Most of these guidelines are just plain common sense, which seems to be a scarce commodity on the Web. The sexy proprietary page-layout and text markup features provided by Netscape and Explorer as they leapfrog each other have seduced many a webmaster into jazzing up their pages, only to be forced to put "you must use Netscape/Explorer to view these pages" at the bottom. This could be rephrased to say "these pages look awful without Netscape or Explorer." Stick with standard HTML (currently HTML 4) (1) and your pages will look good on all browsers that support it.

Overall, we've found that companies either get the Web or they don't. Your Web site should reflect the culture of the Web, which we call the "Gift Economy." (Witness Netscape and Microsoft.) Very few sites (5%) can charge for admission or require membership, and many people avoid sites with these barriers. Give away something valuable: information, software, advice, humor, and people will flock to your site.

Provide content in as many forms as possible.
Content is the most important trait of a great Web site. Sites that provide only links to other sites are essentially meta-lists (although Yahoo seems to be doing well :), while sites that have some information that's useful to the user stand out and will be revisited. A recent check of webreference.com's statistics confirms this, our content providers account for 62% of WebReference.com's total impressions. Content is King.

Provide valuable, timely information to the user, not lots of data.
Web sites should be updated regularly. Stale Web sites say "been there, done that." For the information to be valuable it should be well-edited. For external links include only the best sites with concise descriptions. For internal content be like a magazine editor, don't rush to publish mediocre or incomplete articles. Typos are unacceptible. [sic]

Share everything you learn
Great Web sites share everything they learn and hear (that's relevant of course) with their users. Give behind the scenes accounts of your latest site features, go open source, start a newsletter, and you'll get more than you give.

Provide an options to your users
One of the Web's strengths is the volume of information available. That is also one of its weaknesses. Sites that offer sorting/filtering record features allow the user to filter the content they see. The future of the Web are "one-to-one" Web sites. These automated, database-driven sites adapt the content, advertising, and even the look to individual users. Technologies such as Web Objects and Cold Fusion allow webmasters to create dynamic, interactive, and adaptive Web sites.

Be interactive; good interactivity engages the user and makes your site memorable.
Web site should have is interactivity. The Web is an interactive hypermedia communications medium that your Web site should reflect. Sites that involve the user and have a sense of fun or adventure will get more hits.

Another advantage of interactivity is self-generating content. By allowing your visitors to interact with your site they actually create content for you. Script-driven user surveys and forums allow visitors to share information with others and can help shape your site to better serve their needs. Forum or chat software is a great way to do this.

Dominate a subject area; become the site for that subject.
Don't duplicate a list when you can point to it. Leverage other people's work to reduce your workload. Let others who specialize in a particular topic keep their list up to date for you. On the other hand, don't make lists that point to lists ad infinitum, seek out the meat of the site and point directly to the article or resource. Many sites on the Web are just lists that someone else has already done.

Searching
Put a search box for your user to search dynamic data.

"A Web site is like a diner. It has a core arsenal of dishes that justify its existence, but it also must have a regularly changing specials menu that keeps its regular customers coming back for more. The assumption...is that a nettizens...visits the site on a weekly, if not daily, basis."