by Wayne Tully

Created on: July 08, 2007

Have you ever at some point thought about designing your own web site?

If so, what do you think is the most important aspect of this popular task?

Is it the way your pages look? Well to some degree it is, but it's more to do with the navigation of your links and how your website flows and presents itself to your viewers as a whole.

When potential visitors see your site you want them to find the relevant information quicker than they would researching it themselves, so that hopefully they will come back to your site either by bookmarking it or taking note of the URL(web address) for later use, and so that they don't just go elsewhere on the net, because once they are gone you'll more than likely never see them again! (fact!).

So you want to make your site easily accessible and all the information that the visitor wants is clearly marked with links that draw them in.

Of course you are not in full control of peoples minds to make them stay, but remember by making your site interactive and with something for the viewer to do you may gain an advantage over other sites that don't offer this.

Images and banners should be used sparingly and only to compliment your targeted content, 70% writing(content) 30% pictures(Images) is a good rule to follow, ideally either your home page or your index page should have your main content and the point of your website should be realized here, maybe you are promoting a service or product, make it known.

Your site overall, needs to be attractive to the eyes and not that much of a distraction that puts your readers off, clear, readable and easily viewable articles and valued content are what should be presented here, there is no point in mis-matched colour fonts or a mix of small, medium and large sized fonts scattered throughout (this appears quite childish), you need to think beyond the fact that that particular design may look good to you, but may be off putting to others, try to think about your subscribers or future ones as these are the people who will spread your reputation so make a good professional first impression.

It's also a good idea to get a basic understanding of HTML, which is the code that all websites are partly made up of and designed by, all tables and colours are formatted using HTML and then split up by other coding language such as Javascript which creates the interactivity into a web page, you do not have to be a complete know it all in HTML but it is helpful to know the basics such as creating hyperlinks and links

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