Determine the goal for the site

Is the site news related? An entertainment guide? A virtual store selling classifieds?
In a single word: Focus.

Identify your audience

Assumptions: Your audience is educated, informed, relatively well off, curious, impatient, busy, task oriented, use the web for research.

Use technical statistics from the server to determine frequency of visits, frequency of unique visits, time of visits, where the site was linked from, where they go in your site, where they don’t.

Learn whether your audience is surfing from home or work. This helps determine on screen size and bandwidth that your site will target. Design for the lowest common denominator (currently 640 x 480 monitor size, 28.8 or 36.6 modem speed. Aim for a 30K limit for a single page and 600 pixel live space.)

Understand and target your audience’s plug-in preferences. Don’t use technology that isn’t widely used. (What’s hot: Macromedia’s Flash and RealAudio; what’s not: Dynamic HTML and Photo Bubbles.)

Use language familiar to your user. For example, rather than creating a new brand name for your entertainment guide, simply call it "Entertainment."

Be aware of international implications of graphics and color.

Create a hierarchy based on the site’s strengths

Human tendency is to categorize, so categorize sections logically and focus on the site’s goal.

Minimize the number of sections to no more than 6 or 7, or re-evaluate the categories.

Storyboard your user’s experience

Help your user by outlining a path for your site or story–a site map or intuitive navigation.

Follow "Human User Interface" guidelines similar to those of a computer operating system.

Use contrast

Apply design rules similar to those for print media.

Contrast of size helps determine hierarchy as well as the focus of information.

Contrast of color helps determine hierarchy as well as the tone of information.

Contrast of type helps determine the voice for the information.

Keep the color for linking consistent with graphics and hypertext.

Design with clarity

Again, focus. Avoid clutter and visual noise such as animated graphics.

Layer and separate information when your content becomes visually overwhelming. Don’t assume that it’s time to make users click.

Design with an emphasis on usability

Accept the fact that most users surf the Internet for research: a movie showtime, a concert date and ticket availability, or a sports score.

Make information easy to find.

Establish visual and interactive consistency with site’s brand

If an existing non-web medium exists, take advantage of that brand identity.

Allow your user to interact the way they would in the other media.

Develop a living stylebook

Develop a stylebook that can change as the technology as well as the staff changes.

Build a "toolbox" of techniques so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel of technology as you repeat storytelling devices (timelines, bios, etc.).