Preferably design your web site to be viewable on a 12-13" monitor. (Yes, there ARE still some of these around!) A good yardstick is to keep it within default width of your browser. I find it mildly irritating when I'm forced to pull my browser out to full width of my monitor.

However, having to scroll past width of screen is downright irritating--a bit like trying to read a comic or newspaper and having someone else continually covering up right-hand side of page. If a site stretches past my 15" (640 x 480) monitor I have to be very keen on its content to stay--and I probably don't go back to it. Page lengths are not quite so important and will vary depending on content, but it's not a good idea to make them too long.

Statistics from my own web site indicate that just over 20% of people are still using 640 x 480 monitors. So, if you design your site only for majority of visitors, you're effectively blocking out more than a fifth of Web surfers-- or at least making it difficult for them to appreciate your site fully.

*10,000 Calorie Graphics: Just Say No. Impatient Americans will not wait half an hour for a big fat graphic to download. The rest of world pays for internet access by hour, and can't afford to wait that long.

*The First Magic Number is 100… Most web experts advise keeping pages under 100k for efficient loading. The best program I've come across for shrinking images without compromising their quality is Ulead Smartsaver. You can dowload a copy of SmartSaver 3.0 on ZDNet. http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,000MF0,.html And for more info, visit Bandwidth Conservation Society: http://www.infohiway.com/faster/index.html

*The Second Magic number is 216. For best results, stick with 216 known web-safe colors. Find out more at Smart Color Picker: http://reallybig.com/resource.php3?catid=21&id=1583

*Thumbnails. If you want so show off photographs of your product, be smart-use thumbnail images in your catalogue that link to a larger version of photo, so user can choose to clog up his or her phone line, rather than feel ambushed by a huge picture of tap shoes or home-grown herbs. More on that: http://www.collectorsforum.com humbnail.html

*Crimson and Clover, over and over Got a logo or a top bar? Good. Use that puppy on every page for your graphic. If it's same graphic on every page, you'll speed things up for your users; their computer only has to download that image once, thus speeding things along for everyone.

And now, I'll print this list and take it home with me; it's time to get down off my soapbox and follow my own advice!