Some basic tips when you start to design your website:

1. Short Paragraphs
   Break text into very short paragraphs. Longer paragraphs tend to look like forbidding brick walls of type on screen.
2. Clean, modern fonts
   Use a sans serif (clean, modern-looking) font, like verdana or arial for paragraphs of text because they are more legible on screen.
3. Don’t center Paragraphs
   Don’t center more than two lines of type. Centering is ok for headlines, but in paragraphs it begins to look messy and is harder to read.
4. Don’t use all caps
   Don’t use all caps, except in headlines. They’re harder to read. Use Bold or Italic for emphasis. All-caps is considered shouting.
5. Contrast between text and background
   Make sure there is lots of contrast between your background color and text or it will be hard to read. If you use a background image, make sure it’s extremely low contrast so it won’t make reading text difficult.
6. Use images that download quickly
   Learn to use tools like Photoshop or Pixelmator (or even free tools like iPhoto) to resize and optimize your pictures for quick download.
7. Use the same image on different pages
   Using the same image over and over on different pages will economize on transfers. If the same image appears on different pages of your site, it will only have to be downloaded by the browser one time.
8. Keep it compact
   Don’t annoy users! Scrolling, especially side-to-side, and automatically resizing a user’s browser window often makes people go away without exploring your content.
9. Easy navigation
   Make it easy to find links to every part of your site from every page. Organize links so they are obvious and intuitive, and put navigation near the top of your page.
10. Keep it simple
    Don’t load the page with extra frills like clip art and unrelated photos. One strong photo related to the content will do more than ten random images, and cute is highly overrated. Too many elements on a page tend to look busy. They confuse, distract from and dilute content.
11. Visual Hierarchy
    Lay out each page so the most important things have more emphasis, are noticed first and are read first. Putting things at the top, in the upper left or center, making them bigger or brighter or in more contrast to the background are all ways of creating emphasis. Surrounding something with blank space also creates emphasis.