UK Web Site Design and Search Engine Optimisation
What are the basics?
So you would like to know how to set up your own website? The bare bones required in order to do this includes an editing program, a place to put your website up and most importantly an idea. The idea is central to everything that you do with your website. It will define your target market, the manner in which you write, your design and the technology that you will use.
Website Ideas
For instance, you may want to put up a website in honour of your wedding day. Now unless you happen to be someone in the media spotlight, the likelihood is that your audience is typically going to consist of close friends and family. This means that you can give your website a very warm and personal feel. You might find a need to include some galleries, wedding lists, maps and pictures on the location and possibly a diary, but nothing that requires major programming.
Perhaps your idea is to promote a music event, in which case you may well want a stylish design as well as more interactive elements. The promotional copy would need to be written in language that suits your market and you may decide to include a hard sell focus in order to generate interest.
Or what if you wanted a site from which you could sell home made pottery? You may wish to write in a warm tone, but it should not be quite as personal as was the case for the wedding site. The design should have more of a professional feel to it, and this time you would need to include a shopping basket and possibly even a stock control program.
Creating Your Website
When you have decided on your idea, you will need to look at how you will go about creating it. In the old days, you didn’t have any choice but to go ahead and learn a programming language called HTML (or HyperText Markup Language). You could then create your websites using a text editor such as Notepad or Microsoft Word. However, things have moved on and these days you can use a visual editor such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver to create a website with relatively little training or programming knowledge.
Then you will need a place on the web in which to put your website once it has been created. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Freeserve, AOL or BT Yahoo! allow you to have a certain amount of webspace for free. However, if you wish to have a commercial website or want to have a more professional look then you should investigate other web hosting companies. By doing this, you will also be able to buy and use your own domain name for your website like www.buymypottery.co.uk.
Layout and Design
Once you know what you are providing and who your market is, you can start to think about your website design. There are several key areas that you will need to address. Will your content be made to appeal to home users on 14.4 modems, or business users on a T1?
Would you prefer your layout to be fixed to support smaller resolutions such as 640 by 480, or do you want to create a website that is fluid? Are you worried about browser compatibility, or dynamic technologies such as flash, javascript, streaming media, etc? Remember that when you are programming you need to keep it simple, as search engines can struggle to index anything more complex than HTML.
What colours would work well within your sites context? Try to pick a couple of complementary colours and reinforce those throughout the site. Where possible, use websafe colours from the 216 colour universal palette and make sure that the text is readable. Black on white is fine, but red on black is hard to read and is also the most likely to be missed by colour-blind individuals. Also be careful when changing font sizes. You should allow the visitor to use their own defaults so that they can read your text comfortably.
Important information should always be kept “above the fold”. This means placing important information on the first screen that visitors will see without any need for them to interact with your site. If your visitors can only find what they want by selecting links or even scrolling down, they are more likely to leave than if they are presented with what they are searching for straight away.
Examine how you wish the pages on your website to interlink with each other and categorise your information in a meaningful way. Look at how you are you going to organise it and present it on the website. Should the website provide the material in breadth with a lot of links from the front page? Or should the content be split into defined groups providing more depth?
One method of deciding on a design for your website is to take all of your ideas and sketch a layout. This can be done on paper or in an image editing program. Having created the initial design, you can then easily change colours or positions of various elements in order to see what works.
Be The Best!
The main thing to remember when designing your website is to focus on what you want to achieve. If your website appeals to your visitors, then you have already won half the battle. When you are happy with your site, try to establish links to it from online directories and related websites. Once you have got the ball rolling, you should concentrate on making your website the best that it can be!