Thinking Ahead

One thing that's important to keep in mind when designing your website (or having it designed), is to try to keep things flexible for future upgrades. Is it possible/likely that a year from now you'll need to add a new section or two? If so, is there room in your menu to add an new button to get to that section? Or will that mess up the whole design?

Vertical menus that run down the left or right side of the page generally are easier to add to (or subtract from) without effecting the overall design. Horizontal menus running along the top (or bottom) of the page can be a lot trickier, especially if you're wanting to keep the  width constant from page to page (and that's a huge pet peeve of mine — seeing sites in which the page widths vary). (See my old post on page dimensions for more on this.)

Might not be a really big deal for a small website, but if you've got an expanding business, you'll want your website to be able to grow with you!