This line of reasoning applies to web sites as well, and yet many sites in our area of interest appear to have skipped over the "hire the graphic designer" stage. Maybe as a modern-day counselor, you or your company has been contemplating your own web site. The elements I have outline in this brief column may help place you on the proper track.

Go to a well-constructed web site such as apple.com, amazon.com, or ebay.com. Ignore completely the actual content of each of these sites and attend only to the look and feel. Make note of the palette of colors, the organization, the use of movement and animation, and the choice and variation of type face and size. Use the + and - keys in your browser's menu bar to enlarge the font size. Look to see how the page responds. Don't bother clicking anywhere on the page itself. There's no need to link to anything just yet. For now, let's focus on the home page of each site.

Obviously, by the time these words reach the printed page, the sites themselves might change to some extent. For now, though, the sites I've mentioned have stayed remarkably consistent for several years. This is a good thing. If each time I walked into my office building's elevator, the floor choice buttons were on a different wall, in a different order, and changed color each day, I would spend much of my elevator time in confusion and would eventually take the stairs. In the same way, if a long-familiar web site changes, the hope is that the new orientation will have such extensive advantages that more new customers will be gained than old customers lost. The changes had better be good. That being said, let's look at Apple, eBay, and Amazon to find a few consistent points:

o The title in the title bar of the browser window, driven by the web site, is simple and unambiguous. "eBay - The World's Online Marketplace" and "Apple" are as complex as they get. No extra exclamation points.

o The background color is universally white. There are no funky color choices, no wallpaper, and no grid making it difficult to read the presented information.

o The size of the brand name is quite small. Look at the eBay logo in the upper left of the screen. It's really rather tiny compared with the information elsewhere. They make their point with color. Amazon's logo is even smaller. And Apple makes its presence known only through their pictoral logo in a rather tiny space on one of the home page's file tabs.

o Hit the + and - keys in your browser menu bar. See how each screen responds. The text remains within the appropriate areas. Resizing text does not make the entire screen run amok. Certain text can be resized, while other text cannot. There is a standard followed there which observation will quickly reveal. While there are slight differences from site to site, these sites are internally consistent.

o Look at what blinks or moves. Apple's site has a single line of text in their "Hot News Headlines" that changes every two to three seconds. Amazon has a small "Gold Box" which sparkles using small animation effects. eBay has a moving line of promotional text which eventually stops after the screen has been displayed for a few minutes. Unless your site is for a television station or animation design company, video and animation should be downplayed on the home page.

o The vast majority of the text is black and dark blue where blue indicates a link and black indicates the lack of a link. This is a longtime web standard that the better sites still follow and customers expect.

o All three sites have a Search window in an immediately obvious location on the very first page. In fact, in all three sites, the Search text entry location is the only place on the home page in which text can be entered.

o All three sites use clear methodologies to distinguish available content. Apple uses file tabs across the top of the screen. Amazon uses text categories down the left side of the window combined with categorical file tabs at the top. eBay has categories down the left combined with operation functionality across the top. In each case, the center of the page focuses on content that the companies feel will be of contemporary interest. The vast majority of the home page, therefore, has content that can change regularly while maintaining the functionality and operating characteristics of the site.

o If you scroll down a bit, each site provides basic information about the organization behind the site. This always requires a mouse click, but the routing to get there is straightforward. If I want a corporate phone number, mailing address, or names of the people in charge, this should be no more than a click or two away.

The basics I have noted represent just a few aspects frequently found among well-constructed web sites. I haven't started to discuss linking at all, nor have I addressed actual content.

What addiction-related sites are you familiar with that follow the characteristics discussed this month?

Stuart Gitlow, MD, MPH, is the author of Substance Use Disorders: A Practical Guide, from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. He will be speaking at the Psychiatric Congress in Orlando in November 2003 on eMail and the psychiatric patient.