Essentials

Research has show that potential visitors take less than a second to decide whether to stay on a site or go elsewhre. It essentail to grab attention with the main item seen on page load. This is usually a hero image with different features from all the other gazillion out there.
Navigation
Apart from interesting and relevant content the most important item in a website is the navigation and contact info. It must be well designed and convenient to use if visitors are going to click through to other pages.
It may come as a surprise to some that the worst type of navigation is a horizontal bar with dropdowns switching to a "hamburger" tab at the top right or left. This is probablythe most common type of navigation but has shown to be the wordt for click through.
Thumb Driven
The best type of navigation is vertical and visible on page load. If this is not possible the vertical links should slide out from the edge using a tab that is position at least half way down the browser/device window. This allows mobile device users to reach the tab with their thumb rather than have to move a hand to the top of the device.
Two For One
Navigation systems with directories are very confusing for visitors and should always be used with a breadcrumbs nav on each page.
A better option it to use two menus - one for directories and the other for pages.
Contact
Contact info - street address, phone number and email - must be easy to find and not hidden away in the footer. If vistors see the contact info upfront they are more likely to trust a website.
Footer
There's nothing like a huge footer stuffed with info to spoil a web page design. The footer below uses a grid layout to insert a popup links section with optional pjone, info and copyright,
spam protected email function and a smooth scroll to the top icon.