Before you start the design process you must think what is your site’s target audience and it’s browsing habits. It’s very important for the success of your website to follow in the design the taste of your audience, they are the one that dictate the design, not you!

2. The theme of your site

Your visitors must know what your site is about after a few second look at it or after reading the first paragraph of the main page (the index). If you are selling a product it must be crystal clear what kind of product that is, or if you have multiple products you must dedicate a page for each product instead of one page for all products.

3. The speed of browsing

We are in the speed age, everyone is in a hurry so waiting for a website to load is not what visitors want. Make sure your visitors actually see your site in 10-15 seconds if you expect them to spend their precious time on your website.

4. K.I.S.S.

This is what we like to call Keep It Simple Stupid. Your site’s navigation must be intuitive, allowing your viewers to find what they are looking for very easy and without having to cross their eyes. If the point of interest is hard to find on your website, the competition is 3 clicks away. Keep that in mind and Keep It Simple.

It’s been a while since you could get a good ranking without making any optimization for the search engines, according to a study by JUPITER MEDIA MATRIX about 55% of all web purchases start with a search engine, and 93% of those don’t go deeper than page 2, so you’ll need to target your keywords and make sure your ranking for those keyword searches are high enough to actually be found.

6. Accessibility

Making your site accessible you can reach all the market and all types of visitors, making your business prosper. You can find all the info you need about website accessibility on the W3C page!

7. Compatibility

Internet Explorer still holds a big share of the browsers market, but even so your website must look the same on any browser. The new mobile devices became more and more internet compatible and more and more used for browsing and it’s a good market to keep in mind and to keep close. Again, all the info you need can be found in W3C’s Standards validity check page.

8. Content

Content is King, everybody says so i know! If you want a high search engine ranking you must feed the SE spiders with unique content, you can design you site to look good with graphics but spiders are not people, they love text! Each page should have 2-3 keywords and enough content to keep the SE spiders happy!