Travel, cooking and web 2.0+

In the age of social media and e-commerce eyeballs are the customers walking in your door.
Sounds simple.
Sounds common sense.
It is easily (and often) overlooked.

Whatever your intent is in creating a website, be it for profit, for enjoyment, for expression or just because its a Tuesday evening and you have nothing better to do with your time, take a step back for a second and examine how you can improve the end users experience, even if this is initially at the expense of your initial goal.
You have seconds to grasp a customer and a minute chance of keeping them.
Engage and captivate.

A website is often seen as a one way conversation, a site giving the end user what they seek, a marketing tool and also as I have (scaringly!) heard, the future!
A website should be like a good restaurant.
You should have people outside greeting the potential customers, engaging them, showing them where there are tables available; they came here to eat, right? A waiter should arrive promptly with water and menus and inform the customers of the evening specials. Whenever there is an expression of interest in a dish, he should describe the meal in greater detail. He should provide the customers with an enjoyable experience.
Likewise, a website should invite a user in, it should have a smile (and hopefully a laugh!), it should captivate them, it should provide them with the knowledge they need and not overwhelm them with what they don’t.
IOTA has a great presentation on some of the great rules of building a website for your customers:

Above all else, build a website that you would want to visit.