Website Design guidelines for novice and pros

Website designing is not as complex as people make it look if proper guidelines are followed. In the current internet age, having a website is not a mere show off, but an absolute necessity. Your website can serve as your business place, business and self branding tools, marketing tools, communication channels, relationship builder, career and skills building tools, and money making machine. According to Bill Gate, “if your business is not on the internet, you will soon be out of business”, and having your own website is one of the best way to have your business on the internet.

Simple guidelines to website design

1. What is your name?

Everything answers to a name and some names end up as brand. When you hear Apple, Samsung, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, you don’t need be told who they are.  Naming your website after your domain can be your best bet. If your domain name is the same as URL to your website, locating you on net will be much easier. Some of the points to note when choosing a domain name are:

• Choose a name that can be a brand
• Choose a name that is easy to pronounce
• Choose a name that is easy to remember
• Choose a name that is as short as possible
• Make the name intuitive for people to guess what it is all about
• Make your name keyword rich
• Use smart ways of modifying name if your desired name is taken
• .com extension is still the golden standard
• Don’t infringe trademarks or copyright

2. KIS

Keep it simple (KIS) should be your golden rule in your website design. You don’t need to confuse your site visitors with bell, whistles, animations, pop ups, multiples links, color riot and complicated things that will keep your website visitors confused all their stay on your web page. Go straight to the point, few external links, and few calls to action.

3. Branding your site

Branding is the distinguishing factor of any business entity. In a very few words say what your website is out to do. What is your mission and vision? What are your text, colors, logo, slogans, images, audios, videos and unique selling proposition?

4. Design approach

When it comes to web design, you have many options out there because of many themes and templates available to use. Designing website with wordpress or wix, wordpress has thousands of free and paid themes you can use for beautiful web design or website builder software from wix that comes with hundreds of templates.  Choose a theme or templates that suit your desired styles

5. Professionalize your site

Your webpage is the best place to showcase your passion and enhance your professionalism. Depending on your field or industry, your site can offer video and audio coaching platforms, you can provide online stores, and you can provide apps for self improvement, web forms for newsletters, webinars and mentoring.

6. Customize your site

When you visit most websites on the internet, majority of sites look the same. To customize your website is to add some unique features to it. I use wordpress in most of my web design and the good here is that wordpress come with thousands of plugins that can help you customize your website in the matter of seconds. There many widgets that will make your WebPages unique and beautiful. Wix free website builder software is another option if you are not out for wordpress site.

7. Optimize your site

To optimize your website makes it run smoothly, quickly, and accessibly by search engines. It can be search engine optimization, which ensures good site’s ranking on search engines. Things to consider when optimizing your website are: meta and title tags, keywords research, smart use of keywords in content, fresh and new content, back links, alt tags on images, Google analytical and site map and many more techniques you can learn online.

8. Responsive design

Responsive website design is to ensure the theme, template or code is using css and html that will make your content look good on any screen. The web page should look good on desktops, tablets, and phones.

9. Images

Make sure your images are small or resize to the standard website size for easy loading.

10. Socialize your site

Socializing your website does not only give you online presence but also generate good traffic to your website. Social media and website promotion are now great tools for website exposure. All you need to do is to add the buttons like: follow us on twitter, share us on facebook, watch us on YouTube, and any social media you are active on.

Website design is a dynamic process that needs a continuous improvement. You can contact me for further training or check me on Hire a Webmaster for your Website Design