I'm not a professional web site designer and openly admit
there is a lot that I don't know. But if you're a beginner
I probably know more than you do, so the listen up.

Rather than give a lengthy dissertation on web design I have
broken it down into the following points:

Keep your navigation bars either at the top or left of the
page (a recent tip I heard is: by putting the nav bar on
the right of the screen it appears below your site content
in the html code and therefore will be read by the SE
spiders last). You can clearly see my navigation bar on the
left of every page at http://www.007workfromhome.com

Have your navigation bars visible on every page unless its a
sales page, in which case you don't want them to go
anywhere else.

Divide your navigation bar into related groups of links for
easier navigation.

Have you company name and logo in the top left or top middle
of the page.

Keep the theme of your site standard throughout. Don't use
different fonts on different pages or mix fonts on the same
page without a good reason for doing so. A constant theme
also includes the color of unvisited, active and visited
links.

Keep your use of colors to no more than about 5-7 different
colors per page (less if you can).

Include a site map which lists every page. Good for your
visitors and site maps make it very easy for search engines
to spider your site.

Don't have more than 3 layers in your web site. That means
if I was to start at your home page I should be able to
reach any other page in your site in 2 clicks or less. Any
more and your visitors may become lost and search and
engines will leave before they have finished indexing your
entire web site. This is easier than it sounds if you have
a comprehensive navigation bar and a site map.

Limit your use of graphics on a page unless they are
essential to your marketing because they will drastically
increase load time and some visitors won't be prepared to
wait.

Keep your background white and the majority of your text
black. Mixing background colors and texts not only looks
unprofessional it is can also be difficult to read.

Include a links page which can be reached from the
navigation bar. On your "Links" page have instructions
describing how someone can post a link and the link you
would like them to posted on their site. I prefer to view
links before I post them in case they are not appropriate.

Written by Murray Hughes
http://www.007WorkFromHome.com

http://www.007workfromhome.com/how-to-design-website.php