There’s no way around it. Having a website is a must-have for any serious business today. So how do you get one made if you are on a budget? At first it seems like a daunting task, but is it really that difficult?
Hiring someone to do it for you can be pricey, but you can actually save money if do it yourself. Just keep the following tips in consideration if you are to design your own website.
Stay Away from Frames
15 years ago frames were cool. They gave the typical HTML markup tags much more complexity as you could design interfaces that were not possible previously. Then came div tags and redefined the entire way of programming a website. Gone are the days of the hockey stick layout.
Another reason not to use frames is the difficulty updating your website. While visitors to your site may enjoy the pages that have frames, search engines are not likely to pick up the information contained within frames. So as mentioned if search engines can’t find your information on your site, it will not be displayed in the search results. That lowers your ranking and the amount of visitors who’ll use your site.
Broken Links Are a Big No-No
Check your copy for any broken links before publishing your page. The worst experience a visitor or customer is to click on a link only to find out it goes to a 404 page. It’s evenly as bad if any search engine finds out when they crawl your page, because they will punish your SEO results.
To find broken links you can either check them manually yourself or use a tool like Free Broken Link Checker.
Use Shortcuts When Possible
Use shortcuts often. When thinking about good web design shortcuts are not to be underestimated. They make for a smooth navigational experience through your website and will save your visitors time and give them a good user experience. There are lots of HTML tags that are helpful and enables you to make changes quickly without going through the entire upload process.
Don’t Rely 100% on Templates
Though templates are tempting to use because they are so easy to manipulate, don't rely solely on these provided by the host to build your site.
You should really be adding elements of uniqueness and personality to your website. This means that you should come up with new design elements that are not available by using the pre-created elements in the template or the provided options of the host's WYSIWYG editor.
Experiment by Starting Small
Start out by creating tiny websites in order to determine areas that you've worked on which were solid, and the areas that you've worked on which were bad. Start by creating simple layout structures and then expand your creativity as you get more experience.
Get a Book About HTML
Go to your library or take advantage of the free online about web design and study them. Be sure to start reading books that are at your current level. You want to learn more, though you do not want to jump ahead too quickly and not understand what is being taught.
It’s about learning how to create an amazing website in your tempo. If you skip lessons it’ll all end up taking longer to learn.
Think About Your Audience
Website design requires proper research. Do extensive research on your niche, only then should you set your sights on your target audience. Figure out how old they are, what their interests are, what colors they like, if they use glasses. All that is going to influence the overall design, color palette, font sizes and more.
Don’t be A Copycat and Steal Other People’s Web Design
There are probably quite a few existing site styles and designs looking appealing to you, but it's essential to tap into your own unique creativity. Create your own original features that aren't seen before and make them better than what your competition provides. If you use this method it be put you leaps ahead to create a quality website.
With that said, it’s okay to get influenced by cutting-edge designers. There’s no reason to invent the round wheel again, but make sure to put your own touch on it. Someone seeing your design shouldn’t think they have seen it somewhere else before.
Use Graphics as Eye Candy
Don’t make your website design too text heavy. Add flair and value by designing kick-ass graphics. Think about adding interest to your site by wrapping text around the content related images. When readers see your website took time and effort to create, they are more likely to spend time or money on your website.
Minimize Spam if You Have a Blog
An important factor when owning a website blog is to consistently remove spam and negative content. Blog owners will find that maintaining your site on the regular is especially helpful. The same applies to websites with forums. Great website designers stick around to get rid of garbage before it piles up.
There are great free tools available to help you sort through the comments. You can even decide not to publish comments until you have approved them.
Spend Enough Time On Your Website
Do your best to set aside serious time every single day to do work on your site. It’s important not to neglect your site once it’s live. Concentrate on making a focused effort, instead of a hit-and-miss approach periodically. Working hard on web design will help you build and keep a nice site.
HTML AND CSS are Core Tools
Get somewhat knowledgeable in CSS (cascading style sheets) and HTML (hyper text markup language). HTML is the wireframe for everything on your pages, while it’s CSS that does the heavy lifting for design.
You want your website to have consistency and the cascading style sheets can help. It'll will also make it quite a bit easier if you decide you want a layout change later. To change font color of each page, for example, you'll just have to change a single line of code if you keep the CSS in an external file.
Keep Your Color Palette in Check
Background colors on websites should mostly be neutral. Visitors to your website can be overwhelmed by strong textures or busy patterned backgrounds and it can give an impression of being an amateur. Of course there are instances where a colorful background is warranted, for example if your products are very vivid and entertaining.
In general though, a neutral or white background is best. It's a fact that neutral shades make the most readable backgrounds.
Get the Right Domain Extension
If you are interested in honing in on a local group of people with your site, it will probably help to buy a top level domain with a country code. This will guarantee your domain name for that particular region. .com for the US, .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .ca for Canada and so on. You can entice people to your site by using the right ccTLD appropriate for your region.
Remember to List Supporting Organizations
Include all relevant logos for your various suppliers, affiliates and organizations. Local and national support systems let visitors know you are trustworthy. Usually logos of supporting organizations or companies are placed in the bottom of your website. They are not a top priority but a good trust building section to include.
Update Content Regularly
We have talked about the importance of the design of your site, the reason people are visiting your website is primarily for the content. Whether you have a simple or advanced site focusing on the content and images is important, you're far more likely to attract and retain visitors who will be interested in your content. A good rule of thumb is to keep your page simple, because it helps speed up the time your pages takes to load.
Editing your site is really important to stay relevant, so don't put it on the back burner! Before you upload anything to your server, be sure to thoroughly check it for spelling and grammatical errors. Avoid pages with 404 errors. If they do it doesn't give a good impression of your company. It'll make your site appear unprofessional and repeat business is unlikely.
Conclusion
Hopefully at this point you have a much better idea of what is important when designing your new website.
If you make sure to implement everything you learned here and don’t get stagnant in maintaining your website, you are sure to have success with your website, both in design, development and maintenance.
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