Now a day we have a dynamic, competitive Internet world, creating a base of regular visitors is one of the keys to success, and the design of your site is extremely important because it is, in a very real sense, the first impression you make on millions of Internet users worldwide. Always an attractive, user-friendly site design can be the difference between success and failure, and therefore a good amount of time should be devoted to making your site as good as possible.

For designing a good site, however, is a lot more difficult than merely dragging and dropping some pictures and text onto a page and arranging it to look nice. For successful sites we must try to come up with the perfect marriage of form and function, making sure that neither component is lacking or in excess.

Possibly the most important thing to keep in mind when designing your site is that there is by no means one site design that is best. As a matter of fact, the nature of your site, its content, and its theme should all be carefully considered in order to ensure that your site has the look and feel you desire, without sacrificing the user-friendliness that will keep the hits streaming in. Hence before you open up Dream-weaver and start creating tables, and inserting text blocks and images, sit back and think about what it is you want your website to portray, and how you want visitors to feel when they visit your site. Whenever your site is a personal website, think in terms of how you can exhibit your personality and style.

When your site is a commercial website, think in terms of how you want your customers to feel about your products and services. Always a good deal of planning beforehand will allow you to choose the correct theme for your website, saving you the headache of going back and trying to get it right afterwards.

Later on you have come up with the look and feel that you feel is most appropriate for your website, the next step is to research what other websites with similar objectives have done. Do spend some time looking at existing websites, and make notes of their respective positives and negatives; then think of how your site can incorporate the positives, while avoiding the negatives.

We can learn a lot about what works and what doesn't by looking at the layout, color scheme, text, and images of other websites, and then use that knowledge to get the most out of your site. If you have completed your research, and come up with an idea of what you want your site to look like, the next step is to plan your site. Better way to do this is to start by drawing a sitemap, covering all of the pages you plan to create.