It takes some time to find a good balance between the two extremes of being indifferent to anything but the "big picture" and obsessing about small minute details. The right approach for your site will depend on various factors, but certain general principles are valid in most cases. Sometimes there probably are reason for breaking these principles, but nevertheless, they can function as "rules of thumb" that can help in making your website perform well.

1. Avoid Using Unnecessary Splash Pages

Splash pages (or splash screens) are the first pages that a user sees when he/she enters at a website. They normally have beautiful graphical content and words like "welcome" or "click here to enter", but they lack content. It is questionable whether such splash pages have any real purpose from the point of view of the visitor. Unless there is some reason independent of the visitors' general opinion why you want to use a splash page, it might be smart to simply not create such a page at all. Basically, a splash page without any real value is often just one extra reason for the visitor to click on the "back" button or type in a new address.

2. Avoid Using Excessive Banner Ads

Oviously, if one of the purposes of your web site is to generate advertising revenue, you may want to use many banners and advertising links on your site. But using too many of them -- especially if you place them to the page carelessly and in a disturbing manner -- can be a big cause for annoyance from the visitor's perspective. Affiliate links that are relevant to the site content can be integrated into the the page in a more natural manner and they can provide some real value for the visitor, and thus may be perceived generally as less disruptive. But this should not be overdone either.

3. Easy Site Navigation

The navigation exists to serve a purpose, which is to, well, navigate on your site. The navigation should not take the center stage (think of complex flash-based navigation systems with sounds and even movie clips attached to it), and neither should it be so minimal that the user has to spend a significant amount of time figuring out what to do in order to access the main sections of the site. A multi-tiered drop-down menu may be helpful in some cases, but you should at least consider seriously this question: Do I really need this? (Or perhaps even more importantly, do the visitors need it?)

4. Indicate the Current Section Clearly to the Visitor

The visitor wants to know which section of the site he/she is currently in. It is not difficult for the user to get confused about this if he/she is browsing a larger site that does not indicate this clearly. Unlike you, (s)he didn't design the site structure and thus doesn't have an immediate grasp of details that may seem self-evident from the designer's point of view. And the more confused the visitors of your site are, the more likely they are to head elsewhere.

5. Use Audio Only if It Adds Something Positive and Relevant to the Experience

Background music that loops on and on can be quite annoying for a visitor who spends any amount of time reading the page. If he/she wants to listen to music, he/she probably prefers to use his/her stereos, iPod, or Media Player. If you use audio, it would be a good idea to at least add a clearly visible mute control button.