DO’s and DON’Ts of Website Design – Part 1
Once we created our product, Bailout The Game, we needed to present it to the world. As you know by finding this website, the best way to make our product visible to the world is through a website.
We have a few key DO’s and DON’Ts for you on this part of your business enterprise.
The biggest thing to DO is… DO your homework. Rushing through this step will waste your time and potential for success. Figure out your message. Work though how to convey that message properly. Understand how the message is presented on your website. Layout the website generically how the website is to be completed. If you are selling a product, find out the best method to receive payment. Taking the time to complete this rather simple planning is the best thing you can DO to assure your website goes online looking complete and professional.
Now, that you have some direction on how to layout your website, the design of the website needs to be executed. But wait…How are you to be sure that your target audience will be able to find you? You need to DO a complete strategy for your SEO (When I first heard SEO, I thought to myself, what in the world is that?!?). SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and I cannot stress enough the importance of this three letter acronym. You need to figure out what keywords people will use in a search engine and those keywords needs to find your website. Go to a bookstore and get some books on SEO programming to better understand how to accomplish this important task properly. Your website design needs to be geared towards this goal using the keywords in the programming of your website.
At this point, you can create the website yourself or hire someone to DO it for you. I recommend that unless you are better than a novice at website design, let an expert DO this step for you. Provide your website designer with as much information as possible including artwork, text, the message, layout sketches, company information, etc. Additionally, provide the designer with all the SEO information you can provide them. Let the website designer complete the front page and present it to you. Now you need to take a real hard look at what has been accomplished and be absolutely positive that your message is conveyed completely and succinctly. Remember, this page could be your one and only chance to catch someone’s attention to find out more about your products or services. After tweaking the front page, the balance of the website can follow the template of the front page. Follow through with evaluating every page as they are designed and make sure each page conveys your message properly. As the message is driven home with each additional web page, your overall website strategy is carried through the website.
Okay, now you have a completed website. What to DO next is find the proper website hosting company. As with most small companies or start ups, we did not have a server and appropriate bandwidth to host the website on our network. There are plenty of great companies that offer this service at a small price with tremendous bandwidth available to your website. Now get your website published, make sure everything looks correct on multiple browsers, and assure all the links work.
I have provided you some key things I think you should DO when publishing a website, but I want to assure you DON’T make the same mistakes I made. Its less costly for you to learn from my mistakes than for you to repeat the same things that probably cost money to our bottom line.
One thing I DON’T want you to do is wait to get your website online because I DON’T want you to miss out on internet presence due to being stuck in the ’sandbox’. Plus, if you have a unique idea but could catch on as a trend, I DON’T want you to miss out because someone has bought a similar name and steals your limelight. Get something on the internet quickly that has some information about your company and what you are going to offer. Plus, buy any related url names that you can think of and redirect them to you main website. This will help the time clock at getting out of the ’sandbox’ and assure the integrity of your domain name is preserved.
The next item is DON’T trust what the website development companies tell you at face value. According to the research I have completed after the fact, many website designers are not SEO experts and vice versa. In fact, most of the SEO experts DON’T even offer website design. We were told many things by our website development company that I have learned later from a SEO expert were in direct contradiction with how search engines find content. This proved to be very frustrating because a competing site has outranked us since the day our website made it online.
DON’T trust anyone to design your website for you. Your vision needs to be realized. Get involved and stay focused to assure the message is conveyed properly.
If you offer a product on the internet, DON’T offer a single form of payment. There are many people with different preferences. When we started, our website only accepted PayPal. I chose PayPal because that is a trusted name that I personally prefer. However, many people DON’T like using PayPal and another solution needed to be offered.
DON’T ever let anyone else have total control of your website or your url’s. You must have access to your web content so that minor corrections can be made quickly and efficiently. If you want to make a special offer to your customers, you are able to make sure it happens. If content needs to be added, you are capable of adding the content. Your website content is owned by you for the purpose of offering your services or products. Therefore, the website host needs to be in you or your company’s name. Plus, do not trust your website designer/hosting company to purchase url’s for you. This can prove to be a conflict in interest if they make a purchase in some other name other than you or your company’s name.
Lastly, DON’T ever sit back and relax. The internet is an ever evolving organism. Your website needs to evolve also. Content should be constantly updated, tweaked, added as your business grows. These continual additions also alert your fans, customers and search engines that they should come back often to see if there is a new product or service they may want or need.
As this is the first of the DO’s and DON’TS, I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. Come back often as we will be creating a series that will educate you on what we have learned as we create and grow Liberty Street Games.
Bailout! The Game
45 Responses Leave a comment
And beware of companies that promise they can get your SEO to page one ranking overnight. Anything worth getting takes time and hard work. 48 hours of keywords will not get you page 1. It’s measured on relevancy mostly, with incoming links getting weight, depending on their page rank.
Andrea
http://browardnetonline.com
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