So you think you’re ready to build your own web site? You’ve grabbed a domain, secured hosting and now you need content. Having and building your own web site can be fun, functional and even profitable, but it can also be difficult, troublesome and eat up all your free time. Before you start slapping together pages and posting them for the whole world to see, here are a few helpful tips to keep in mind to make sure that your web site is working for you – and not the other way around.
1. Determine Your Purpose
Before you dive into Dreamweaver®, FrontPage® or another design tool, it is critical to determine what your purpose is before you begin to build your own web site. Are you creating a web site to advertise a product or service? If so, do you need to be able to sell that product or service through the web site? Is your web site intended to share family news and photos? If so, do you want friends and family to be able to post comments, ask questions or interact in any other way with the site?
Do not pass Go until you’ve successfully answered these questions. Defining the purpose of your web site is an important first step because it will determine all of your future decisions to actually build your own web site. If you’re advertising a product or service, you’ll need to know how you’re going to drive traffic to the site, and you’ll need to make sure that the design of the web site makes it easy to learn about that product or service. If, on the other hand, the web site is for friends and family, you’ll need to be more concerned with a design that represents your family in a positive and appealing way. Needs like online commerce (buying and selling via the Internet), interactivity and blogging functionality will arise as you define your purpose, and these needs will dictate the web site’s design. These factors will ensure you build your own website, meeting all your needs with both design and functionality.
2. Decide on a Look and Feel
The second step to building your own web site is just as challenging, however, more creative. After you’ve decided your web site’s purpose, the next thing to determine before you start getting creative is how you want the web site to look and feel to those who visit. Much of this depends upon the purpose and the audience for your web site. If you’re selling a product or service, you’ll want the look and feel to be consistent with the branding and positioning of the product. Is it aimed at conservative families or young singles? Should it feel professional and formal, technical and authoritative, fun and entertaining or some combination of these? The look and feel you choose will determine the balance of text and graphics, the style of writing you need and many more key elements of the web site’s content. An intentional and consistent look and feel will make your visitors more comfortable and will lead to a more successful site.
3. Keep It Simple
When you start to build your own web site keep it simple. Regardless of your web site’s purpose or its chosen look and feel, an important guiding principle for all web sites is to keep it simple. This means you want your graphic elements, such as photos, icons and diagrams, to be easy to understand and include only the information that is absolutely critical to the purpose. The graphics should be bright and large enough to accommodate tired eyes and impaired vision. Similarly, the text of the web site should be simple, brief and easy to read. Instead of long paragraphs of dense text, break up your thoughts into concise chunks that don’t wear out your visitors’ eyes. This simplicity will not only make your visitors comfortable and convey your site’s message more effectively, but it will also make it easier for you to update the web site later.
4. Take It for a Test Drive
The first thing to do after you build your own web site is to test it out; you are your own QA department. Once you’ve put together the web site, it’s tempting to publish it and make it public. Before you do that, however, you’ll want to take it for a test drive to make sure it works the way you intended it and that it’s user-friendly. If your web site is serving a professional purpose, such as selling a product or service, it’s a good idea to enlist the help of friends, family or even customers to test-drive the site for you. Let them explore the web site and try out all its links, features and functions. Encourage them to point out any errors, problems or elements that just don’t look or feel right. If their feedback is in line with your web site’s intended purpose, make changes and let them try it again. By identifying and addressing issues before you launch your site, you’ll save yourself from public embarrassment and frustrated customers.
5. Create an Update Strategy
There is still work to be done after you build your own web site to make sure it is a success. Now that you’ve launched your web site with a clear purpose, a well-conceived look and feel, and a simple design, the work is done, right? Wrong. Your web site visitors will expect your web site to be updated on a regular basis. If it isn’t, they’ll stop visiting. You’ll also have the need to update your website content to keep pace with all the changes in factors that impact it. You’ll modify or change your products or services. The family will go on a new vacation or add a new member. Rather than have to panic later, develop a proactive plan for how to make and implement changes. Design your pages so that you can replace or update text and graphics easily without disrupting the site’s look and feel. If you don’t have control over how or when changes are implemented, find out how the process works and make sure you plan so that changes can be made without causing downtime for your web site.
Thanks to user-friendly software and other technology, it’s never been easier to build your own web site. Follow these five important guidelines and you’ll be sure to launch a web site that’s fun, functional and profitable.
