To create a website, just like building a house requires a plan. You must know exactly what your sites purpose is. This will act as the foundation for your site and also tend to dictate style.
1. The Plan - examples: A. The purpose of my site is to share
memories with family and friends
B. I want to market my homemade candles and expand my customer base.
C. I would like to create an
information sharing site where individuals may learn more about
the parenting of difficult children.
2. The Design - As you can see each of the above have distinctly different purposes which need to be strongly considered. Family and friends may not be as bothered by slow loading pages of the grandchildren, the candle buyer who will become frustrated and move on. What kind of image are you trying to create? Sophisticated, whimsical, stylized, sleek, cutting edge, dramatic, or what we like to call, "down and dirty or less is more" - does what's needed as minimally as possible.
3. Focus - Most websites try to do too much, are incredibly busy and frequently far less effective as a result. Overburdening your viewer is a mistake. Like a good instructor, try to convey one or two things well, rather than providing dozens of things that won't be really digested.
4. Navigation - One of the biggest keys to a great site is easy, straight forward navigation. A person should not get lost on your site nor struggle to get to any location they seek. From any page on your site, make it possible to go directly back to the home page. Also, check out our e-zine on one of the most innovative techniques we use - side-tab navigation.
Avoid these common errors
Highly distracting patterned back- grounds, dark colors, difficult to read text, numerous type faces on the same page, pages that require you to scroll horizontally, numerous animations on same page, and unoptimized graphics
