Don't put design above content. Web publishing seems to have
become a race to put more graphics and fancier elements (like
frames and dynamic content) online. More often than not, the
results are visually unappealing and are slow to load.
Try to control your artistic urges and keep things simple. As I
mentioned earlier, people generally won't surf your site for its
aesthetic qualities. They want information and want it quickly.
This doesn't mean that your pages have to be bland or boring. A
simple page design is far more effective than anything fancy.
That's not to say that making an attractive site won't help. But if you don't have the Web design skills, try to enlist the aid of someone who does in order to implement an ambitious design. Otherwise, keep it simple.
Getting Fancy
When authoring for the World Wide Web, you should strive to make
your pages accessible to all browsers. Control your urges to
write pages that can only be viewed in the latest version of the
browser. While it's tempting to use technologies like Java and Dynamic HTML (DHTML). But unless they add something to your site, don't use them. Stick with plain HTML instead.
If you plan to add complex formatting to your site, use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS allows you to precisely specify fonts, margins, text attributes, and more. If properly crafted, CSS-authored pages can be viewed in
the latest browsers, as well as older ones.
Break It Up
There's nothing worse than having to scroll through a long
document to find what you're looking for. If a Web page is weighs longer than two or three screens, consider breaking it up into several
smaller documents.
Proper Navigation
After usable content, good navigation is the most important aspect of a
Web site. However, it's the one that's most often
neglected. It doesn't take much time to add links to a page, and
it's simple to do. Navigation doesn't have to be fancy. A simple
navigation bar (pointing to the next and previous pages, as well
as the top level document) will do. Also, you're site's main page
shouldn't be more than two or three clicks away from any location.