So what is this thing called a "well designed web site"? In concept it can be summarized in a few words:

"A well designed web site communicates and encourages communication."

It's as simple as this statement implies. However, implications of this statement are far reaching and critical to success of your web site. For example, one of critical questions to ask yourself when you are designing your site is "who and what are you communicating with?" Why is this important? Because in addition to your visitors with their complex requirements, you area also communicating with search engine spiders, internet mapping routines and other automated tools. These are critically important to success of your site.

Okay, so what do you need to do to make your site communicate to everyone and everything possible? Some suggestions are listed below.

Design Your Site

Before you do anything, sit down and think about your site. Virtually all successful projects begin with good planning, analysis and design work. Leave out these steps and you may find yourself reimplementing your site over and over. Think it takes too long? Well, I have a question for you: "why is it everyone has time to do it over but over time to do it right?"

http://www.internet-tips.net/Webmaster/gooddesign001.htm

Alt Tags

To make your site communicate better to those people (and search engine spiders_ who do not view graphics, be sure and include ALT tags with each image.

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

Metatags

You want to tell search engines (and other spiders) about your site? Include proper Metatags on each page. This helps improve your rankings on some search engines.

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

Navigation

Link Every Page To The Home Page - One huge mistake that many webmasters make is to forget to link every page back to their home page. It's important to remember that search engines typically spider your entire site. This means that visitors can land literally anywhere in your site. If you are smart you will accept this fact and place a link back to home page.

Java or ActiveX Menus - I know those Java or ActiveX menus look great, but a large minority of your visitors will not allow these to operate due to security concerns. In my company I am in charge or security, and one of things that we do is turn off downloading of ActiveX controls from internet. Period. We are also very cautious about allowing unknown Java applets into our organization.

The point is stick to a simple, clean navigation interface. Personally, I would avoid Java and most especially ActiveX in anything intended for internet.

Confusing Menus - You want to make it difficult for your site to succeed? Then make your navigational system difficult to understand and use. Bury your hyperlinks in a complex image map that's not obvious to user. That's a great way to stop people from looking around your site. Some other things you can to do prevent users from enjoying your site: