You'll notice that almost every really good page has some of following links:

Contact Us

About Us

Help

Feedback to Webmaster

General Feedback

Links to other sites related

Home (on all pages except home, of course)

Back Buttons, Next Buttons, Paging for pages that go together

Search this site for....

These are just a few of common links that you'll see on really successful pages. Step back and look at your page from a marketing and artistic viewpoint. Would you stay long?

If you need help with "Looks Great" part of your website and you insist on doing design yourself, here are some pretty good sites to give you help:

http://www.webmonkey.com http://www.flashkit.com http://www.macromedia.comSo

3. It's links actually work: I've mentioned this in another article, but it is worth mentioning again. Test and test and test your site for broken links. Put it through some very exhaustive checks to make sure all links people click actually go somewhere and to make sure places they go when they click are where they were supposed to end up in first place. Have friends or coworkers test links for you to get a second, fresh eye to look. It helps to put an email link at bottom of each page that says something like: Problems with our site? Email Webmaster. This will correct more mistakes than you'll ever correct on your own. People love to gripe about how your website doesn't work as advertised. It's good criticism for you. When responding to them, respond politely and thank them for pointing out this problem. When I return in Part 3, I’ll talk about quick response to requests by your prospective customers. Thanks for joining me!

Dead links. Do I really need to mention that this is a no-no? Apparently, because so many sites still have links that either do nothing or point to 'under construction' pages. If you don't have content - don't make link.

Site Look and Feel ------------------

If you are walking around Paris, New York, London, or any other major city, there is a particular look and feel to place. Visitors like that: it addresses that instinctual need to know where we are.

What cities and countries do with architecture and landmarks, web sites need to do with design.

Many people sneer at pre-designed templates that come with web design software like 'FrontPage' and 'HotMetal', but idea is sound: creating a themed 'look'. In this way, visitors know they are on your site, whichever page they are on.

Reassurance -----------

Just as well-drafted maps and effective signposts help tourists to confidently find their way around, so too must we ensure that our site visitors never feel lost.

The easiest way to do this is to put whole site's navigation system on every page. An effective device is to color-code menu items and page backgrounds so that folks know intuitively which section they are in.

Provide browsers with familiar landmarks and they will be content to keep on looking at what you have to offer.

Redesigns are often a quick way of making your visitors uneasy. Now, I have no problem with redesigns - most sites get dated after a while - but not at expense of functionality.

In fact, it seems to be an Internet rule that more a site is 'redesigned' more it becomes impossible to navigate. I had been visiting one ISP's site for a couple of years to pick up occasional emails. Then, suddenly, they decided they needed a redesign. After their (probably vastly expensive) designers had made it modern, link to email was hidden way down page. It took me 5 minutes to find it.

Guess which email account I am no longer using?

The Internet is, more than almost anything else in this fast-moving world of ours, all about instant gratification. Unless your visitor can get to what they want in three clicks, likelihood of them exiting increases dramatically.

That is important enough to repeat: you have only three click to keep your visitor's attention.

Even beginners to Internet know that it only takes one click, in their favorites list, to leave you forever.