This article is not about the practical designing of your site. It will, however, help you avoid many of the common mistakes that novice and expert designers make. Whether you are going to design the site yourself, or contract out to a design consultant, there are several key elements to good site design that you (or your designer) need to work to.

The most important part of your site is the home page - that is what your potential customers will see when they first visit the site. If that is not right, it doesn't matter what the remainder of the site is like - no-one will ever get to see it!

Now just imagine your home page as the cover of a book and the whole web as a big book store. Most of the people (your potential customers) in the store are there to browse around for a while. They will have a look at many books and will pick up only eye catching ones. They will then pick it up and look at the back cover for further information. If that still retains their interest, they may then actually open the book.
This is like many of the browsers on the Web. They will surf through many sites before stopping long enough to navigate through one particular site. So it is very clear that you must have a very well design home page to make people browse through your inner pages.

The following pointers will help you to design a site that your customers will find attractive and will stay at for at least a few minutes! I would recommend that you list these points and ensure that they are followed - especially if you are paying someone else to design the site for you - make sure you get the site that will work for you - not one that shows what clever designers they are!

Downloads Quickly - most accepted research has shown that a visitor will only wait six to eight seconds for a site to download - after that he will skip on somewhere else - so don't have lots of graphics on your home page!

Easy to Read -  Make it easy and simple to read

Make it Clear - show your visitors exactly what they have to do to navigate your site/obtain information/buy goods etc. Don't leave them thinking what to do next.

I trust that the above tips will help you in designing a web site that will not only look good but, more importantly, make visitors want to look at the remainder of your site.