Design the site for customers, not the company.

The most important aspect of a business or a normal website is to adhere itself to the needs of the visitors and not just to those of the company. Many people involve in too much of advertising stuff to gain visitors. These type of things are sporadic and let the visitors just view your page accidently and leave the site. Although it increases the count of visitors but i'd rather choose to have them sufficiently to those who really want to be in my site and not just because that they are surfing the web to make money and i've added my site in such surfing stuffs. I've experienced a lot of them i shud say. If you think you can make visitors come to your website forcefully then thats just waste of time.
It's always better to put contents which is useful to the customers' needs and obviously fit for your site. Avoid over-flattering marketing hype about the company. It inflates the ego of the company more than it helps your customers.
Keep your visitors involved and make them feel like a valuable contributor. Tools like forum and blogs are a really good way to know your visitors needs and keep them satisfied. Expedient Interaction between you and visitors is the most important weapon you could use to make your site a good web place. Ask for communication from your visitors and answer their communications swiftly.
You need to have content on your website that is timely and pertinent to the customers' life. Provide tips and techniques to cure a problem as fast as possible to the visitors.

A successful website is designed for the target audience, not to impress the site's owner...