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Net Watch Article - Having A Successful Website 3
Designing your Website

Designing your web site will be an ongoing process. You will need to design and redesign your site until you find the right balance of form, function, and content.

When starting to design your web site, the most important thing I’d like to express is, there are many ways to design a site. What’s perfect for one company may not be perfect for yours. Your site is an extension of your business and your personality. Both you and your business are unique. Be ready to commit time and effort into making your site portray this uniqueness.

Here are a few guidelines that can help you to design a unique and effective web site. First, realize that the actual “look” of the site is a small piece of your web project. Be sure to integrate your web business plan (see articles one and two) and web marketing strategies (article to follow soon) into the design of your site. And the most critical part of your site is content. We define content as the actual text that people read to learn about you, your business, and ultimately your products and services. Without good content all the planning, marketing, and fancy graphics won’t convert viewers into customers.

When you sit down to create the content for your site, remember you may know your business, products, or industry very well but don’t assume that others do. You have to think like the consumer. For your opening page, try to keep things short and to the point so that your potential customers don’t get lost. Use your secondary pages to really deliver details. Your secondary pages are where you want to use your detailed graphics and images as well.

Many people find it difficult to prepare content for their site, so don’t be afraid to ask for help. Consider hiring someone to help you develop the materials. When consulting with clients, we find that most just need a little help in bringing what they know about their business onto the page in a structured format.

Once you have the basics of your content, you can start looking at how you want to present the information. Many clients really don’t know what they want their site to look like. To help streamline the design process and save our clients money, we recommend that they visit a site like www.pixelmill.net before we start designing their site. Pixelmill sells web site themes of all types. Most of the time we can find something that perfectly fits their needs saving them hundreds of dollars in design costs.

If your company chooses to create a site from scratch, try to avoid spending a great deal of time and resources developing elaborate graphics and animations. All those bells and whistles can be counter productive as you only have a few seconds to convince your viewer to stay on your site. The more elaborate, the more time it takes for your page to load and for you to present yourself to the viewer. Remember to keep the opening page of your site simple and fast. Use the other pages of your site to present more detailed information about your products and services.

If your company is looking to start a web site or to update your existing site, give us a call. With over 8 years experience helping our clients build successful sites we can help you too. Just give us a call at 843.835.5624