The internet is an important marketing tool in today's society. More and more people and businesses are becoming connected to the internet, so it is important to take advantage of this advertising medium. A website is an economical and effective way to gain exposure and credibility, provide information, and increase revenue.

It is important to follow some simple design principles when designing your website. The first and most important is the principle of “Intuitive Navigation”. Visitors to your website should not have to search very hard for what they want to find. This means links and buttons should be clearly marked, and labels should be easy to read. Links should be clearly marked (with a different color or font) so that they stand out from the text, and link text should be descriptive. The objective of intuitive navigation is to enable visitors to your website to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible.

A second navigation principle is to avoid what some people call “Mystery Meat Navigation”. This type of navigation (usually programmed in Flash), only shows the link text when the mouse is over a certain part of a screen (usually a picture of a button or something similar). In order to find what they want, visitors have to drag their mouse over different parts of the screen. They do not get a clear and complete picture of the website because this type of navigation is time consuming and confusing. Many people do not have the patience for this type of navigation.

Use attractive and simple color schemes. For example: Avoid using yellow text on a white screen, or repetitive obtrusive backgrounds. This type of design makes the content of the site difficult to read, and may give visitors a headache. Avoid distracting designs, or flashy elements (*cough cough* animated gifs *cough*). Many of these things may be cute to look at, but don't lend themselves to credibility or professionalism.

Although you don't want to distract your visitors from the content of the site, you also don't want them to fall asleep either. Text placement, images, buttons, headers, and colors are all important when designing a website. A website that looks like it was copied and pasted from a Word document won't keep many visitors interested for long.

Be careful with images and other slow-loading content. Images, music, and other media should be optimized to be viewed over the internet. Keep load times as fast as possible, keeping in mind that some people still only have a dial-up connection to the internet.

And lastly, remember the KISS principle: KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID! Keep in mind why people are coming to your website, and make it easy for them. Popups, intrusive advertising, hidden or hard to find links, all-flash, slow-loading websites will just discourage visitors from staying and/or visiting again. Design with your users in mind and you can't go wrong.