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Website Design Tips

Starting a new website can be as intimidating as becoming a new parent. Even experienced webmasters will admit the very idea of designing a website from scratch is enough to make anyone cringe. There are so many things we can do with websites these days… just figuring out what to do, where to do them, why they're even important, and how to make them work can be a long-ended job in itself! Are there any shortcuts? Yes (thank goodness)! Here are some of the most important ones.

Deliver via priority. One of the things that makes building a website so frustrating is the assumption that the whole thing should be built in a day. Since this isn't Rome, there's no need to think your website should and could be completed within 24 hours. All attempts to accomplish such a miracle are futile and destined for failure. The smartest way to build a website is in steps, but not just any steps. The most important steps are the ones you want to follow. What are the most important things your website must do? The answers are what your website should offer first. Save the snazzy stuff for a later time. Examples are a description of your company, a catelog, and a way to contact you. Later, you can add an e-commerce system, privacy and terms of use policy, and support forum. By building a website that focuses on delivering the most important functions first, you'll have a better chance of grabbing and holding on to the first batch of visitors. Delivering unimportant functions over critical features will simply turn visitors away.
Use a template. Here's another handy shortcut: use a template! For the life of me, I'll never understand why people insist on designing a website from scratch when there are tons of beautiful templates already available. These are templates that have the potential to look and function better than anyone of us could design by ourselves. So why not use them? You needn't worry about whether your template is used on every other website in cyberspace either because today, you can get exclusive rights to some of the most innovative templates available. All you need to do is look for them. They're everywhere at awfully cheap prices too!
Improve via Smoke Tests. Sooner or later, you'll add new functionality to your website. You'll add more graphics, more videos, more features, and then even more of the same. The problem with adding more ‘stuff' is that without careful implementation, you'll inadvertently compromise the website's performance and render the whole thing useless. Avoid "screwing things up" or "breaking a button" as we jokingly say by using the same strategy software programmers use in writing software. That strategy is to smoke test everything! Always make a back up copy of a working version and then add things to a copy of the working website. Test how new additions work with the copy before enabling those new additions on the live site, and test one addition at a time! This is what smoke testing is all about and it's what prevents confusion as to what "broke a button" indeed!
Let your visitors build the site. You may own the rights to your website, but do you know who owns your website's experience? If you guessed your visitors, you guessed right. By listening and responding to your visitor's suggestions, you'll increase visitor retention, loyalty, and word-of-mouth referrals since no one loves a website more than that which listens to them. Ask for feedback and implement suggestions. Take polls and surveys, and then change or add what the results indicate. One of the best ways to let your visitors build your website is through Web 2.0 technologies. Read our article entitled, "What is Web 2.0?" to see what we mean. The internet is changing -- and so are your visitors. Keep up with those changes and you'll keep a hold of your market!

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