2nd Rule - Errors. The king daddy of site design taboos in my book. Have you ever had this one happen to you?: You've found perfect price for perfect gift. You went to check out and, poof: 404 error. You click back button and try again; still no dice. Do you call their customer service number and take a chance of launching yourself into a black hole? Personally, I will search for another site that sells same product. The error site just lost a sale and possibly a repeat customer. Limit your errors. Not just 404's, but broken graphics and even misspelled words. Complexity is a big one here. The more complex your site design, higher chances of an error occurring. Keep it simple.

3rd Rule - Logos and Graphics. Another problem that can make your site look very unprofessional. This is a place to not skimp. Find yourself a good graphical artist and invest in a good logo. Don't get some huge, complicated logo that will take forever to load. Forget about weird neon colors, animated animals, flames, fonts, etc. Keep your graphics simple, sharp and professional.

4th Rule - The little things. There are probably hundreds of things that can scare traffic away from your site. Here are a few:

Updated dates - Don't include them. Many people have sites that will not need to be updated on a regular basis. Including an updated date can only do one thing: make your site look outdated.

Site Counters - Ugh. I still see these every now and then on seemingly respectable sites. "Hmmm, they've only had 3,000 visitors since August, 2001. There must be something wrong with them." It may just be that counter is broken, but how are you going to tell them that?

Too Many Ads - Link pages are great, but there is a place for them, don't crowd your navigation or product pages with too many ads. It's ok to sell a few spaces but don't draw attention away from your products/service/content.

There are a lot of things to remember when designing your web page, but most importantly you need to ask yourself, "Would I buy there?".

Be sure you have clean HTML code. Your site must work in all browsers and across all platforms. A good HTML editor will write clean HTML. Many developers still write in text mode and occasionally forget an opening or ending tag. One bad tag can ruin your whole page.

There is a bevy of discussion these days on use of CSS (cascading style sheets) and yet I see very little mention of how differently Netscape and Explorer interpret these commands. If you do not want to perform necessary testing yourself use an online service to do it for you.

Be sure your JavaScript works on in all browsers. Recently, I was asked to critique a specific site only to find image rollovers did not work properly in Netscape. This is basic stuff. Is your CGI reliable? These behind-the-scenes programming tools that are used to enhance a site can easily destroy it if they do not work properly.

5) Content The US Postal Service cycling team has depth and discipline. On a Web site, this is reflected in quantity, quality and consistency of your content. Aside from articles and white papers, content must be short and consistent throughout site. Stay well focused and direct content to your potential client base.

6) Anticipate Every day before individual race begins, US Postal support team drives ahead to next city. They literally dominate a hotel and prepare for arrival of riders. The team chefs take over kitchen, preparing types of meals each individual rider prefers. Anticipating feeding habits of a machine that burns over 5,000 calories a day is no mean feat in itself. The cyclists never look at a menu. Their individually prepared meal is waiting for them when they arrive.

As you lay out your web site, try to anticipate where your visitors will go next. You can then design your navigation system to lead visitor to next page, or set of pages. You can pre-load images so visitor does not have to wait for them to load. You can direct people to a specific page by continuing a block of text onto another page. Imagine yourself as a chef for a racer who hates meat, will tolerate pork and devour chicken. How long would you last if you gave him a rare steak?