Designing your Website
What makes a good website?
If you are building your first website, it is always a big temptation to
use a lot of graphics and flash. Please resist this temptation. Not
only will it make your site look like a newbie built it, it will also load
so slow that no one will wait to see what you have.
If you want to build a flashy site, make one to show your friends. Get it
out of your system. Then make a simple site to sell your wares.
A nice, 'clean' site is very important. Take a look at this site. Is it
easy to read? Does it look clean? Can you find what you are looking for?
This is what you want for your site.
Pick two or three complimentary colors and stick with that. You can add
another color here or there for emphasis but for the most part, stick with
your two or three colors.
Use white for your background. I know you had a real cool background
picked out that you wanted to use. Do you want a cool background or
customers? Take a look at Yahoo,
MSN and
Google. These are the top 3
websites in the world. What do they use for a background? That's right,
white.
Black is considered the best font color to use. I think black on white is
just a little too boring so I use navy blue. Any dark colored font should do
just fine. Dark on white is easy to read. Don't use
yellow or pink or
baby
blue or any other light color. It's too hard to see and your visitors
probably won't read long enough to buy anything.
Don't use fancy fonts. Many browsers don't handle fancy fonts correctly
and your prospective customer might not see any words at all. Or they might
see symbols. Use Arial, Georgia, Veranda,
Trebuchet, or MS
sans serif. These are universal fonts and they are easy to read.
How would you like to read a whole page of this?
Don't overdo the bold or excessively large fonts.
Keep most of your text at 9pt - 10pt. Save the larger type for headings. Bold an
important point here and there if necessary but don't have half of each
paragraph be bold. Not only is this hard to read but your visitor won't know
what's important and what's not.
Put exclamation points where they are needed! Don't end every statement
with an exclamation point! Don't put several exclamation points in a
row!!!!!! One will do. The same goes for question marks? If every statements
is a question, your visitor will wonder where all the answers are??? (See
how ridiculous this paragraph looks?!?!?!)
Make sure you proof read everything you write. Check and double check for
misspelled words or wrong words. Your spell checker will not catch 'their'
if it's supposed to be 'there' or 'tow' instead of
'two'. Read each page out loud, you will find your
mistakes much easier that way. You might feel silly doing this but it really
does work. If you can't read what you wrote without having to pause to
figure out what you meant, your visitors certainly won't understand it.
You are either one person or a group. Use either 'I and me' or 'we and
us'. Don't make half your information from we and the other half from me.
You will look like a fake. It is usually best to be one person. More
personal and comfortable for your visitors.
Keep your layout simple. You want your visitors to find what they are
looking for. If you have a bunch of drop down lists, you will annoy people
and they will leave. Have one list of topics either on the right or left
hand side of the screen. It doesn't matter if the list is 30 links long,
keep it all in one, easy to find spot.
This is for your visitors to see at a glance what you have to offer. They
are not looking for cool, java scripted, slide out lists. They are looking
for your information.
I have added 2, very generic, sample page layouts for you to view and use if you want
to. The actual samples are in black and white. I added some of my information to each to show you what it will look like as an actual website.
If you want to use one, just click on the code link. Copy and paste the entire page to your HTML editor. Make any changes
as you see fit. Here are the samples. <--
You will also find some links to other free templates on this page.
You can have a quick row of 6-8 links across the top of the page if you'd
like but don't crowd the look. A row or several rows of links in your footer
is fine. Make then 8pt and "link blue". Make sure all your links have
underlines and don't underline anything that isn't a link.
People expect certain things when they are looking at a website. They
expect underlined words to be links. If they find this is not the case on
your website, they will go somewhere else.
Make sure all your pages look about the same. This will make your
visitors more comfortable. They can feel at home if they go from one page to
the next and it all feels the same. If each page is different, you will look
like a newbie and they will leave.
Set one page up the way you like it and save it as "template.html". Every
time you start a new page, open template.html and rename it the new page
name. We will discuss page names in optimization. Just name them what ever
you want for now. This is very easy to change. If you always use this
template to start every new page, you pages will all look the same. This is
very important for a professional look.
If you add pictures, make sure they are relevant to your
content. Don't just add a cute picture on a page
because you like the picture. If you can get your point across without the
picture, leave it out. Pictures load slow on dial-up connections or older
computers. Just because it loads fast on your computer doesn't mean it will
load fast on all computers.
Don't have any funny mice or snowmen run across your screen. Don't use
cursor alteration script. Don't make bubbles come up from the bottom of the
screen. Don't play music. Don't have any audio that starts with the page. If
you decide to have a recorded message on your site. Give the visitor the
choice whether or not he wants to listen to it. Have a play button available
for that choice.
Make sure you check the way your web site looks in several different
browsers. I test mine in Explorer, Netscape, Opera and Mozilla. Each browser
handles the html code differently. Just because it looks good in Explorer
that doesn't mean it looks good in Opera.
Don't look like a newbie! No one wants to buy from a newbie. They don't have to know this is your
first site if you make it look professional. Keep it simple and clean.
Always ask yourself, would I buy from this website? If your answer is no,
change it until your answer is yes.
Often you will only get one chance with a person, don't make it a
negative experience for them.
If you need some help with a good site
template, you will find some
Ready Made Templates here.
Once you have your basic layout figured out, move on to
Starting Search Engine Optimization.
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How
To Pick the Right Domain Name
What
should my domain name be?
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