How to build a great website
OK, you've decided you're going to build a great new website for your business. Where on earth do you start?
The web is full of 'Build your own Website' tools. But are they any good? Well, yes and no! They will produce a website for you, and for some they will be good enough. But is good enough good enough! Not if you want to be taken seriously. So many 'Website Builders' rely on just a small selection of templates. They may offer variations in colour and style, but essentially you get the same site as everyone else out there. Is that what you want? Do you want to stand out from the crowd, or do you want to be the same?
If you want your site to be immediately identifiable as your business you do need to start from scratch. It sounds daunting, but with careful planning it needn't be.
To start with you need decent software. There's lots on the market, but in our opinion there is nothing better than Adobe Dreamweaver. It really is the best Web Site Creation Software on the market. It's not cheap (if you shop around you can get it for under £300.00), but it will do everything you want, and a great deal more. Start simply. Create static pages (they are the ones written in html - don't worry, Dreamweaver creates all the code for you). Start out with a table based layout. Yes, the world is trying to move web designers towards CSS based sites, but tables are easier to learn and more robust. You can still use CSS styles in your tables, so the site will look good, but using tables when you start out is much more intuitive and WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get).
Plan your website out on paper before you start. The best starting point is probably the 3 column layout. Have a header (the pretty bit at the top to grab the attention of your visitors) that runs the width of your site, a left column for your navigation, a right column for your announcements, a large centre column for your information, and finally a footer running the width of the table to put extra navigation and copyright in. Make your table 760-780 pixels wide. There are still lots of people running 800px monitors, and there's nothing more off-putting on a site than scrolling sideways to see the whole picture. Now you're ready to put in some content.
We would advise the header be a nice graphic image showing what you do. Grab peoples attention, but don't be garish. We don't want your site to look like someone's thrown every special effect in the book at it! It won't look professional. One of the best graphic programmes is Adobe Photoshop, but there are lots of others on the market. Make your header image the same width as your table and around 175px to 275px in height. Once you're happy with your design you need to optimise it. Sounds complicated, but all it means is reducing the file size without affecting the visible quality. If you don't do this your site will take an age to load, and no one will hang around for that. Good graphic programmes have a built-in web optimiser, so you just need to reduce the file size to the point where the visible quality of the image is about to fall-off and then accept the setting. Do note that anything image-based should be optimised as a jpg file and anything with text or solid colours should be saved as a gif file. But experiment. In the old days you used to have to 'Slice & Dice'. That means cutting your images in to small sections and then piecing them together in html. It meant sites started to load quicker when the world was on a dial-up connection. But now so many use broadband it is not really necessary.
Now you've optimised your header image you can insert it in Dreamwever. Don't forget to give it an alt tag (description of the image). So now you have your site starting to look like a website. Next step - insert navigation.
Navigation should go in the left column. Keep it simple but comprehensive. Try to make every page linked from every other, and make the navigation available on every page. You can use CSS styles to make your side navigation look good but still be text based. You should also put duplicate navigation in the footer, together with any copyright information (and if you're a limited company you need to add your registration information to keep on the right side of the law). Next - Content.
The content goes in the centre section. Keep it clear, concise and easy to read, Break it up in to short paragraphs. Include Bullet lists. Highlight key phrases and points you want to emphasize.
That's it - you're nearly there. Just add some 'Announcements' in the right columns (new products, special offers, Newsletter sign-ups etc) and the site's looking good. Just the finishing touches.
Now the page looks good you need to add a few bits. Insert a title tag - make it useful and product/service related. Add the description tag and h1/h2/h3 tags where you need them. There are no other tags you need to use. Just make sure that every page has a unique title and description tag.
That's it. You've just created a web site - or at least the first page. Now create your other pages, upload to your server, and you've joined the world wide web!
© 2007 how to build a great website
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