We all want to know what makes a website a good website. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there are some essentials.

Purpose:
Why do you have a website? What its purpose? How are you going to measure your success?

Design:
We're talking about things like colour choice, alignments, visual interest, and meaningful metaphors.

Message:
Content is king. Every page in your website needs a goal. You need to understand who your target audience is and what you want them to do. Then you must provide them with the appropriate information and a meaningful call to action.

Architecture:
How are your pages organized? Is it intuitive? Will your target audience understand?

Usability & Accessibility:
HTML is still a coding language and it needs to be well formed and accessible. Not everyone who visits your site have fast connections, some can't install the Flash plug-in, knowing your target audience and your goals certainly help to set your usability and accessibility standards.

Online Marketing:
Appealing to the search engines is a game. Get it wrong and you'll find yourself banned. Do it right and you'll be rewarded with lots of free, targeted traffic. It's not difficult, it just takes experience and planning

Technical Stuff:
Is your domain easy to remember? Is your ISP reliable? Do they have 20,000 other websites hosted on your server? Do they support the right technologies for your website to grow?