The number one rule of any website design is this-make sure that it performs optimally under all conditions. The biggest mistake one can make when designing a website is to include too many fancy graphic works and flash files that needs endless minutes loading them for display.

There are five website design rules you can follow to help you build that optimal performance website that rocks.

1) Don’t use splash pages.

Splash pages are dazzling fancy pages you often see when you first arrive at a website. They are dazzling pages that have images with words such as ‘welcome’ or ‘click here to enter’. They are pages with no purpose, and serves to discourage uses from fully utilizing the actual purpose of the website due to their slow loading time. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the ‘back’ button!

2) Never use excessive banner advertisements

Normally you will find these at the top of the web page where they will be advertising something (not always related to the site) but sometimes they will be elsewhere on the page as well. Adding banner ads are actually futile efforts to maximize the use of your website as space research shows that people tend to ignore such advertisements. The best way to utilize web space would be to use good contents and weave your affiliate links into them so that the users would not feel coerced into buying.

3) Simple navigation is important

Keep navigation simple so that the youngest user can use it. It is good to leave out any fancy flash menus or even multi-tiered drop down menus, they only serve to make navigating the site harder. When navigation becomes hard and frustrating, they will leave your site for good and you will probably never get them back. Have a sitemap added to the website design to help them find what they are looking for.

4) Make it clear where the user is at the moment

Give them a clear view of where they are now and how to get to where they want to be. This way, they can head to the right information they are looking for. This can easily be achieved by ensuring each page has a title and a textual ‘breadcrumb trail’ that clearly shows the links they have made to get where they are now. If you create any form of confusion, you will drive the visitors away.

5) Think carefully before you insert audio in your pages

To make your visitors stay longer, avoid the use of excessive music. One can get irritated by continuous sounds being played over and over again. Adding audios may seem cool but provide some form of user control such as muting ability or volume control so that your visitors can adjust accordingly. If you diligently apply these website design tips, you will be rewarded with retuning visitors again and again to your website.

There are several kinds of website hosting that are available for sites on the Internet and depending on the type of online business or site you have, will determine the kind of hosting that you will need. There are numerous different websites that provide free web pages or websites for individuals and they usually only provide a page or two with the ability to upload pictures. They are also very user friendly so you won’t have to become a computer champion to use one of these types of sites.

When you think about a site like MySpace for example, where you can create a site there that is totally free. It is a simple matter to add images, blog sites, messages, film recordings and even music with the only restriction being that it is for friendly uses only, or is designed to be. This is an excellent example of a free web site, but meanwhile, MySpace uses your webpage to post their own adverts. Of course you will be restricted on space, what sort of subject matter you can post, and of course the site does not belong to your, but MySpace. Should you want to sell products online - you can employ a affordable shared server that offers you an chance to establish your own web site at no charge and might even supply guides. You will obviously need a domain name of course, such as myfavouritethings.com, and you will need to register the domain and then have access to upload your website on the shared server.

While this may sound great, in the case of a free common server, you will be sharing your site with other sites, although you will be restricted to storage space as well as the amount of information you can transfer at any one time. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to receive thousands of individuals visit your web site in an hour as it will take up too much of their bandwidth. This can be ideal for tiny online business that sells very few products online although meanwhile, your website will probably have a quantity of advertizements that are positioned on there by the hosting company to earn the revenue required to look after your site. A common server alternatively, is just like a non-paying server only you have to pay a little bit every month to maintain your website. You have a bit more freedom when it comes to advertizements and could even generate revenue by signing up for Google Adsense adverts to be place on your web site, even though you will still need to create a domain.

A dedicated server holds only your website and no others so you can have as much space you need to create a website as complex as you want. You will have sufficient bandwidth to accommodate all the traffic you might get, and have complete control over the adverts that you position on your site. Of course a dedicated server is the ultimate in hosting because you are in reality hosting your own private web site and you have sufficient storage space, the amount of information that can be transferred and freedom to do whatever you please. Even though these types of server, while costing more money to use, in actual fact end up saving you money, or adding to your income, if used correctly.