That phrase "obtain the information he wants" is what I think is the main purpose of a web site. The visitor to a web site is generally looking for some information - an address, a price, a specification, a photograph of what something or somebody looks like or perhaps just background information on a person or company. Many web sites open with an impressive background photograph, soft music, moving pictures and the like, and a visitor waits impatiently till all the components have been assembled before being able to go to the next page. Not really useful, although perhaps - for a time - it's impressive. However, what the visitor is really looking for is information, and a good web site should provide this information quickly and easily.

So the three rules for a good web site are:

1. Keep the design simple - the more "business" and frills a web page has, the longer it takes to open

2. The web site should be so arranged that it is obvious at any stage which menu item should be chosen next

3. No piece of information should be more than 4 mouse clicks from the opening (or index page)

Keep the design simple

Every few weeks a new programme comes onto the market, or an existing one is modified and new features added. The result is that a web designer can choose from an amazing array of bells and whistles - more and more impressive little touches can be added to any design. The software company tries to sell more by introducing new version with more and better features than its rivals, and web designers compete with each other by designing web sites making use of these new features.

Absolutely lovely - till a potential customer with a three or four-year old computer using a slowish ADSL line wants to look at the site. Web designers working for big companies usually have a very up-to-date computer connected to a very fast broadband line and can demonstrate their latest design to their clients so that it all looks fast, slick and totally impressive. But a chance visitor trying to get hold of a small nugget of information is much less impressed. It all takes time, and if you have to wade through ten or twenty mouse clicks to find out what you want, and each page takes 20 or 30 seconds to open, that's a total of 4 to 5 minutes. Never mind how lovely each page is when it finally loads, we want to get hold of that nugget of information now.

So keep the design simple. Try to cut the number of photographs or drawings back to two or three, use images of the 480 x 640 pixel type (perfectly OK even for a whole screen filler), don't use endless little moving effects (or music or even films), stick to standard lettering that everyone has on his computer (Arial or Times Roman) and cut down on special logos.

I know it's not so exciting or visually impressive - your job as a web page designer is to stick to simple components and arrange them in such a fashion that the quality speaks for itself. Or as the great German architect Mies von der Rohe once said "Less is more".

Make each next step obvious

Think of a web site as a house. The average house has a front entrance which (usually) leads to a corridor; along the corridor are doors which lead to the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, the w.c. and various other offices. Then there are stairs, which lead to various bedrooms plus a bathroom or two.

The house is in effect arranged in a hierarchical fashion. Suppose you are away a few days, and you want to tell your neighbour (who has a key so that she can water the plants) where to find the special garlic press. "Open the front door, go along the corridor to the kitchen, go to the fitted cupboards, open the second door from the left, choose the third drawer down, and on the left hand side - if put away properly - is the garlic press"

A good web site should work exactly like that, except there is nobody on the other end of the telephone to tell you how to navigate, step by step, from the front door to the right kitchen drawer. You might, of course, label each door so that someone looking for a garlic press opens the front door, sees a door in the lobby with "Corridor" on it which leads to a door marked "Kitchen"; in the kitchen is a cupboard door marked "Table and kitchen ware" which, when you open it, proves to lead to lots and lots of drawers, one of which is marked "Food preparation tools" - any person who often uses a garlic press can easily find the garlic press in her neighbour's house. If you arrange your web pages in such a fashion that each page has a choice of buttons that lead logically to the next likely page, it will allow any visitor to find that garlic press.

Before you start your web design program, you should spend days - if not weeks - gathering up all the information (text, photographs, drawings, tables, forms etc.) you want to put on your site. It is not a bad idea to write each item of information on a sticky note attached to a small square of