More from the marketing side of things, web design means a whole different thing than most of us think. For "them", the essence of a Web site is self-service.

In The Three Core Principles of Great Web Design, they come at it from this angle, giving three core needs for any successful site: convenience, speed, and price. Convenience means task achievement with minimum effort. Speed means that you get in and out of a Web site as quickly as possible. Price means...people are cheap on the Web.

The rest of this short piece is devoted to explaining some of the steps behind those three core principles including lots and lots of testing, keeping the speed of your site snappy enough to make people want to stay, and giving them the incentive (free stuff!) to stick around.