Web Design planning the Design and Structure

Tips for creating a good website

Planning

It is important before you even start that you have a clear idea and concept of your future site. What is the purpose of your site? What market do you want to reach? Below are a few reasons why businesses create websites.
to achieve market and brand recognition:

lowering operating cost
wishing to save on traditional advertising
wanting to sell services and products on the Internet
wishing to offer a better customer support and improve customer services

Please remember that your customer may have a complete different view of how a website should look and what it should do. A common mistake made is that the business owners are often more concerned with the looks of the site then the future site visitors. They care very little of how beautiful a website is. What they want is information and more to the point, information which is easy to find. Fantastic looking websites mean very little to consumers if they can’t find what they want very quickly they will leave your site equally quick and they will go to your competition.

Your site must have content relevant to YOUR visitors

Take good care of what you select for your content. The text content of your site needs to support your services and /or products you offer. This content needs to be displayed in the best possible way, to make it easy to read, understand and to find. You must take into consideration that not every person will have a fast Internet connection. If you develop a website which has long loading times due the use of adverse technology such as Flash for example, your site visitors which have dial up connections will get frustrated and will not even wait until your site has fully opened. They will leave your site even before you had a chance to show them what great offers you have on your site.

There are too many sites around which have little or no information of who is behind the site, or where the company is located. Think about it for a moment. Would you feel happy to deal with someone who not even shows his full address, contact details such as Telephone or Fax and in case of a Limited company where their registered office address is including the registration number of the company.? The web can be a very impersonal place. Make it friendlier for your site visitors, give your website a human face and feel. If you don’t you will loose customers, and you will fail to convert site visitors to loyal and paying clients. Try and give every site visitor the best browsing experience possible.

A man without a Target has nothing to hit

Get a piece of paper and make a visual plan. Make a layout of how you think the site structure should work, using a navigation structure which will be logical to your future site visitors. Think about what main menus you think you need and what content you want to link to them Make a list of all the services and products you are planning to show on your site and create categories for all of your products/services. How are you going to offer your services or products? How do you think you best get your customers to buy them? How can you make it easy to invite enquiries? Each business has its own criteria and needs a different approach in specific areas, but in general the above points should be a good starting point for anybody starting out and developing a new website.