It's simple to put together a web page, but making one that's attractive and easily navigable can be a lot harder.  It might be tempting to use all the latest tricks on your site. 

However, unless you use them right, they can actually get in the way.  Fortunately, if you pay close attention and plan things out, it's not hard to design a high quality, professional looking website.  Remember to focus on a clean, relevant site that'll appeal to your visitors and convince them to stay.  Here are a few tips to help you.

1. Make navigation easy.  The simplicity (or lack thereof) of navigating your site makes a big difference in whether visitors leave right away or stay and explore.  Ask yourself what visitors will do as soon as they come to your site.  Most people read the page they're on, then start looking around for other content.  Make that content easy to find.  If you're a business owner, your contact information and sales page must be obvious, no matter where on the site a visitor might be.

2. Choose a clean layout.  Don't be tempted to overwhelm your site with too much at once.  A clean layout is one that uses a lot of "white space" to help visitors navigate.  While that space might not be actually white, it's still important.  Keeping the focus on your content by using a template is also a good idea, but choose your template wisely.  To maximize readability, use only fonts that will be available on every computer.  Unusual ones can destroy the look of your site.

3. Keep load times short.  The less time it takes to load your page, the happier your visitors will be.  A longer load time increases the chances that your visitors will leave.  Remember that not everyone is using a broadband connection, even today.  That means it's important to avoid flashy, but long loading, features.  Keep graphics small in file size, and reduce your use of scripts and Flash to prevent slowdown.  Any scripts you must use should be optimized, and use the cleanest HTML you can.  When you can, try to use SSI (server side include) files.  These, once called from your web server, will stay in the cache, making later requests load more quickly.

4. Design for every resolution.  Not everyone has an up to date large monitor.  If you force your page size to be large, it may run off the edge of the screen.  Pages that don't look good on a user's monitor are likely to encourage them to navigate away.  Design stretch layouts that fit all resolutions, so you'll know that all visitors are seeing an attractive, professional looking site.  Test your page in multiple resolutions by force changing the resolution of your screen before you put the site up.  Objects on the right side of the page may be invisible to people using smaller screens.

5. Make sure your site is scalable.  The reverse of designing for older technology is making sure that your site can keep up.  Monitors keep getting bigger, and computers become more advanced.  Make sure that your site will continue to look good on a bigger monitor and in a newer browser, as well as in the ones it was designed for.  That means periodically checking your site on a newer computer than your own, especially if you're not someone who upgrades often.

6. Be compatible with all software.  Design your site not only for Internet Explorer (the most popular browser), but for the other major types that are being used, too.  A sizable number of people are using Firefox, Opera, Mozilla, Safari, or K-meleon, and there are plenty of other browsers out there, too.  Try to find out what your website will look like in each of them, and correct any problems you might see.  Of course, it's possible to go overboard.  Think about your audience before you design.  While a site like Wikipedia might need to be accessible to people using text only browsers, a large art site can ignore this design requirement.

7. Customize your site to its audience.  There are too many sites out there built on a generic template.  These websites don't take their content and audience into account.  Before you get started creating your site, take some time to think about who's coming to your site, what they're likely to do there, and what kind of computers they'll be using.  This will allow you to create the perfect site for your visitors.  Think about their preferences and the level of experience they have using the Internet.  A social networking site for younger users will have significantly different characteristics and needs from a personal gallery for an artist.  Remember - simpler is better.  If you don't need a feature for your site, don't bother to add it.  It'll just get in the way later.

Good web design practice is an important part of making sure your site gets a lot of visitors, and that they stay around to see what's available.  Design a clean, easy to navigate site with a lot of content and not too much clutter, and you'll be surprised at the way your traffic improves.  Always go in with a good plan, and know your content and audience.  Think first before you design, so you can create the best website possible.