Admittedly, this site doesn’t even follow all of them (I keep meaning to do a redesign, but I barely get enough time to make regular posts, as you may have noticed), but a few thoughts on things that make good websites:
- If there is a navigation tree, it should have 3-7 items at each level, no more, no less. Nine may be allowable at the highest level, but is never actually necessary.
- No one tool / website / page / area should do more than one thing.
- One thing is defined as something you can explain in one sentence without a conjunction.
- Never try to impress your users with how complicated something is – they will not be impressed, they will leave.
- Give the eye room to breath.
- Be consistent everywhere.
- Once your user has seen the home page, no other page or behavior should surprise them.
- You are not all things to all people, your site can’t be either.
- Never, ever, ever build anything in flash.
- Blinking things distract people and we are all already too distracted the way it is – never make anything blink.