| Building an Innovative and
Effective Website, by making full use of available technologies,
is crucial for the future success of your current or future
online business. There are literally 1000's of great ideas out
there, but finding the right ones and applying them to your
website, is where the real trick lies.
Applying the best tips, tools and other design principles to
your website, can bring you untold success on the internet. At
the same time, using powerful and innovative ideas in the design
and development stages of your website, will level the playing
field for your business, and raise it's competitive edge on the
internet.
We have been doing web development for more than 7 years now,
and during this time, many important design and development
principles have come to light. Don't waste valuable time by
making the same mistakes many other
web designers and webmasters
do. The following 8 powerful website design principles will
assist in helping you make the right choices for your online
business :
1. Do-it-yourself OR outsourcing ?
Before you start compiling your new website, you have to
establish your skill level to tackle the specific project. If
you have sufficient html understanding, a good idea of graphics
and colors, plus fair writing skills, you mostly can do the
website design yourself. If, however, you don't have a fair
understanding of html, it would be advisable to outsource.
2. Dynamic vs. Static web pages
Do you want your site to be static, i.e.. no input from
visitors, or dynamic, i.e.. fully interactive, with visitors
being able to log on, take part in forums, post information, etc
? Many new and fantastic scripting languages are available to
make your site more dynamic and bring it to life.
3. Web Site Title vs. Domain
Before registering a domain for your site, take some time to
think of related words or names that best describes your
business. Compile a few possibilities and then check for
availability on the internet. The best ones would normally
already be "taken", but innovative thinking can get you very far
!! When compiling you main page, use this domain name and extend
it to your website's main page title tag. This is step 1 in
getting future good search engine rankings.
4. Build your site around important keywords
When building the content part of your site, remember to
include a fair dose of important keywords and phrases that best
describe your business. These keywords, the words and phrases
people use when searching for relevant information on the
internet, should also be extended to all the important tags of
every web page of your site. Be careful though not to overdo it,
as search engines penalize "keyword stuffing". Also use full
sentences and make them sound natural. The clever search engine
algorithms have recently just become even more advanced, and can
now track unnaturally sounding sentences !
5. Optimized Title, Description & Keyword Tags
Each page of your website should be individually optimized in
terms of the message you want it carry. Every page is different
and there for a specific reason. If the page info and page tags
do not match in terms of keywords, the page will not show up in
search engine results. Search engines want to give searchers
relevant results, and by not applying this principle, your site
will not rank well.
6. A Site Map with links to all pages
Assist the search engines by making it easy for them to index
your site. If all pages can be reached from a central point like
a sitemap, you will firstly make sure that the search engine
spider finds all your site pages, and secondly help visitors to
find relevant info and pages quickly. Sites with good structures
and fresh content gets spidered more often.
7. All pages back-linked to the Site Map and Home Page
Visitors to your website will not necessary land the index
page or sitemap. It is therefore imperative to give them a way
to get to your index, site map and other important pages. A well
structured informative website also receives more return
visitors.
8. Standard background & fonts on all pages
By keeping pages uniform, you ensure your visitors know they
are still on your site. Having various banners, backgrounds and
fonts will only confuse visitors. Try to stick one font, or two
at the most. The human eye needs to adjust every time it reads
text written in a new font. Do not irritate your visitors by
using many different fonts - they will leave in a flash !
If you have an existing website, but nothing much have been
happening for you, try to apply these 8 principles and see what
good transpires...
About The Author
Brian is a freelance writer, website marketing and SEO expert &
webmaster of 3 websites, including Rank Advance : http://www.rankadvance.com.
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