Important Rules:
Easy navigation
Your site should let the visitor navigate through your site easily without having to hit the back button more than once. A solid, attractive & intuitive navigation system is the first aspect of building a successful site.
Originality & Creativity
The simple rule in web ethics is no stealing of graphics or plagiarism of words from other site(s). I've actually had an awards site (which was slapped together in probably less than an hour) copy my site criteria word for word!
Well Established
Your site should be well known among the Internet community. Unless it's a personal page, your site should be listed in the top 10 at any major search engine. 300 is recommended, & a monthly submission service is also a good idea. This is an integral part of maintaining a successful web site.
Harmony of colors & images
The font & graphic colors used on your site should blend harmoniously together, & images used should fit into the overall theme or purpose.

Content:
Good content
This means that you have more than 10 pages of useful content. This is a must. Generally, visitors will be more prone to linger if it has helpful material or it sparks their interest. If your visitors become uninterested within minutes, it is therefore not the best of the web.
Grammatical & Spelling Errors
Proof-reading is an essential component to maintaining a good web site. It takes only a couple of seconds (or minutes) to quickly read through your content before publishing it live on the web. If a misspelled word changes the whole meaning of a sentence, it reflects poorly on the webmaster.
No profane, racist, illegal or anti sites
Self-explanatory. (Hopefully!)

HTML:
Reasonable loading time
Graphics & pictures may take awhile to load, & I will take this into consideration. However, if it takes too long to load because of unnecessary stuff like large mailbox graphics (when a simple text link will do just fine) you will lose points.
Screen resolution compatibility
The site should be reasonably attractive & functional in all screen resolutions, not just the one that YOU use. Monitor sizes as well as resolution settings greatly vary what your viewers see. We at Phrizbie Design will develop your web site to look great for all sizes.

Big No Nos
No distracting backgrounds
Have you ever been to a site where you couldn't read the words because the background was too dark or over-empowering? This is what we want to avoid if you choose to have a background image, or color other than white or black.
No saturation of advertisements
One or two banners is fine, but having more than two on every page becomes distracting to the visitor. Plus it shows that the number one purpose for your site is to make money (which is not very appealing to your visitor).
No poor quality animations
The web is full of low qualilty & generic animations. Make your web site st& out by NOT using the same thing that thous&s of others have used. Example: Flashing Yellow signs that say "NEW!!"
NO HYPE!
This is the #1 mistake of web entrepreneurs & marketers all over the world. HYPE. The use of all capital letters implies hype. Do not use all caps for anything not absolutely necessary. Do not use "!!!!!" Do not say things like "THIS IS THE GREATEST DEAL EVER!" or "WE ARE #1 ON THE Internet!" These things are probably not true, & guess what? People will not believe you.
No Background Music
If you must:Sound or music should be able to be turned off.
Dont Over-do the "Extras".
Animations, Scrolling text boxes, moving banners, flashing lights, blinking signs, music, etc... Too much is not a good thing. It will slow your load time down considerably & create confusion. People generally have a goal they are trying to reach, or need to know what the main point of the site is right away, not be entertained by gimmicks. On that note....

Good use of the superfluous stuff
Macromedia flash, active-x, dhtml, vrml, xml, uml, smil, etc are excellent tools in elevating a site's appeal if used in moderation & only if it has a purpose. If you use a flash intro, you must have a 'skip intro' link.
Usage of the alt & meta tags.
Incase an image is broken or a graphic takes too long to load, your visitor shouldn't have to second guess where the graphic links to or what the picture is. Ideally, you should also specify the width & height for all graphics & pictures.
Reasonable page lengths
Pages that are lengthy should be divided up into several pages, or have hyperlinks that can lead you back to the top of the page. Pages that are excessive in length often represent poor information architecture or laziness.
No excessive use of java
Please keep the use of java (not to be confused with javascript) in moderation because they just increase the loading time. A good site usually uses flash instead of java when an animation or eye c&y is needed.

The Jealousy Factor
Lastly, but certainly not the least, your site should make
others say "Man! I wish my site was as good as this!"

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