Beyond Appearance: Every design has a "sales" potential. Think about it, why do some websites sell better than others? While every site needs to be visually attractive and pleasing to the eye, effectiveness of the web site to perform for the company is what the goal of the web site should be. The key to effective web design is to convert visitors of your web site into buyers of what ever your selling (products, information, ideas, etc.) Even though we always need to keep in mind important SEO and Marketing strategies when creating content rich pages, we ALWAYS need to keep the visitor in mind to close the deal.

Rule I. Sacrifice Beauty for Effectiveness: While we want the website to stand out on a visual level, we need to realize that there are many factors to making a website a success on the internet. Before we add a ton of great looking graphics we need to ask ourselves if this is hindering the overall effect we are trying to create with the viewer. Would we be better off using text links to allow for better site navigation and usability? Most times the answer is at least partially YES! Text not only makes the page load faster, it also allows non conventional web browsers to navigate the site more effectively. For instance, when a search engine spiders (crawls through) your site, it could care less about graphics and goes right for the text links.

Rule II. Less Is More: Unless a site is quick and easy to use it will be a barrier rather than an open invitation to users. Current usability standards suggest users spend on average less than 2 minutes on a website. The key to engaging visitors must therefore be simplicity over complexity. Keep in mind that when using the word simplicity I am not talking about getting rid of all of your content, in fact words are the lest amount of problems. All pages should still have over 250 words on them to properly get your point across and for SEO purposes. However less graphics, less flash and other memory hogs need to be reconsidered. Thats why you need to live by the axiom that less is more - less clutter, fewer barriers. Lets look at a few ways to obtain the results of this axiom:
A) Make pages easy to read and engulf. It's a well documented fact now amongst designers that people rarely read pages online - they "speed read". Therefore, if the information they need is not easy to access they move on rapidly. Using easy navigation techniques like proper heading placement will allow users to access the information they find valuable from you faster. Proper use of white space and overall spacing should be a must in a webs design. Clearly differentiate thoughts with space and borders making accessibility priority.
B) Follow Standards: When it comes to labeling headings, tags and navigation links. It's imperative to follow industry standards that have evolved on the internet. Not only will it bring a sense of familiarity to the user, but also comply with search engines and internet browsers.
C) Layout, Graphics and Colors: The web makes it easy for designers to do some amazing things with graphics and colors. The first portion of your site is similar to opening a letter sent in an envelope. When you remove the letter that is folded in three sections, you will see the top third of the page first. Designs with a dramatic color can make compelling choices for setting a mood, however reading on a computer screen demands contrast, otherwise the web viewer will be dizzied by vision fatigue. You do not want to irritate or tire your visitors in any way to keep them reading on or coming back. Striking graphics can be real eye-catching for viewers; however successful internet marketers are pretty much agree that you should avoid flash graphics as much as possible. Another important factor to consider is that not all colors are viewed the same way on all monitors, so here we revert to the KISS policy of keeping it simple.
D) Copy Basics: You may not realize this but many of the successful internet marketing businesses already figured out that design and layout of the website should be as much of a marketing decision as the ad copy on the website is. People feel comfortable with words. Words are found and analyzed by the search engines. Most importantly, words are what drive sales and build confidence among web users. This has been true in other forms of media long before the internet was born.

I will touch on all of these aspects and more in future articles, but this is a great starting point when embarking on your new web presence or a guide to recreating your current site.