If you've been to the websites of many of the world's biggest and most successful corporations, it's immediately obvious that they have quite a few things in common:

• Complex, slow-loading "ENTER" screens

• Broken or mal-formed links
  - most links, especially those to documentation or support for older products, only confuse potential customers who would be better off buying your new product line anyway.

• Nonworking "search" boxes
  - successful companies know that letting readers search for information they're looking for will only draw their attention away from what you'd like them to see.

• Well-designed, visually interesting "under construction" or "coming soon" pages
  - remember that website design and creation is no longer the playing field of mere amateurs; the emergence of specialty, dedicated website-design firms has led to an ever-more-competitive race for your potential customers' or clients' limited attention span. People have come to expect, polished, professionally-designed "under construction" pages, with sophisticated animations, mouseovers, and extensive plug-in and Frontpage extension support.
  - don't neglect sound effects and background music for your most high-profile "under construction" pages. Features like sound and animation are what keep people coming back again and again to your "under construction" pages instead of your competitors'.
  - be sure to increase your appeal to international customers by writing "under construction" in as many languages as possible. [ as an added feature, we've compiled an "under construction" phrasebook to help you design under construction pages with International Appeal ]

• Visually involving, dramatic backgrounds are very important to your website's image.
  - Many companies, even after investing the time and effort necessary to develop an exciting background graphic, forget that overlaying text can detract significantly from the visual impact of even the best background. Always make sure that if you absolutely must include text content in your pages, that you use only text colors and styles that blend smoothly and pleasingly into the background instead of clashing with it.

• Finally, remember that your company's website is the first "face" that many customers will see, and first impressions are by far the most important. Be sure to avail yourself of the latest javascript functionality to install and operate flying, animated graphics, a happy little "screen pal," or an enthusiastic multimedia "guide" (like Microsoft's beloved Paperclip, "ClipIt") to entertain your potential customers and help them find their way around the complex world of the internet and the world wide web. Follow these rules in designing and building your website, and you could be the next to follow in Microsoft's footsteps.

In these highly competitive times, few companies are satisfied any more with an ordinary "enter" button; an opening screen that loads in under a minute, merely provides useful information and easily navigated categories practically cries out: "amateur!" Many of these "old-fashioned" ENTER screens fail to exploit the latest graphical plug-in technologies, making them work under all browsers and not even crash software platforms and versions other than the one it was originally developed on.

Today's sophisticated websurfer demands exciting and state-of-the-art animated "ENTER" graphics; multi-megabyte self-installing add-on software that reconfigures systems, adding many new features while disabling yesterday's boring, old functions and programs; and high-tech pop-up interfaces that dazzle and delight the browser with all manner of animated banners, surveys, and nearly free limited-time offers, all working together to make every web surfer's visit to your site an unforgettable emotional experience!

In the weeks to come, we hope to highlight some of the most outstanding examples of state-of-the-art website design that best demonstrates the qualities outlined above, whether they used our products and services to build their site or were stupid enough to hire some inferior web design firm that's probably still using last month's version of whatever browser they're designing for.