Get Lost

How many times have you visited a site to get drawn down into some cul de sac and have no idea how you got their or how you get back to the home page without typing in the URL again? Apply this simple rule to the structure of your site - it should never take more than three clicks to get from any one page to any other.

Use Colour Excessively

Avoid the temptation to use multiple colour backgrounds with equally colourful fonts. You may like it but the chances are there will be many more that don't! And there are a very limited number of successful combinations of coloured fonts on coloured backgrounds - your visitor may not be able to read your carefully crafted copy at all.

Use Music

Unless your site is actually designed to appeal to people of particular musical taste or is all about music resist the temptation to provide sound on your site just because you can. Music is so much a matter of individual choice that one man's meat is definitely another man's poison where music is concerned. Someone working in an office certainly does not want music blaring out unexpectedly!

Over Use Frames

Frames are great at making navigation simple and quick but more than three will work against this. Use two for navigation and one for content. Avoid scroll bars and borders on frames, they're highly unfashionable.

Use Links Without Regular Checks

Most webmasters will check every link both within the site and links to other sites on the World Wide Web before their site is launched. But do they check regularly when the site is up on the Web? Links should be checked every week. If your site has many links you can purchase software to check these links.

Use Browser Specific Features

Avoid the temptation to use the latest in moving graphics if it means that it only works with one browser and you have to put the phrase "Best viewed with ..... browser". You will not only turn away many would-be visitors but alienate them as well if they perceive that you don't like their favourite browser.

Copy & Paste

Don't just take content from your brochures or other company literature and try to replicate it on your web site. The Web is a different medium and visitors view it differently. Think about the message you want to convey and how to convey it in a medium where content must be sparse but full of impact.

Show Your Web Site as Under Construction

And don't put a date on it. If you have extensive design work to do just put up a home page with your company logo, what business you are in, why you are different and contact details with a 'phone number. This can be achieved very quickly, may get picked up by some of the search engines and, most importantly, won't irritate any visitor. You can even give a taster of what the site will be doing.

Design for 1024 X 768

Or greater. There are still many people using a screen resolution of 800 x 600 (some still in 640 x 480). To get predictable results design in 800 x 600 and the vast majority of visitors will be happy

Use a Million Colours

There are only 216 "Web safe" colours that can be used that will be seen in the same way by both Windows and Macintosh users. This means that if you want to be sure that a visitor using a Mac and a visitor using a PC actually see the same thing you need to stick to web safe colours for your backgrounds and for the colour content of graphical buttons etc.