Designing Web Pages

The look and feel of your web pages should be professional and give the impression you are good at what you do (hopefully you are!). Remember; first impressions count. If a visitor has reached your site it should work hard to keep them.

Domain Name

Although not strictly under the heading of design your domain name is worth a mention here as it’s how your visitors find you.

It’s a good idea to come up with several possible domain names and test them amongst your friends and family to see what people like. Research like this is invaluable as you may find you’re �too close’ to your website plans. You should have a name that reflects your business or website objective and is easy to remember. It also needs to be something that people will find if they are guessing at the site name.

Before starting your web design remember to check your web domain name has not already been used. If it’s still available register the name, even if you don’t intend to use it straight away, so no one else takes it. This procedure can be easily done on the internet through one of the many domain registry companies. If you’ve purchased a DIY web design package it’s likely they’ll check the domain name for you at no extra charge.

Designing the Pages

Think about sites that you like and why you like them. Are they easy to navigate? Is it easy to find what you’re looking for? Do they load quickly?

A useful rule to remember when designing your web pages is the 3 click rule. The visitor should always only be 3 clicks away from finding what they’re looking for. If it takes longer than this they’re likely to loose interest and leave.

This means your pages need to be carefully planned. Your website is like an enormous book where every page tells a story and links to another. Think of each of your web pages as joining to another in a vast circle − don’t leave any pages out of the circle as stand alone pages won’t encourage visitors to move around the site.

When writing content for your site it should be written in clear easy to read chunks. Paragraphs should be no more than 3 or 4 sentences long and should �flow’.

Keywords and phrases are essential, but don’t be too heavy with them or your site will sound stilted and false. Keywords exist to tempt visitors to your site.

There are also search engine programmes on the internet called robots and spiders, which trawl websites searching for keywords and links. The programmes then record the links and words and this information is used to prioritise how websites are ranked by the search engines. There is no easy way to find out how these programmes work and how to get your web site higher up the rankings as the companies that develop them like to keep it a closely guarded secret.

Keeping the Visitor’s Interest

There are several factors that will keep a visitor’s interest and when designing your site you should take them into account:

keep your site up to date − old news looks like you’ve taken your eye off the ball
don’t use too many graphics − they take too long to load
include a newsletter − tell your visitors what’s going on in your world
include a FAQ and help page − make things easy for the visitor
put your contact details on every page − you don’t know when a visitor will make the decision to contact you and you don’t want to loose their interest by having them search for the contact page
if possible include freebies such as software
have competitions, special offers and new product features and change them on a regular basis

When designing your website always ask these 3 questions:

1.Will the site attract the target audience?
2.Are the pages clear and concise?
3.Is the site useable?