Website Design Tips - Planning Your Website

When you start to build your site and add information and products to it do it one page at a time, completing each page as much as possible as you go. If your site will have more than 5 pages don't create those pages in your site's directory until you are ready to work on them. The more pages your site has the longer it will take you to complete them all and the longer it will take you to "go live". Start with just a few pages and a handful of products or articles and that way you can start to put your site to work for you a lot sooner as you build it up.

Websites are never totally finished. There is always updating that needs to be done and fine tuning to get the best search engine listings. Having a feature rich website full of many pages of products and valuable information is exactly what your visitors and the search engines like to see and that should definitely be your long term goal. But we?ve seen many people give up on their dream because they never get their site complete enough to take full advantage of it. If your site is a mess, disorganized, and full of empty pages more than likely it will be a failure. Start small and get it actively working for you as soon as possible in a professional and effective manner. Web site planning is only the first step.

Good Website Design

The design and layout of your site is the next most important part of building a website. Make a bad choice here and it won't matter how great your content is or how much advertising you do. If your site looks bad no one will visit and those that do won't stay long or buy anything.

Choose your colors carefully and keep in mind that your tastes may not be appealing to your target audience. Try a few different color schemes and ask some of your friends or family for their opinions about them. And remember this term, "white-space". In general, white-space is the cornerstone of good website design. Keep the background areas where your information or products will be displayed white or another light / pale color. Dark or oddly colored backgrounds distract your visitors from your information and also can make it difficult to read. Background images are also a big don't for the same reasons plus they make your pages load more slowly. Colored text should also be used sparingly. Contrast is key, otherwise it can be very difficult to read. Here's an example. Try to use colored text only to emphasize important information. If you choose to use a color other than black throughout your site make sure it is dark.

The layout is how things are arranged on your pages. There are many different ways to display your content and we'll cover that a bit farther down the page. What we're going to discuss here are the elements that frame your content such as your navigation menu buttons, any graphical accents, logos, etc.

The name of your website, domain name, or business name should be prominently featured somewhere at or near the top of your pages either within your logo or near it. And it should fit within the typical boundaries of the page. If you make it too big or it contains too many words then it will stretch your pages so wide that most visitors won't be able to see the whole page unless they scroll sideways. Very annoying, and definitely not good website design. More about this later.