Hire a Web site design firm that understands your market position. Find one that won't get "geek crazy" – meaning they are so in love with their own design capabilities, your site gets bogged down with graphics, plug ins, GIF garbage, etc. But, conversely, check your ego at door when you work with your design firm – we've see so many good Web site designs ruined by clients who can't or won't listen to sound advice.

Pay attention to "load times," how long it takes a Web site to load on an industry-average 56 KBPS modem. If it's more than 12-18 seconds you may experience "click of death" – site doesn't load quickly and surfer is gone. Of course, if you're targeting broadband customers who are reaching your site via ISDN or DSL, then you can build a site that incorporates multimedia-ready content that may include streaming audio or video, or Shockwave or Flash capabilities. Go ahead and let those digital geeks get carried away with cutting edge content presentation.

Keep it simple – make your site easy to move around in. Build a menu structure that is consistent with industry standards: local menus (for a page or section) on left and global menus (overall site navigation) at top and/or bottom of each page. Keep as much information "above fold" (above cutoff point at bottom of a monitor); don't make people use horizontal scroll bars unless absolutely necessary.

Inculcate "digital speed" into your overall site design. Your clients/customers should be able to get to their desired area of your site within one or two mouse clicks; they will quickly get frustrated if they have to click through multiple menus to find information they are seeking.

1) A lesson for marketers is to make our web sites, products, etc., compatible with largest possible number of users, including most common browsers and computer systems.

The vast majority of web surfers use Internet Explorer, with Netscape in distant second place. The most popular screen resolution is 800 x 600.

This also means avoiding or using extreme caution with newer technology that people with slower connections and older computer systems can't easily use. One exception may be if you cater to an especially high-tech target market.

2) Unless you have a good reason to deviate from default hyperlink colors, it's best not to. Typically, blue links have not been visited, and purple links have. Other non-link text colored blue or purple may confuse visitors by making them think they are links.

3) A common pet peeve among surfers is slow-loading web pages. When using images on your pages, use width and height attributes in HTML code to specify image sizes. Browsers can then allocate proper space for images and text can start loading (giving visitors something to view) while images load.