Just as an experiment, go into your browser and turn off graphics, then surf for an hour or so. You'll soon understand some things that you need to do to allow for those people.

Why would anyone not want graphics? Well, it does make surfing much faster, and some of older browsers don't support graphics at all. You would be smart to use ALT tags to make it easier.

This is especially true of image maps - be sure to include ALT tags or someone who has graphics turned off will just leave your site fast.