How To Make Your Website Structurally Sound

You've decided to build a website. Great! Your first step is to determine its structure-the pages you want to include and the information you want provide to visitors. But how to begin?

Your first instinct may be to make your site different from everyone else's. After all, trying to differentiate your business is what you've been doing throughout your branding process.

Building a website is like building a custom home

When you create a custom house, you can arrange your floor plan however you want, paint the walls as you please and fill the house with furniture you love. Your goal is to create a unique space that stands out from everyone else's.

In the same vein, there are elements of your website where standing out makes sense. For example, the overall look of your site and your copy should be different from other sites-especially those of your competitors.

Differentiating your website is good for your small business-to a point. What you don't want to do is reengineer its basic structure.

Standing out isn't always the stable way to build

Underneath it all, even the most unique custom home has the same foundation and spacing between studs in the wall as every other house on the block.

By following underlying principles of construction, builders help ensure that the house is structurally sound. Why not use the same approach when it comes to your website? That way, your site is far more likely to work well for you.

To use site building rules, of course, you need to know what they are.

Rule 1: Do competitive research

Before someone sets out to build a custom house, they'll probably do quite a lot of research-looking at other houses, determining the architectural styles that appeal to them, and perhaps even checking out homes in the neighborhood where they want to build.

The same goes for your website. You need find out what you're up against. Once you're familiar with competitors' sites, you can make sure that your site will not only be different in the right places, such as look and feel and content, but that it will also be comparable in the right places.

Most likely, your competitors have been building their sites for some time-and probably updating them to answer customer questions and market their businesses more strongly. You don't want prospects to pass you by because your site doesn't answer an important question that a competitor has addressed.

Visiting other sites and making notes of basic structure, business information presented, customer questions answered and even relevant tools and articles gives you a jump start on creating a site that facilitates apples-to-apples comparisons.

Rule 2: Plan your site architecture

As you may suspect, planning your site architecture is like drawing up architectural plans for a custom house, where you plan just what you'll include and what will go in each space. For example, do you want a library? A formal dining room? And where will you put the piano?

Similarly, for your website, you must decide the pages you'll include and the information on each page.

When planning your site architecture, think about what you'd like your website to do for your business. Do you want it to bring in clients and close sales? If so, pricing information and even a shopping cart can help do that. Do you need your site to get media attention? Then a Media Room might be the key. Make sure to include the pages and content required to get the job done.

In addition, think about how you plan to expand your website in the future. At the beginning, designing a website of more than 10 pages can overwhelm a small business-both in terms of budget and time required to write the content.

But, if you create an expanded site map at the beginning-a website wish list if you will-then you and your website strategist can determine which pages will be most important in helping you reach your goals. You'll also have a clear road map you can use to add on to your website as your budget and schedule allow.

For more about the pages to include on your website, see this article: Pages To Include On Your Website.

Rule 3: Name your pages in a way that makes sense

Have you ever walked into an unfamiliar house and been unable to find your way around? You probably asked the hostess where the kitchen was so you could drop off your pot luck dish or the way to the bathroom.

On a website, though, visitors don't have the luxury of asking where things are. So you want to make it as easy as possible for them to find the information that they need.

Some small businesses want navigation button names to be clever or interesting. But, it's important to think about the website visit from your customers' or prospects' point of view. They often come to your site looking for specific information. Even if they're just browsing, they want an organized way to look around-where clicking a link takes them to the page they expect. Remember that visitors don't have a lot of time or the patience to bumble around your site.

You see the same navigation buttons on every site you visit for a good reason. Established usage conventions have trained visitors to look for names like "Services," "About" and "Contact" when they're out browsing around. Capitalize on this and your visitors will be able to find what they're looking for quickly-keeping your site and your business in their good graces.

Following these three simple rules makes it much more likely that your website is structurally sound and that your visitors will have a great experience there instead of a frustrating one.

Basics of Web Designing

In this current cut throat competition in the market it becomes very essential for the business houses to expand their way to market the products or services to maximize the profit. Business is now flourishing even over the web. All the businesses are now realizing that they should have an online presence besides their physical existence. And thus the importance & needs for the efficient and professional web designers are increasing day by day.

To start the design for the websites you must keep some important things. The first thing that you should always keep in mind that web design differs from print design. So, you must plan on "WHAT TO INCLUDE" and "WHAT NOT TO INCLUDE" on your website.

So how do you build up a great website that sells? Let's find it out.

The Foundation

Before building a house, it is necessary to build a proper foundation. Likewise, before designing a website you should keep in mind these basic things.

a) Remember that you are designing your site for the impatient online reader. They do not have the patience to read the whole contents. Instead they scan through .So you should learn to apply features and techniques that catch the attention of the viewers.
b) Uniformity is also important, while designing a web site. You should use features to which people are accustomed.
c) The web site should be user friendly. It should use web-optimized graphics.

The Superstructure

Now we move on to the super structure that is the house itself or the website concerned. Just remember these tips and go on to create a great website.

a) The web site should load quickly and be easy to scan. These are the essential prerequisites of web designing.

b) While designing a web site, you should keep in mind the needs of the potential customers. People visit the web site with a specific purpose, to get a solution to their problems. So you should focus on providing people with the specific information. You should also ensure that no information is more than a few click away.

c) The graphics should be so styled as to fit the content and not vice-versa. Often web designers complain that the content is not suitable to the web design. But you should remember that it is also important for people to read the content. The content provides information about the services and products. So attention must not be diverted from the content at any cost.

d) You should choose a font style and color that can be easily read. Frequent use of bold fonts makes the page difficult to read. The background color should also be kept light. Otherwise the viewers will have difficulty in viewing the pages.

e) You should use customized graphics to make your website attractive. But the graphics should not divert the attention of the readers from the content. The graphics should serve as an appendage to the content, which should be the primary focus.

f) Blinking images are to be avoided. They distract the attention of the readers from the content. Some viewers also consider them to be a nuisance and cover up these flashing images in order to concentrate on the content.

g) Avoid broken links. Make sure that they do not occur on your website. Concentrate on the link architecture.

h) Use contrasting elements on your web site. Placing contrasting elements side by side will easily attract the attention of the visitors. It is in fact one of the basic elements of web designing.

i) You should remember that the content should be aesthetically pleasing. Yet it should have powerful functionality at the same time. The website should be capable of giving out the relevant information in the least possible time. That is what readers are most interested in.

j) Don't concentrate all your attention on attractive graphics. Give an equal focus on page layout, error handling and structure.

k) Don't repeat your titles and page headings. Page headings are instrumental in focusing viewer's attention. Using the same headings will make them think that the information being provided is the same. This will decrease viewer retention.

l) You should make sure that the content and the page headings are grammatically correct. Incorrect grammar and syntax will reflect badly on the web site.

m) Lay stress on the keywords. Use of keywords help viewer's to ascertain whether the site is important to them or not. Most visitors flick through a website. So infrequent use of keywords will make visitors skip over a web site, even though it might contain relevant information. Here the needs of Web design with proper search engine optimization (SEO) grows up and up.

n) Pay attention to your homepage. That is what the viewers will first see. The home page should be attractive and provide useful information. If it doesn't satisfy the mentioned criteria then the readers will move on.

You must remember that the primary aim of web designing services is to focus on visitor's needs. Design your web site in such a way as to direct the eye towards the important features. The less important ones should recede into the background. Web page designing is extremely challenging. Viewers take only a fraction of a second to decide whether a particular site will be useful to them or not. So you should hit the nail on the head immediately. The web site should be attractive, easy to read and easy to navigate. Adhering to the above guidelines will help you to build up a website that sells.

Design a web site means you must make a convincing presentation. You should not include too many graphics, pop-ups, and flashing gifs in your web design. These take a lot of time to load. Your website should be easy to navigate. You must remember that the attention span of the average viewer is very low. You have to grab the attention of the viewer immediately otherwise they will wander to other sites.