Are you getting lost in oblivion trying to find a way to design your website? Are you getting confused on what colors to use, how to use them that they don’t look like a Picasso? Probably what should work for you temporarily is to look over the different website design templates which are available all over the net.
Templates are pre-set designs which you can check out from other websites which specialize in designing websites and putting them up as templates. All you need to do is to check out these sites:
- www.web4business.com
- www.newtemps.com
- www.website-templates-resale-rights.com
- www.123webtemplatesandmore.com
Now some of these websites offer free templates which you can simply download into your system. They will have a library full of designs which you can choose from and they are great for small businesses. If you are just starting out with your business, the free downloads are a good option for it will launch your business faster and at less cost. And then if you think that you could now actually hire a web designer to customize your site, remember that this may cost a bit, but at least you know that you have upgraded your site to make it more attractive to visitors.
There are also sites which offer packages for a certain fee, some for about $500 some up to $1200. However, they are semi-customized so to speak for the company that does these templates include other services like domains, and web hosting. Meaning to say, you do not need to be a techie to make your website technical. You can trust them on the designing and technical stuff as that is inclusive of the package that you sign up for.
This means that even if you have very little computer sense, your ebusiness will still get launched and will get to earn profits. Visit the sites and learn more about their services.
One of the worst things that a website could do to a visitor is to make them confused. Like if they have to deal with a site that is difficult to navigate or there are too many special effects going on, that will not attract the visitor at all, unless they are masochists. Remember about cell phone users.
One of the ways to attract a visitor to your site is to make it easy for them to go around it. For example, if your website has articles in it which offer help or tips, then do not make the link to those help articles difficult to look for. There are some websites which have great help and how to articles which should grab the interest of the visitor and probably making them purchase whatever it is that you are trying to sell them. But if the link to the articles are placed way down in the page and the font is super small, then most visitors would just give up on looking for the link. What they cannot find in about 5 or 10 seconds is just enough for them to give up and go to another site.
Then there are sites which have flashy special effects and grab the attention within the required 5 seconds. But because they are too flashy, the visitor may just develop a headache from having to see them peripherally while they are trying to navigate through the site. These will not only make them cross eyed in the process, but they could also lose interest fast for they get irritated with the flashes and confusing colors. So do not over do it, it will only make you lose your traffic again.
Another thing, the special effects may make it longer for the site to load up and visitors will get tired waiting for it. So again, you lose the traffic.
When it comes to websites and its aesthetics, people are always conscious on the attractiveness of the page. And the attractiveness does not only involve the colors, buttons, and other stuff. The font style and size on that page is also very important.
Obviously the font style should be readable, if it were too hard to read the visitors would not bother. And then again if the style is readable, the size of the words should also be at least visible.
Take for example a visitor who wears reading glasses. They have to use their computers with their heads at an angle because of their glasses. So they already get tired by the very simple act of opening a site. Now, take for example your website and you want to place everything on the first page. The only way would be to make everything fit, right? So what is the most obvious thing to do? Of course, you make the text smaller. Now, with a font size so small, do you actually think that visitors with reading glasses would stay on your site?
These questions are very valid and you may argue that the size of the font does not bother you so it should not bother the visitors. This is a very sweeping assumption to make, and no, you are totally wrong if you think along those lines. Small sized fonts can be very difficult on the eyes even for those who do not wear the reading glasses. So try hard to avoid using size 10 and below.
It is hard to ignore that most sites with interesting articles in them don’t get opened because the links which should bring the visitor to the page find it hard to find because of the microscopic fonts. Remember that the content of the site is very important for it keeps visitors interested. But if they can’t find them to click on then forget it, you lose your traffic and your income.
Everyone knows that the graphics can make or break the website. Some web designers hardly use any graphics at all while there are others who runaway with their designs and the result is chaos.
One of the things that you first meet when it comes to tips and how to’s on web designing is to ‘optimize’ the graphics. This can be confusing for the newbies who don’t know a thing about graphics. Once they read the word ‘optimize’ they may conclude that they have to use a lot of graphics instead of the opposite.
What optimizing simply means is to make the graphics as small as possible but without sacrificing the quality of the graphics. This will make it simpler to load on the site while at the same time it makes the page look more attractive. This could be done with .gif and .jpg formats.
The graphics should not look like an advertisement either for research finds that people will just ignore them. So if you want people to click on them for it will lead them to another page then you would fail to lure them in.
The graphics can have two kinds of effects on people – either they get curious about why it is there or they could get turned off. Unfortunately, most people get turned off.
If your graphics are too big or too heavy, this will only slow down the loading of your page. Now, remember, speed is very important here. Visitors will only stay on a site if they have no waiting period to deal with in terms of loading. If the page cannot load within seconds, then they will just click the mouse and move on to another page. If this happens then you lose your traffic and your website’s ranking will go down.
Millions of people make use of the internet every second of the day the whole year round. Most of these are students who like to do their research online or laypeople who want to know technical stuff without having to deal with technical stuff. In short, most people who surf the net like to read simple language so they could have a better grasp of what they are trying to learn.
Of course the contents of these sites have to be worded in such a way which should be interesting and simple, too. Take for example someone who is trying to understand what a melanoma is and when they open a medical site they get swamped with words that are not only hard to spell but hard to digest as well.
One of the demands that excellent websites tell their writers is to make sure that the language of their articles are simply worded, have perfect grammar and are free of spelling errors. If the articles are not perfect grammatically they could get rejected.
So if you have writers for your website and you wish for those articles to get the ranking on the major search engines like Google then you have to demand the same things. Do not hire writers who do mediocre articles for these will not get popular and popularity is what you are aiming for as that will increase the traffic and profits for your site.
Now, about the number of words. Try to keep them painless for the reader. No one wants to read more than 500 words on one page for it can get painful to the eyes. A lot of times there are articles which are cut into two or three segments so that the eyes of the readers would not tear up or get strained. One other thing, try not to make the background of the articles too flashy. That would only increase the level of the pain your visitors have to endure.
If you want your website to become more visible in the search results of the search engines, then you have to lure them to your site by making sure that the visitors will click on your links. This can be done by creating a site map which will include all of the pages of your site and to make it easier for visitors to link from your homepage. The search engines will follow those links to your site map and will eventually add your website’s pages into their index. When this happens, a user who is searching for something related to your site will get your site on their search results.
You should study what words users use to search for things. What are the words that they would type in to find immediate results? You can include those words into the title page of your site. Some people use commonly used keywords when they do this. The correct keyword would make your site more visible because more people tend to use them. Try to avoid using words which may be too long or too many jargons or not used in a normal conversation and the average user would not even know what it means so it would never get used.
Try to create a Resources page which would include links to sites which are related to your site. If you can have a lot of inbound links from good and quality websites which would also contain topics that can link to your site then you will have a better ranking in the major search engines.
Another thing, search engines are not that interested in graphics, they prefer text. Try to avoid too much graphics for this will not get your site into the engine’s indexes. Use Flash and JavaScript instead for these will bring your site to the indexes faster.
Going through websites online, one of the most common things that a visitor meets is the box which says ‘click here.’ This may be short and sweet, but it is also boring. It is best to make the links more or less descriptive and make sure to underline only those which are links, for these would clue the visitor that the description will lead them to a link.
Also, to make it more distinctive, try to use a different color for the font which are links, the most common of which is blue, but red and other colors are good, too, but never white, unless the background is dark. Just make sure that the links are attractive against the background of the page or else they could simply blend in and get overlooked.
Now, there are also some links which have icons beside them. If you want to have the icons beside your links use Excel, Word, or Acrobat. These are non-HTML files. The icons can make the links more attractive and visitors who like icons would prefer to use them.
One of the worst things that could happen is to link to a site which does not exist or are ‘under construction.’ If your site has a lot of those, your site can disregard your site and you don’t get good ranking.
Ranking is very important to make your site visible on major search engines like Google and Yahoo. If your site has no ranking, two things can happen: your site will not be listed or, if it does get listed it will be on the last end of the search results which means no traffic to your site and no profits for you.
This is the importance of the linking. So don’t get lazy on the linking by simply typing in the ‘click here,’ get more descriptive for this will be better appreciated by your visitors.
You may have been going through several websites and inspecting their designs. Most probably, you are looking at all the buttons, the shapes, and the different color schemes and are going bonkers over the difficult decision to which one to choose, which should work best, etc. Well, stop doing that.
Most probably you are not the technical type and you are getting lost because you don’t have the skill to do the web designing yourself. So here is a tip: do not get lost among all the colors. What you need to do is to first think about what your personal preferences are. What your favourite colors are and what are not. That way you can already narrow down your choices.
However, there is also making use of common colour schemes that are used by designers when they first start out. These are simply combining some ‘eye friendly’ colours which can be gentle to look at while at the same time attracts the attention.
The combination includes the following basic colors: red, yellow, white, blue, grey, and orange. So any combination involving these colors will do quite well. These are gentle on the eyes and quite attractive too.
Again, if you are not sure how to combine the colors simply go over the millions of websites online and inspect their ‘look.’ You could also go to samples online from free templates. Templates are prepared website designs which you could download for yourself.
Rule to remember: if your combination does not attract you, then obviously your visitors won’t be attracted either. The first five seconds into your site will be the window that should grab the attention of your visitors, if it gets longer, they may just use that sixth second as time enough to click their mouse over to the next site. So make sure that it grabs the attention quickly or you lose traffic.
Have you ever wondered why some company names or brands have become household names or get included in the dictionary or thesaurus? The reason is the way they played with words to describe their brand.
Take for instance Wal-Mart’s “always low prices” and Toyota’s “you asked for it, you got it!” These are simple words that have become tag lines for their brands which basically summarizes the purpose of the business. “Never leave home without it” was used by American Express years ago and today this is used to tag all sorts and kinds of items and not just a major credit card.
You can do the same thing for your ebusiness. You should include a good logo design on all of the pages of your website and make sure that they are placed on the top left portion of the pages. This will make it visible to all the users and eventually once they see that log they would immediately think of your products.
Another thing, make the colors on your pages complement the colors of your brand. If your logo gets lost in the chaos of other graphics, dots, buttons and shocking colors which you think will grab the attention of your visitors, then you will fail. Your logo will just get lost in the background and get overlooked so the hours spent on designing the logo will be for nothing. Make sure that your logo stands out on the page, not the background. And if you have text on that page, they too will get lost in the background.
Once you get to settle on a theme of your site, try to make sure that these are consistently seen on the other pages. Try to avoid getting too dramatic by changing the look of each page. This will only confuse your visitors who would conclude that they were sent to a different website altogether.
