5 Intelligent Tips on how to Create a Website
In all spectrum, the creation of something out of nothing can spectacular and challenging task all at the same time. Spectacular because you are able to produce something out of generally nothing and challenging because of the ways and means that one needs to take in order to complete the process. In order to allay some of the fears in creating something, particularly, a site; the following intelligent tips are being suggested:
1. Take a whole picture of what you are trying to create. Generally, the first step that a web creator should take is to capture the bigger picture and make a clear understanding of what the whole thing will encompass. This will make it a lot easier for you to digest the whole process to take.
2. One-by-one, synthesize the whole idea. This is where you will be pulling out the detailed aspects of the general whole. Make sure that you understand the connection of each section to another section.
3. Create an outline or a chart of how these components should be attacked when the creation process commences. The chart will guide you relatively in trying to understand the relationship of each element to one another.
4. Create the site based on the chart. Create one section and allow for it to be completed. Test the section as an individual. Allow for another component to be created and similarly, test it as an individual component. When these individual components are made and tested, fuse the two and test them together until you reach the completion of the entire site.
5. When the whole site has been created, test the site based on some potential clients' perspective. Test it against usability, against user friendliness, and against workability. When these have passed the smaller cluster, release it and have it tested to a bigger cluster of potential clients.
6 Steps to Start Your Web Site Project
Regardless of size, building a Web site is similar to building a house. There are many decisions to make along the way, most vendors will try to sell the owners on more than they need, and if one is not careful, the project can end up costing more than anticipated. However, when executed properly, a marketer with little technical knowledge can step away with an effective and appropriate Web site for his/her industry by following a few simple guidelines.
Whether you've hired an external marketing firm to assist you with these steps or you're working directly with a Web design firm, at a minimum the following guidelines should be observed when approaching a Web site project.
Identify Your Target Market
The Internet is so exciting we all want to jump on this gravy train and make things happen, but the cutting edge isn't for every market, and some technologies may look cool but are useless to your mission. Taking some time to think about who you are targeting with your Web site, and how you would like to steer them towards doing business with you will assist you in identifying your goals and become a reference point for all subsequent decisions.
Examine your target market's approach to the Web and your content. The Internet provides a uniquely intimate experience in which the site visitor chooses the direction of the information in a non-linear fashion. The site visitor is not bound by pages in a book. S/he can only make decisions based upon the following:
- What do I need?
- What are the choices?
- What is my past experience?
This means that regardless of how you usually consider your product or service offerings, it's more important than ever to consider those items from the client perspective. Take time to think about how your various targets will approach your Web site - what information will they seek? Is this an existing client? A prospective client? What keywords will this person look for? What keywords are meaningful to that target group? What is their experience with the Web thus far?
Determine Goals and Strategies
After completing the above steps, then decide on some reasonable goals for your Web site. What tactics and strategies will you implement to meet those goals? For example, a goal might be to provide current departmental information on the Web site to keep prospective students up to date on the latest course offerings and department changes. A college may wish to encourage more teacher participation in updating the Web site, but other than providing them with the technology to do so, how will you inspire them and market to this group to make their involvement in the college feel interesting and not just another task? Some of these questions may get complex, and your project may slow down here because it's not fun. However, more time in this area will enable you to save money in the long run and increase your satisfaction with the final Web site.
Get Buy-In
Bring all your decision makers together and let them know what you're planning. Let them give you their input. If they disagree with some of your choices, you can back up your choices with something they don't have - research. Your ideas are not based on feelings, they're based on fact, and that's powerful. However, the other stakeholders in the Web site might have some good ideas. Maybe they want to get increased benefit from the Web site, too, like an intranet, or automated email notification. Listen to these ideas and consider them carefully.
Evaluate Needs
Now that you know what you want your Web site to do, you can figure out what technology is out there to do it with. This will inevitably cause some revisions to the previous step, as creative vendors will inform you of applications and opportunities you may not have thought of before. That's okay - you will not be led astray by the temptation of the super highway when all you needed was a 2 lane road. But you will be able to appreciate the input and take time to consider if this option fits your target market's approach to your Web site.
Now days, every organization either big or small owns a website. But, there are just few websites who have higher return on investment (ROI) or large amount of visitors visiting websites everyday. This is because they have a well-designed attractive website. The appearance of the website is the first thing that one observes while browsing through. Therefore, it becomes a perquisite while designing.
But before working towards design of the website, it is important to evaluate the kind of website you would be creating. The different types of website i.e. dynamic and static have different parameters for designing. Based upon your requirement, you can design an appealing and attractive website.
Features of a Good Website
Every website has different parameters for designing. But, there are certain features or parameters which remain same for a good website. They are:
- Color Scheme: Selecting a right color combination is very important for your website. If your website is related to children, then select bright colors like red, orange, green, etc to attract their attention. While designing a professional website, it is important to select color scheme which are in-sync with corporate colors of the organization. The colors should also gel with the overall theme and type of services/products offered by the website.
- Navigation: Navigation provides an intuitive way for visitors to follow. The navigation has to be uncluttered and concise, so that it is easier for visitor to browse through the website. You should preliminarily have consistent left and bottom navigation throughout the website.
- Layout: Layout defines the structure of the website. Nowadays, website's web page real estate is 1024 X 768 resolution; web page real estate is the area in which website is covered as compared to full screen. The font size should be 11 or 12 pixels, so that the text is easily readable. Prefer to select a professional font face rather than fancy fonts.
- Loads Quickly: Website should have graphics to make it appealing, but avoid having loads of graphics or scripting as it will increase the website load time. If websites takes more than few second to load, people tend to get annoyed and browse through another website.
Overall the website should have a user-friendly and well-organized professional look to attract millions of visitors.
A Few Mistakes to Avoid When Designing Your Web Site
Be aware of these common pitfalls when designing your site:
* The home page does not quickly tell you what the Web site is all about. You should be able to visit the home page of any Web site and figure out what the site is about, what type of products it sells, or what it is advertising within five seconds.
* The poor use of popup windows, splashy advertising, splash pages (pages with neat animations and sound but which you have to watch for five to ten seconds before you are taken to the real Web site), and other Web design features that draw interest away from your Web site, products, and/ or services.
* Poor Web site navigation. This includes broken hyperlinks, hidden navigation, poor wording of navigational links, links that take you to pages with no links, links that take you to the same Web page, and pages with no links back to the home page (always include a link back to the home page so that regardless of where site visitors are, they can find their way back home!).
* Believing that because you have a Web site, you have a marketing campaign or overall marketing and advertising strategy. You need to understand that your Web site is not your marketing strategy. Your Web site is just a part of your overall marketing strategy, depending on your business goals; for example, if you have a successful restaurant but want to advertise and promote your business on the Web. Creating a Web site is great, but if it is not promoted and advertised, no one will ever find it. By passing out business cards with your Web site URL embossed on them, you are using a traditional marketing campaign to promote your Web site. If you offer a downloadable/ printable coupon from your Web site, you are successfully using your Web site as part of your marketing strategy to meet your goal of increased restaurant sales.
* Failure to attain Web site relevance and content updating. There is nothing more dissatisfying to a Web customer than visiting a Web site that is grossly out of date. Incorrect pricing, products no longer available, dated content, and ancient advertising all signify to the Web site visitor that your devotion to your Web site is suffering greatly. Cramming your pages with non-relevant material will detract the visitor from getting the point of your Web site (the five-second rule mentioned earlier).
* Avoid too many text effects. Forget flashing text, reversing text, gymnastics text, or other eye-popping and dizzying effects, which do nothing more than annoy your site visitor. Don't create a "loud" Web site that contain so many blinking, flashing, twirling, and spinning icons, text, or graphics that visitors are overwhelmed by the effects and under-whelmed by the site content.
* Limit the number of graphics on your Web site so that you don't overwhelm your site visitors with "graphics overload." Don't use animated GIF images on your Web site. These were cool ten years ago, but in today's professional environment, they are just another "loud," annoying distraction that site visitors don't want to see.
* Don't use Microsoft's themes (built-in design templates) when creating a Web site with Microsoft FrontPage. While FrontPage is bashed on a regular basis, we stand by the fact that it can be used to design great Web sites.
* Don't incorporate frames into Web site design. The use of frames within a Web site will drive customers away faster than anything!
* DO incorporate the proper Web site design elements to ensure that your Web site is ready to be found by search engines.
Hence here are some web design tips to make your site look more attractive.
- You must choose carefully, a professional color scheme for your website as it represents your company's image. Stick to two or three complementary colors.
- Try to use images and graphics in your website. This will prove to be highly beneficial for you in case the visitor is not free to read your content but if you can attract them by images then you can convey your important message clearly. This will also help in capturing the visitor's attention and recall your site to visit again and again. But remember, do not over use Flash and other animation tools as this leads to an increase in page's loading time and also looks unprofessional.
- Try to use bullets and numbering to make your content more crisp and lucid. Your visitor might not read every sentence of your content but can read the bulleted points easily.
- You must ensure that your visitors can read the text on the background i.e. if the background is dark always use light color for the writing a text and visa versa.
- You don't need to fill the whole screen with text and graphics instead use the white space effectively, and allow elements to breathe.
- Try to create a simple logo to identity your website. And this very logo explains everything about your business, hence you must take utmost care in not to use more than three colors and not to make it too wide or too tall. Also, have a captivating tag line somewhere with the header, and write an About Us page which describes the uniqueness of your website. These will leave an impression for your visitors to remember your website.
- You must provide a way back to your home page on every single page of your site and give your customer the information they will be looking for and help them find it easily and quickly.
- You must keep your site's navigation consistent. What you do on one page, should be done the same way on the rest of your site's pages. Keep the colors consistent as well.
- You must make sure that your page loads faster. If viewers have to wait for a page to load then they will switch over to somewhere else. It is estimated that if a page doesn't load in 8 seconds you will lose 1/3 of your visitors.
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