To help some amateur web designers out there, I have here a list of established rules of thumb in web designing. This may help you in creating functional and arty wed sites.

1.A picture is worth a thousand words thus, you need not stuff your page with a truckload of images. Pictures and images are used to enhance page and not to mess it up. Bear in mind that less is beautiful.

The average time to load a page should not take longer than 5 seconds. If it’s longer than that, surfers might click away elsewhere. Therefore, you must keep page size less than 30k.

Each file on page should have a separate HTTP request to server. Lots of small images will slow down loading. Other factors that contribute to slowing down of loading are height and width attributes. Without these, browser should wait for image to download since it has no idea of how much space to leave for them.

2.Navigability and functionality come before artistic excellence. It is no use making your site a masterpiece of art if users cannot navigate around it.

3.Keep web site simple.

4.Whenever your whole page is within a table whole page cannot render until whole table is downloaded. To remedy this, split table into two and let top one be a short table that displays only page header and a small number of navigation links.

First is gathering of data. Before any design to exist you must first gather a complete list of all products you will include in catalog, as well as all non-product copy. If some items will be grouped together as one catalog photo block such as a shirt that comes in 4 sizes and 6 colors, check to ensure that it is clear for designer. Sort further list into categories or spreads.

Second, write product copy. Although most every company can pull a list of products, item numbers and prices from their computer system, virtually no company maintains proper product name and descriptive copy. Product names used in inventory software typically have names like "IVY T-SHIRT RED MEDIUM." In your catalog that same product would instead be called "Ivy T-shirt", available in red and size medium.

Keep in mind that descriptive copy for general customer catalogs should range from 30 to 60 words. Business and technical catalogs should be as brief as achievable while getting across information a corporate buyer needs to make an informed purchasing decision.