KEEP EVERYTHING OBVIOUS

Do not go out of the general pattern of a web-page when designing it. Take the examples of large companies such as Microsoft, eBay, Google or Yahoo! and understand the general pattern of placing logos, navigation links, etc. Visitors to your web-site expect certain conventions and when they don't find them, you lose valuable visitors.

LIMIT THE USE OF COLORS

Flashy colors look good only when used in small amounts. Emphasize on the headers through bright colors but limit using too many colors on the same page. Software like Color Wheel Pro greatly help in choosing the right color combinations. Limiting the choice of colors to 2 or 3 will not only save designing time, but also save your web-site from looking cheap and tacky. Certain color combinations can also create problems for color-blind people. To get the right combination of colors for them, try out the free software provided by Vischeck.

GET THE RIGHT FONTS

The content on your web-site must be legible to all its visitors. To do this, you need to get the right font for the content. Fonts like Verdana, Arial, Times New Roman, Geneva and Georgia may not look very interesting but they make your content, which is the thing required to be interesting, much easier to read. Once again, keep in mind the use of colors for the font, against the color of the background.

MAKE PLANS BEFOREHAND

It gets really irritating when you are almost done with designing a page of your web-site and you forgot to add something in between. Even worse, if you haven't got any space left for additions. Always get a clear-cut idea of what you are going to include in your content and how much space you will need for it. Understanding how to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), avoiding unconventional layouts and complicated backgrounds will help a great deal.

MAINTAIN CONSISTENCY

Do not opt for changes in between different pages of your web-site, for the same type of content. For example, if your hyperlinks are in green, keep them green throughout the web-site and do not change the color for every page. If your navigation bar is at the top of the page on the home page, keep it at the top of the page for every other page as well. By using CSS correctly, most of this should happen by default and you can concentrate more on the web-site content.

KEEP IT RELEVANT

They say, “A picture is better than a thousand words” - true, but never post a picture irrelevant to the subject of discussion. Even more, don't paste a picture or a video just because you have space, as these pictures and videos do take up bandwidth. If you are able to remove a picture without negatively affecting your content, then do not hesitate to do so. Remember, focusing on your content will ultimately offer your web-site better search-engine ranks.

SIMPLICITY IS THE BEST

To not confuse your web-site's visitors and to save development time, use the simple, common and popular web-design layouts available online for free. Pushing boundaries usually leads to confused and frustrated visitors, which affects the incoming traffic to your web-site.

TRY AND MASTER CSS

This may not be a necessary step, but is extremely useful when you are designing a web-site intended for a large amount of traffic. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is extremely useful as it makes your site easy to maintain and update for you, and helps visitors and search-engines read your content much more easily. CSS can certainly be called the web-designer's best friend. Two amazing books for learning CSS are “CSS the Missing Manual” - David McFarland and “Bulletproof Web Design” - Dan Cederholm