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Website Creation - Do's and Don'ts

It's easy to get caught up in the creation of your website, the creative juices fly, and all the artistic talent you never have been able to put to use go into high gear!
Whoa, boy!
Not so fast!
Believe it or not, as young as this web business is, there have been some hard and fast, tried and true rules put in place about what the public will and will not accept. If you want your website not only to reflect that hidden artist in you, but be a monetary success, you need to take these rules to heart. Think of your favorite magazine. You know there is always competition among them, some doing well, some dead and gone. What makes the one you read attractive are the same rules we are about to discuss for your website. They have a standard layout they adhere to, week after week, page after page. There is a flow to it, a color scheme, and careful rules about fonts.

Look-and-feel
The look-and-feel of your site is very important to the visitor's experience, and it is important that it has a pleasing feel to it when a visitor first arrives. Now here's the caveat; Your favorite colors and your cute designs aren't necessarily what is attractive to the general public. Believe it or not, there are very scientific reasons for choosing color. Not long ago I visited a site selling vacation properties on a far-away island. I am always intrigued by far away places that I have never seen so I went to their site. Instead of soothing blues and greens that fell like grass and water, I was greeted with bright orange with lime green highlights. Needless to say, I still don't know what the island is like. I left the site without clicking on the pages that might have had some images to educate me to the island's beauty.

If your site is aimed at the younger generation or selling pop hits or movies, then many of the following rules don't apply. If you want to aim squarely at the mainstream public, then maybe you need to take the rules to heart. Before you open up your favorite editor and start hammering away, sit down at a desk with a pen and paper - yeah, that old fashioned stuff your grandparents used to use! Draw a large rectangle to represent your home page. Now draw a small rectangle box at the top to represent your header. From here organize your page with boxes to represent your image placements and text areas. You may need to do this several times before you hit one that flows the way you like it. Once you have a design you are happy with, you are ready to open your editor and create your template.

TEXT
First lets talk about text - fonts to be specific. There are thousands of beautiful fonts available for the creative web designer, but each has its place. Since there is not enough room in the article to discuss all the specialty websites, I'm going to focus on mainstream Ecommerce sites, you know, the ones that are there to bring in a buck. On an Ecommerce site you want to pick a font that is easily readable by everyone, in a size that doesn't strain anyone's eyes to read. The most common are Arial, Times New Roman, Helvetica and Courier. A good font size is usually 12 point. I don't recommend page headers that are too large, although the first one on the home page may be set at H1 for search engines. While we are on text, be very careful with Color. Never ever lighten the font so it blends with the background (grey on white). If you want people to buy from your site, let them be able to read it easily. Last but just as important as the rest, keep your font selection down to two, one if possible. Changing fonts throughout a website makes it look junky and not well planned. Once you decide on the basic colors (brown & green or Blue and yellow, etc.), I suggest very highly that you Look at this tutorial, Color terms and theory . This tutorial will give you a little insight to the terms and compatibility of colors. Also visit Color Wheel Theory ,  a great visual on how to choose complimentary colors.

FLASH
Once in a while, a small flash object in the right place will add important information to the site, but more often than not on an Ecommerce site, it detracts form the sales pitch. Imagine that your customer came to your site to purchase something, and your flash takes his attention away from your sales pitch. Usually one of two things happen - either they leave because the site is to flashy (no pun) or they get caught up in the movie show and forget what they came for. Either way you lose a sale.

Read on
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Your website - the do's and don'ts that make or break a website. Your look-and-feel and functionality makes a difference whether potential customers stay and return.

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Internet marketing - Don't believe all the hype, SEO isn't a magic ticket to traffic, it takes old fashioned marketing with some new tools to get the job done

Functionality - Did you consider functionality when you designed that beautiful Ecommerce website? Lack of functionality is the greatest killer of repeat business

Coaching - Do I need a coach? Why hire a coach and what specifically can a coach do for me?

Joe Job - Know what to do if your site ever comes under attack by a disgruntled user or under-handed competitor