Building Your First Website?
Building your first website to begin your journey as online entrepreneur? But you have no experience on how to kick start it? Not to worry, and you should not be too worry even if your website is not as “Fanciful” compare to others which look impressive.
However, not being a web design expert or HTML is not an acceptable excuse for building up a website that’s half done. It is the impression that you are going to give to your valuable visitors. Follow these simple basic and you should not be far for a successful website:-
1. Keep it simple
Yes, do keep it simple. Forgo the fancy feature that you see in other “Big” sites. IF you are not aware, let me share with you this: Some of the successful sites are simple in design. Don’t overload your visitors with too many fancy features that you also would get lost in your own site.
And beware, build your website step by step, don’t simply go and try to build a website with hundreds if not thousands of pages. It will drive you crazy. Build 5 to 10 pages initially, expand it to 50 or more eventually. At the end, you could see your website with hundreds of pages. Nevertheless, it is advisable not to go beyond one thousand pages so that you could still manage it comfortably.
2. Throw away excessive Animation.
Avoid those things that move and block your browsing experience. Ask yourself the question of whether you feel uneasy when those flashy things keep blocking your view?
Furthermore, these flash features might take longer time to load. It means your visitors might just go away while waiting for it to complete loading. Hey, nobody online likes to wait. Time is not on our side. Visitors want to get what they want fast, and real fast. If you take own sweet time to present whatever “Great” thing you are offering, your visitors will eventually lose the interest in it while waiting too long.
3. Use a ready made script.
Get a ready made script and install it on your host server. There are lots of useful scripts out there online. What’s a script? I not too sure how to explain it, but I just know it will save me lots of precious time in building my website. Like most of us, I’m new too. I just wanted to get a website up and running.
Do you need to spend lot money to get those scripts? NO. There are lots of useful yet FREE scripts. For your info, some of my sites are built with these free scripts too. I know very well I don’t know much about HTML or so, thus I just install it on my host server and build my website from there. Run a search for “FREE SCRIPT” on any search engine, you’ll find lots of information on this topic.
For early stage in website building, I suggest that you use the “PHP” type of script. Don’t ask me what is “PHP”? I am not techie too. But I tried it and it is so simple that I am now starting to learn how to modify the script myself.
4. Use a template and customize it.
Yes, use it. Don’t ever try to build a new website with a brand new template all by your self, especially for your first ever website. Trust me, it will take forever to complete. I tried it, and I know. Building a website from scratch for a newbie like me will simply take forever.
Browse online to pick the one the looks simple yet easy to customize. Yes, you can learn to customize it, but advisable not beyond that. You can customize the font, color, height and width, put in some table or similar features, just don’t try to do the fancy type like others. They spend great resources in getting it done.
5. Visualize Your Visitor Path and provide guides.
Yes, you ought to know where your visitors will be browsing thru your site, the path and so on. From there, your task is to build and provide an easy browsing experience to your valuable visitors.
Do guide your visitors when they arrive at your site. Don’t let them lost their way. Lead them to what they are looking for. Be it an information they trying to search for, or a product they are looking to purchase. Give a clear guide and site’s path to what visitors want. Unless you want to lose them, then you could just ignore this advice and load your website with all kind of information until you also lose in it.
6. Watch your expenses.
Even if you can manage to follow the above and build your website all by yourself - It is time to get helps. Hire somebody to do the job. There are plenty of good designers who will perform the tasks for you for a reasonable price package. Spell out your requirements before hand and get all the support that you need.
Watch your expenses closely. You should not be spending much in getting your first website up and running. Remember, although it is critical to get your website looks and runs as good, you should not be spending too much before the website generate steady income for you.
Viewing thru all the above mentioned basic guides, I truly wish you have a successful online venture. Just remember, a poorly built website is going to lose you business. Don’t fall into the trap of fanciful websites. What you need is to build a successful online business empire. That’s your aim and mine too.
Get Your Business listed in Business Listing Center for business leads. Network sites consist Web Resources Search and BizNet Directory are also business platforms.
