The most important thing that you should never forget is that content is always king. There is no technique that will work better than having good and quality content.
The next important thing is to select a niche and stick to it. There is no need to be the jack of all trades; it is simply not profitable to do so. Create a goal for yourself and try to achieve it.
Creating your own website is a challenging task but it is also fun. You might be tempted to include all the little trinkets and thing to your web page. However, do not do it unless of course, you are writing about trinkets.
Website designing is not to win awards or look cool. Its main purpose is to be able to accomplish some goal for the website. The best way you can stay focused on your goal is by writing it down before beginning any work on the design.
Remember, first impressions are very important. Therefore, make sure you are sending the right message to the visitor. The first page is where you have to make this impression. Therefore, it should be concise and it should give an interesting description of your website.
Now this page should not be very busy, that is, do not put a lot of buttons on this page. Instead, lure your customers to go in further and look through your site. You can do this by using interesting inviting text as well as good graphics.
Do the design as a whole and not as individual pages. This is very important. The overall design of the website should concern you the most. Your design should be able to appeal to your customers. It should have a feel of consistency to it. This very feel is what will make your site stand apart from other amateur sites.
Your site should not be very confusing. Make it user friendly. It should be such that an average person can easily browse through your site without any difficulty. Navigating from one page to another should be easy for the user.
Keep the links clear. If you want somebody to buy your product then make it easier for the visitors to make the purchase.
All through your designing process, at regular intervals view your website as some stranger. Is it something that you would want to see more of?
Tell everybody about your new website. Many people avoid doing this, but, you can have many visitors in this simple way.