Anyone can build a website but not anyone can design effective websites. Effective web design involves a lot of factors, including a substantial understanding of how the internet works, how internet users think and act, and the ability to learn from one's own (or others') mistakes.

Even on the best websites, you'll see more than one mistake but most of them cannot affect the success of the website itself because everything else about it falls properly into place. Most of the time those mistakes are just flukes.

What we need to worry about are web design mistakes that people make over and over again and those that their designers refuse to rectify. Here are some major website design mistakes that will kill just about any website.

Poor information and bad content: I'm talking about websites that seem to tell you they have all the information you need, then in the end just fail to deliver. Poor information or bad content most often result from lack of actual knowledge and understanding, or just sloppy content creation.

It's easy to spot this problem. On the web there are lots of content containing lots of "fluff", unsubstantiated claims, information you already know carved into absolute statements, badly written content or content totally devoid of individuality.

You'll see that this is prevalent among many emerging authority sites. Some authority sites however, are capable of delivering genuine expert information. Others are just hype.

Not designed to function with other browsers: Web designers are often tasked with making sure the websites they design work across the board. This is how you can distinguish an amateur web designer from an experienced one.

Why is this important? Browsers are the medium in which your visitors will see your website. Your customers will make their purchases, give you their email address and subscribe to your newsletters through browsers. There's no other way. But the problem lies in the fact that not all computers are the same and not everyone using the same browser. If your website can't load in IE, you will lose IE users who may be potential customers for your website.

It's a web design best practice to create your base design for "gecko" browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Flock, Camino, Opera). If your design looks good and functions well on these browsers, then it's more likely to be problem-free with other browsers such as Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer. If not, all you'd have to do is add a few tweaks.

Poorly designed "Under Construction" pages: "Under Construction" pages are powerful in that, if they are improperly used, they could destroy your online business. These pages raise "red flags" to search engines and to visitors, telling them that you are not finished and therefore have nothing of value to offer them. Studies show that new visitors won't be inclined to return to your website if they see a blatant "Under Construction" message on your main page.