The ease with which visitors are able to use a Web Site is very important, especially if you`re trying to market something from the site. Usability is very much about how quickly and easily visitors are able to move around the site and not just about making sure everything on the site works.

The need for your website to be easily navigated is enormous. Messy, disruptive and confusing sites are a huge turn off to potential customers. In other words: if you`re looking to make sales, make sure your website is easy to navigate so as not to chase off visitors at first sight.

Navigation (links for moving around the site) is extremely important if you want your visitors to look at more than just your main page. If navigation choices are unclear, most visitors will just hit the "Close" button, never to be seen again.

As a rule of thumb, the main navigation is usually placed in the top 1/3 of the web page or on the left hand column, and the secondary navigation tends to be placed within the bottom 2/3 of the page, or on the right hand column. Of course, this is entirely your choice, because, as with all rules, there ARE exceptions ;~)

If you want to build your website on your own from scratch, I highly recommend getting some free webspace to practice on, especially if you`re new to site-building. Try a few different ones and see which one is best for you, but keep in mind that to be taken seriously, you really will need to get your own domain and proper hosting for your site at some point in time.

Some free webspace hosts:
http://www.freeservers.com
http://www.50megs.com
http://www.20m.com
http://www.tripod.lycos.com

Of course, not everybody is an expert in hmtl, perl, php and things like that, so I`ve listed a few resources that you may find helpful in designing your first website.

Free website templates:
http://freesitetemplates.com
http://www.freewebtemplates.com
http://www.templatesbox.com
http://www.freelayouts.com

Free banner templates:
http://www.animationonline.com/S/banner_templates.html

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