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Splash pages are sometimes the first pages you see when you arrive at a website.

These pages use elaborate designs created with the purpose to “entertain the visitor” with fancy animations, brilliant photos or include welcoming words such as “hello, welcome or click here to enter our website”. They are merely fancy eye candy without any real function at all.
 
Give them the value of your homepage  up front without the splash page.

Splash pages also do NOT help with your website SEO at all. The home page tied to the rest of your site is critical for SEO purposes.

Avoid excessive banner advertisements

Normally you will find these at the top of web pages where they will be advertising something (not always related to the site).

Even newbies to the internet have trained themselves to ignore banner ads. Using them them would only waste precious content space. Use the top of your web pages for focused selling efforts and real information. It will help you with SEO as well!

Keep it simple

The best navigation is one that a young child can understand. You should leave out any fancy flash menus or excessive multi-tiered drop down menus. They only serve to make navigating the site harder.

If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site. Your website design should include basic a sitemap that will make it easy for them to find what they want.

Clearly indicate where a visitor is currently on your website

You will want to make sure your visitor knows exactly where they are without feeling lost. The “breadcrumbs” are put into a website for this reason.

Even if a visitor is several levels deep in your site, the breadcrumb trail allows them to easily navigate back through sections and sub-departments of your site.

Make sure that every page has its own title and that the breadcrumb trail is used to track the visitors steps throughout the entire website. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means they will leave!

Do not use audio or other video “pop-up” distractions

Your favorite tune may be repulsive to some visitors, so don’t use embedded background music. A sound file should not be played continuously as it can be irritating to the visitor. It, like other pop-up type tools, can distract a visitor from “the buying”.

I’ve quite often found on websites a silent timed popup video loop of an attractive “sales clerk” sitting at the bottom of a website. While browsing, the sales person video waves at me, or moves back and forth enticing me to click on them. Some go directly to a long boring sales pitch video when you click on it. Some open the chat window. Some redirect you to a new sales pitch page to read through. Ooops, I forgot what I was shopping for now.