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Steve and I spent a very pleasant hour or so this morning talking to one of our mainstream clients. It was pleasant because it was the final discussion to go over a few points before we start work on his website that's going to be worth many thousands dollars. And it was pleasant because we were dealing with someone who knew exactly what he wanted and nailing down the final details was easy.

It was even more pleasant because what he wants is exactly what every new client, every web designer and every new adult webmaster should want too. In fact listening to his list of wants was like listening to a tutorial for new Webmasters and both of us felt like standing up and cheering when he had finished.

We had a mock up of the index page to show him and as we sat there looking at it on his laptop he pointed to it and said; 'I hate scrolling - I don't want people to have to scroll to see the important parts of my site.'

We were able to show him that all the important parts of the site were above the fold.

This is a site that is going to rely on a lot of images and he was concerned about the file sizes of the images that would be on the site.

'I hate waiting for images to load,' he said. 'I can't stand the way some sites take forever for the images to load because even though the image size is small the file size is huge.'

'I like the links you have down the side of the page - they're easy to see, and you know exactly what's going to be at the other end.'

And there were other things that he liked and disliked about similar sites on the Net and they were all things that are so important when it comes to web design. If you're a newbie to web design then you should have been there listening to him because he nailed every important point when it comes to designing a site that will sell.

He didn't want a huge graphic for the header and he didn't want some fancy Flash graphic on the index page because he knew that those things take time to load and if they annoyed him then they were guaranteed to annoy the people he wants to attract to his site.

He was more than happy with a small logo and the rest of the header to be in plain text because that text and the small logo delivered the message that would draw people into his site.

He was definitely spot on when it comes to having all the important information above the fold ... and he wanted to be sure that that's exactly where the information was not only on his laptop but on a PC as well.

How many of you actually test your sites on a laptop? The fold is not always in the same place so what looks good on your 22 inch widescreen monitor may look a whole lot less than good on the small screen of a laptop.

He knew his site was going to require images but he also knew that he wanted those images to be available in a small file size. How many of us don't even stop to think about the file size? How many of us use fancy content management systems that will compress the image size but do nothing about the file size?

It's important that you keep your file sizes down ... even on a good DSL connection like our client uses big files take time to download. Despite his good connection he really did not like the idea of waiting while an image gradually downloaded pixel by pixel and he knew that his clients wouldn't wait around for that to happen either.

He understood the importance of simple navigation ... do you? He wanted to be sure that the people coming to his site would be able to find their way around the site without having to guess where the navigation links were. He also wanted to be sure that they understood where to look for the things they wanted to buy ...do your surfers know where they're going when they hit on a link?

Every one of those points that he raised is so incredibly important and it doesn't matter whether you're designing a multi-page mainstream marketing site or a small free site for adult marketing. Ignoring those points will mean that you'll miss out on sales.

If our client, who has never designed a website in his life, can understand the importance of those points then why can't mainstream and adult web designers understand them too?