The most important principle for designing an effective website is to carefully determine the purposes and goals for the website.
 

The nature and substantive content of your website should be based upon its purposes. What goes onto the website and how large or complex the site is should be a direct result of the decisions about your site's purposes.
  

The architecture and design elements of your site (such as site organization, site navigation system, page layout, graphic content, multimedia presentations, interactive forms, etc.) also should be carefully selected to serve the intended purpose of the site.
 

An effective website should be designed with the nature and behavior of the intended audience in mind. 
 

A well designed website is attractive to look at. It is neither plain and boring looking, nor cluttered, overwhelming or distracting.
   

Well designed websites look good on all browsers and different sized monitor screens and settings.
 

It is important for a website to download quickly over the Internet. This is especially so for key pages of the site, like the entry page (Home Page).
 

Effective websites can easily be found and accessed over the Internet.
 

A well designed web site should provide an easy-to-use site navigation system.
 

An effective web site is an integrated part of an overall business marketing and promotion program.
 

A good website changes and adapts over time, adding appropriate time sensitive data or new content as it becomes available and discarding whatever is outdated or ineffective.