1. Keep It Simple

One of the keys to a good website is simplicity. You've heard of the "KISS" principle?

Keep It Simple Silly. This applies doubly for websites.

It's easy to fall into the trap of using every possible feature on a web page. It is nice to be able to create frames and tables and font sizes and animated GIFs, but if you have every possible HTML feature on every page, it's highly likely that your visitors are going to be overwhelmed rather than impressed.

Remember, just because you CAN create an effect, doesn't mean you SHOULD. Ask yourself: what value am I adding with this technique? Is this the best way to communicate what I want to say?

2. Simple, Not Boring

Simple doesn't necessarily mean dull and boring. Lots of people confuse fancy effects with effective communication.

What keeping it simple really means is this: think about how people will be using your pages and present your information to them in a way that matches their needs and expectations.

Clean design + Good use of technology = A Good Website

3. Five Fingers

Making your site easy to navigate is critical. Lots of small factors add up to create easy paths through your site. For example, one thing you can do is keep the number of "next step" choices small so that people don't become lost in a long list of options.

Did you know that the average human mind sees five or fewer items as one group, but when it encounters more than five items it has to divide them into smaller sub-groups to process them? It makes sense, then, to try to keep your selections arranged in groups of five or less. That makes it easier for your visitors to quickly see the options and select one.

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4. Three Clicks

Another way to help your website be a good experience for your visitors is to make
information no more than three clicks away. One of the fastest ways to frustrate visitors is to make them click ... and click ... and click... and click .. and click ... and ... to find the
information they want.

Additionally, when you make visitors burrow deep into your site to find content they often become lost and never make it back to your home page. When people get lost, they tend to surf off someplace else instead of fighting their way around a site.

5. 30 Second Attention Spans

When someone comes into a web page they should be able to easily see what options they have and be able to select one quickly. As a rule of thumb, it should take less than 20 seconds for a visitor to load your page and be able to decide what to do next. If it takes longer than that, you'll likely start to lose your audience.

6. Words Matter

Remember your fifth grade English teacher? Remember how she told you that good spelling and grammar were important? She was right.

The web has far too many pages whose creators forgot the basics. Just because your web page is online doesn't mean you can toss out all those rules that govern written communication. Just because it is online doesn't mean you can forget to proofread it. Take a deep breath and spend a few extra minutes with your text. Your visitors will thank you for it.

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7. Balance

A big part of good website design is balance.

Balance between text and graphics. Unless the content dictates an all-text or an all-graphics site, use common sense and aesthetic judgment so that one doesn't overwhelm the other.

Balance between download time and page content. Of course you want beautiful pages, but you need to balance the content of the page with the reality that many of your readers are out there logging on through a modem. Is that photo of your wedding trip really worth a 120 second wait?

Balance between background and foreground. Most of us print things on white or another solid color paper. On the web, it's pretty exciting to be able to create textures and backgrounds, but it's also easy to let the background overwhelm the content in front.

8. Consistency

Use a unified set of design elements, such as layout and color schemes throughout your web site. This will ensure that your web pages are visually consistent and appealing.
Consider the following:

9. Navigation Made Easy

Give a lot of thought to the roadmap of your site and how it's different elements are linked. How is this navigational information conveyed to the user?

All navigation links should have the same order on all pages. Anything else is confusing and frustrating.
Don't play "Surprise! New navigation bar!" A visitor who clicks on a navigation button and suddenly finds a new page with a new nav bar will become confused about where there are. Did they just enter a new site? Did they just enter a new sub-section? Why weren't they warned about this on the previous page?

A visitor's  navigational satisfaction is directly related to their speed at finding what they are looking for.

10. Final Thoughts

Learning about creating web pages is a continual learning process. The technology and tools are constantly evolving and our understanding of how people use the online medium is changing.

To create good websites you can't just rest on your laurels. The web is the best place to learn and keep learning. If you want to be a great novelist you read great novels. If you want to be a great screenwriter you watch great movies. By the same token, if you want to design a great website you need to look at other websites.

Take the time to surf the web and look at the other things people are doing. Look at both the good and the bad and notice what seems to work and what doesn't. Think about the sites that you use and how you use them. If you apply your observations to your work, you'll soon be creating great websites yourself.

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Nancy Bryant