Hi, So, when you visit different websites on your specific topic, what do you look for besides the relevant contents? To start, I usually look for a good navigation system, and slick design.
Attractive Design, Fast Loading and eye catching n makes u feel wow! wen u see it... and ya not too much ads... thanks
Clean and crisp design, prominent navigation that doesn't require me to think about how to use it and minimal Flash(or at least implemented so I have to wonder if it is flash or animated gifs/js).
I know you said aside from relevant content, but honestly that's the king for me. Only other really important issue is no JS errors -- unbelievable how many sites have errors. So many that I have to use a different machine to just go browsing the internet without all of my debugging tools raising red flags. If it's a large site, a site map is a must. I can rarely find what I'm looking for on USPS.com and UPS.com without digging around in their site maps as they keep changing navigation on their sites.
Quality content, Accessibility (for People with Disabilities), Interoperability (in all User-Agents) ease of Navigation. James
First impression is most important for me. usually based on nice and neat, yet attractive graphic/UI design and color + easy navigation. also that there are no forced pop-ups or JS errors After first impression... verify that navigation is indeed easy. content is good and updated if necessary and that the site is responsive and not sloowww