Create Your Own Website - Part 3 - Overall Functionality

Create Your Own Website - Part 3
Overall Functionality

Overall Appearance And Functionality Of Your Website

When creating your website, the best advice that anyone can give you about the overall appearance of your site is to keep it simple. If you’ll notice the mega-companies like Google, Yahoo, etc., their sites are quite simple. Here are some basic ideas to keep in mind that will help you avoid some common pitfalls when designing an effective website.

Text that is too small: While 10-pixel text in Verdana font might look neat on the page, prepare for some major eye-strain. Regardless of how good your content is, if it isn’t legible - you will lose customers. Your text should be of sufficient size for readability, and fonts that look neat on the page and are easy to read include Verdana, Times, Arial, and Courier.
Keep your paragraphs to 2 or 3 sentences. A block of text that is too large may deter your visitors from reading your content.
A white or light background with black or dark wording is easy on the eyes. You’re going for a high contrast between the color of the font and the background.
Keep your fonts consistent throughout, and ditch the fancy fonts unless your theme is art-related. Continue that consistency throughout all the pages on your site.
Your most important content should be placed above the fold of your web page - that is the part of the page that you see when it is first loaded.
Instead of using an excessive amount of banner ads, choose instead to provide more valuable content with your affiliate links placed strategically throughout your site.

Website Content

Your website content should be useful, unique, and also relevant to the theme of your website. When you consider that most of the time, web users go online looking for information rather to make a purchase, you can see how critical it is to your business that you provide relevant content that is both interesting and helpful to your visitors.

When writing content for your website, be sure to include your keywords and keyword phrases throughout. Create good quality content around the keywords and keyword phrases that people are using when they search.

It’s very important to regularly add fresh content to your site, and keep it up-to-date. It takes commitment to maintain your site, but in order to keep your visitors coming back, you will have to continually add fresh, interesting content.

Sitemap

A sitemap (literally, a map of your site) is a web page that lists all the pages on your website. A sitemap is not only useful to your visitors should they lose their way while browsing - especially if you have a particularly large site - but it also helps the search engines find your web pages. It’s a good idea to have a sitemap so that your visitors can always see where they are and where they want to be. Here is an example of a nicely laid out sitemap from Vic’s Blogger Unleashed website.

Navigation

Easy-flowing, seamless navigation makes it easy for your visitors to get around. Each page should logically flow to the next, because if they don’t know how to get around your site, your customers will be gone. Test every link on your site before it goes online - usability is very important.

Templates

The whole point of using a template is to save time and effort, and therefore there’s no need to redesign the whole template - just make the necessary changes for your needs. Court, from Court’s Internet Marketing School has several Wordpress templates that he has tweaked and search-engine-optimized himself, which not only look great, but will no doubt help your search engine rankings, and you can download them at no charge. He also has some great articles on SEO’d wordpress themes that you can check out while you’re there.

Graphics/Audio

Sometimes it may be appropriate to use visual representations of your product’s problem-solving attributes, but… unless your site’s theme is music-related, just remember that not everyone is going to appreciate listening to your background music while they’re trying to read your content. If you must have it, be sure to give them the option of either muting it or at least turning the volume down.

Pop-up windows are a huge annoyance to a lot of people - so if you put valuable information that you’d like your visitor to see in a pop-up, just know that much of the time it will be shot down instantly, without even being read.

When choosing graphics or audio for your site, keep in mind that a large number of people on the internet still have dial-up connections. Large graphics and audio can slow loading times down to a crawl, causing your customers/visitors to go elsewhere. Look for free image compressors to reduce your image file size, and thus, speed your website’s loading time.

Sales

If you are going to be selling products from your stie, it is critical that you make the ordering process seamless. Your order form, or a link to it, should be displayed prominently on your site so that your customer doesn’t have to look around trying to find it - because they probably won’t.

Offer several options for payment including PayPal, Credit cards and checks - and it’s important to use encryption so that your order form is secured.

If you have testimonials from your satisfied customers, boost your visitor’s confidence in you by displaying them on your website.

Website Design Software

I use - and recommend to anyone creating their first (or tenth) website, use a product such as Site Build It from SiteSell.com. SBI! is an all-in-one, site-building, site-hosting, and site-marketing product that makes it so easy to create a professional looking website - and everything you need is included with the package.

Another product that I use (for this blog and others) and recommend as well - is Wordpress through Bluehost hosting. It’s a little more involved than SBI!, with more of a learning curve, but you also have more control in overall design.

Both are reasonably priced considering that your domain, site-hosting, some of your marketing, and lots of excellent tools are included in the price. However, if funds are tight right now, there are enough free tools on the web to get you up and going until you’re in a better position to upgrade.

Learning how to design a great website isn’t easy, however, if you take the time to educate yourself and start with the basics, you can create your own website.

Affiliate Marketing | Create Your Own Website - Part 3
Overall Functionality