Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarters of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practice good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

Here are 6 Quick Design Tips to help you accomplish this:

1. Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.
2. Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.
3. Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into separate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.
4. Make sure your website complies with web standards at www.w3.org and is cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.
5. Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.
6. Use CSS to style your page content because they save a lot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

I would like to hear what you think of the design tips. Feel free to leave your comments below.

Before you begin building the web pages that will make up your website, you will need to create a website plan:

• Draft a preliminary website plan.
• Draw a website map.

Drafting A Site Plan

Your website plan outlines the purpose and goals of your website. It should address the following issues:

Site Purpose: Clarify your reasons for building the site and list the site’s goals, ranked by importance.

Site Audience: Define the types of users you expect your site to attract.

Website Marketing: Explain how you intend to attract your niche audience; through advertising, word of mouth, special promotions, and so on.

Web Copy: Detail what types of text and images you want your site to contain.

Look and Feel: Describe the site’s aesthetics, such as the color palette you’d like to use and the overall tone or attitude you intend to convey.

Web Layout: Consider how you’ll organize each page to allow users to navigate easily among pages on the Site.

Site Schedule: Determine deadlines for creating drafts of the Site and launching the final product.

Draw a Site Map

Once you have your site plan in place, you’re ready to create a site map of your website layout. Your site map should include each of the sites main pages and how they are linked together. You can draw a site map on paper or with image editing software, such as Adobe Fireworks or Photoshop.

A typical site map might look like this:

Click to Enlarge

Who is this website for?

If you are looking for a resource guide to creating a website, CreatingMyWebsite.com is for you. This website will walk you through the basics you need to get started and familiarize you with the essentials needed for creating a website or even redesigning an existing site.

How to use this Website?

In order to get the most out of this guide to creating a website, you should start with the Getting Your Website Started page. This page will show you How to Plan Your Website, The 5 Steps for Creating a Website, and What Type of Web Page Content to Consider.

Lets not waist any more time, your guide to creating a website starts here!

Get The Facts About Creating a Website

Creating your own website can be useful for a number of purposes. Whether it’s to share your expertise on a particular topic, start an online business, foster a community, or just maintain an online journal of your activities, having a website will allow you to make your content accessible from any connected computer.

Domain Name Registration

Your domain name or website address is one of the most important parts of creating a website. This is the name that people will use to locate your website online. The domain name is usually the name of your company.

The development of your website design is one of the most central phases of your tactics to establish your position in the market. Without a strong and constructive design you fail to reach the customers necessary for your achievements. The development phase consists of several phases that include:

• Final review of website design
• Branding
• Development of specific business divisions, such as e-commerce and website.
• Testing 
• Taking your website live

There are specific partitions that need to be developed before your web existence and business strategy is ready to go live on the Internet. Once these partitions have been developed your company is ready to reach your customers and secure your position among your competition. Partitions that need to be developed require unique techniques.

Website Development

Develop a web presence that is based on your business branding and design. The combination of all three elements will reinforce your online business strength: branding, design, and website development.

E-commerce Development 

A constructive and easy e-commerce experience is significant for capturing the confidence and self-assurance of your customers. This includes all aspects of e-commerce: product database, product display, security, and shopping cart.

Marketing Strategy 

The advancement phase is the prelude to your marketing strategy. Marketing requires a strong and solid development phase from which to have a triumphant launch.

The development phase of your business strategy should be as meticulous as possible before you go live with your website. The more safe and sound the multiple divisions of your company existence are the more success you’ll maintain.

Web Content Introduction

The Internet is designed to be changing and dynamic. People who visit your website want to see content that is new and filled with ideas and business promotions. If people visit your website and don’t see new content on a frequent basis they’ll think that your site is stagnant and has been abandoned without any customer service there for them to rely on. 

The home page of your website is one of the most important aspects of your online marketing strategy. It’s the content of your home page that gives your business a brand. The more useful and professional the information on your home page is the more credit you bring to your product or service.

The Internet is one of the best places for consumers to find out about new products and services. This places the net above television, radio, magazines, and newspapers. When you use the Internet to promote your product or service you have the opportunity to reach a multitude of potential customers anywhere at any time. The web is one of the most powerful mediums for reaching and influencing people and the decisions they make about business. 

Components of Good Content

One of the key ingredients to success on the Internet is creating website content that Internet users want to read. When you have content that is (1) interesting, (2) factual, and (3) well written, you have some of the main tools that you need to get the desired traffic to your online website. 

Writing Decisions: When you first start writing content for your website you’ll find yourself facing many decisions before you even sit down at the keyboard or pick up a pen. As you begin to develop the content on your website pages you’ll find that you’re often changing many of your first instinct decisions. This is all part of the process of writing. But how can you most efficiently sort out all you need to think about so that you develop website content that users want to read?

It’s important that you find out what it is that Internet users are looking for on the Internet so that you can focus your website content on these issues. Take some time to study at the top hits in the search engines for products or services that are similar to what you’re selling. 

Even though these top ranked websites are most likely using Search Engine Optimization techniques you can still read what it is that they’re using to draw in the crowd. Take some of these concepts and include them in the flow of your web content….but ONLY if these concepts enhance what you’re writing and are entirely relevant to the products or services that you’re selling. 

Keep in mind that although one website may be at the top of the search engine rankings today, it won’t take them long to fall back into the ranks of “mediocre websites”. Websites that rely on SEO techniques don’t give people the information that they’re looking for to keep them coming back. How many times have you yourself searched a topic in a search engine only to find that the top hit is filled with articles and web content that has nothing to do with what the website is all about?