You may not realize this, but webmasters have more control over users than you may think. To be more specific, you can direct where a user looks on their screen with 100% accuracy. For websites that depend upon advertising revenue, we can do this by controlling four main aspects of the website design.

Layout

This is a fairly common mistake, even for experienced webmasters. Your main content should be the largest visible pane (above the fold) by a large margin. By that I mean that the content should occupy at least 70% of the area you're working on. The other 20% is reserved for anything else you want (navigation and advertisement panes, perhaps). Under no circumstances should your main content be dwarfed by secondary content -- ever.

Colors

The number one rule of thumb when dealing with colors: your main content should always be a lighter color than your secondary content. There are too many websites that invert this rule, which results in the user having to forcefully focus on the main portion of the page, because the eye is naturally drawn to lighter colors.

The second rule of thumb: colors should not be contrasting. High-contrast colors (like black and white) distract the eye. Instead of offering a very hard-line break between panes you want something that blends well.

Borders

Borders should only be used in two scenarios: when you want the user to focus on something over something else, and to help tie the overall design together. Try to avoid using borders, but if your design really lacks one central focal point, then a border can be used to add that critical point.

On the other hand, surrounding one pane with other panes that have borders will have the opposite effect: the main focal point will become the pane without the border, while the other panes all blend together (as the border tends to tie them together).

Candy

Eye-candy can be both a boon and a bane. On one hand, if used properly, eye-candy can attract visitors to less-viewed portions of the website; however, if abuse, eye-candy can make your website look like a big cluttered mess.

Try to limit eye-candy to only a few, high-quality pieces. It's difficult to actually explain how to properly use eye-candy, as it only come from years of experience to determine what "looks good." All is not lost, however, because I do have a few tips on placement:

• Keep it small, bright, and located in the one place where you need people to look; for example, you could use an image to help people focus on your newsletter signup link.

• Avoid animated gifs. I know a lot of new webmasters believe animated gifs add something special to their website, but to everyone who has been online for longer than a year will only look down on these as unprofessional.

• Avoid too many Flash applications. While the smooth animation of Flash can attract many developers, its use for our type of website is very limited.

• Avoid clutter. Too much eye-candy will always make a website look cluttered. You can try any of the above tips, but if you have too much clutter your users will never see the content.

By keeping all of these tips in mind while searching for or developing a website you can keep your readers eyes on the content, and clicks on the ads.