We cannot emphasise enough that the usability of your website directly determines the likelihood of a first time visitor becoming a repeat visitor. A few usability tips:

• Visitors will wait no longer than 10 seconds for web pages to load.
• Language used should be the language of your target audience.
• Make your website work like every other website they have visited.
• Strike a balance between page independence and branding. Remember your visitors are very likely to enter your website for the firs time via a different page than the homepage.
• Only use images that are supported by text (don’t just pop images in there to “fill gaps”).
• Drop down menus may be great for SEO but is the usability trade-off worth it.
• Don’t have non descriptive links. i.e. links that say “click me”. Let visitors make their own mind up about whether they choose to follow a link.

Do

• choose keywords that have a reasonable number of searchers.
• make sure that your landing pages have a clear and appropriate call to action.
• Measure your results.
• Plan your campaigns properly.

Do not

• promote poorly designed websites.
• choose keywords that have too much competition.
• dismiss the power of social media marketing and blogging.

1. Use Dreamweaver, Fireworks/Photoshop and Flash. They are the best tools on the market.
2. Learn CSS – professional web design requires CSS.
3. Learn XHTML or at least HTML 4.01.
4. Learn PHP and MySQL. There’s a massive open source community there to help you.
5. Learn about database design.
6. Learn information architecture.
7. Learn about web usability and accessibility.
8. Google different websites for inspiration but don’t follow bad practices from poorly designed websites.
9. Test your designs in a range of web browsers.
10. Design flexible, robust and scalable web solutions.