How To Make A Good Website
The internet is full of bad websites. We see them all the time. They’re tacky, hard to navigate, full of bad grammar, and half the time they don’t work at all. So, what can you do to keep your website from falling into the same category as the one the 12 year old down the street made to showcase his pet rocks? It’s actually very simple. Users only care about a few key things when browsing your web site, the rest is up to your own creativity.
This is one mistake you should learn from me, not on your own. It is very important, before you ever actually publish your web site, to plan it all out. This means getting a clear understanding of what you want it to look like in your head, then coding the entire thing. After you’ve coded the entire thing, go back and check your code. Then, check it again. Check to make sure it works in all the popular web browsers. Check to make sure there are no errors and that everything displays properly. Make sure all the links work as intended. Make sure everything looks as it should.
The reason I stress this so much is because you will use this initial page as a template for the rest. Unless you have a very compelling reason to do so, you shouldn’t change the look of the web site from one page to another. So, by checking your code many times, you save yourself the trouble of having to edit code on multiple pages later, because a simple typo is causing an error or display problems. For an example, look at the website you’re on now. When you navigate from page to page, the only part of the page that changes is the one section where the main content is displayed (this article for example). I’ll discuss why this is important later in this article, in the navigation section.
I cannot stress this enough. Animated images are just plain tacky. You could have the most professional web site in the world, but the first time a user sees an animated .gif on your website, they’ll automatically assume you’re an amateur. And, chances are, if they think you’re an amateur, they’re not going to buy anything from you.
Think about that a little more. When you hit the web to buy something, where do you go? To web sites like Newegg, Amazon, and eBay, or to someplace called Mikey’s Electronics Shack? Now, for the sake of the example, we’ll assume Mikey’s web site looks exactly as amateurish as it sounds. It is chock full of animated images, like a dancing computer, a smoking hard drive, and, for some reason known only to Mikey, a puppy wagging its tail. Doesn’t sound like the kind of place you want to shop, does it?
Too often I come across a web site that is just stuffed to the brim with pictures, links, and content. This becomes annoying, because it’s just too much to take in. While it’s important to have enough content to keep your customer occupied, it’s just as important not to overwhelm them. You should try to keep each page as clean as possible. If you use clear navigation, you shouldn’t have to put too much on any one page. Simple, in this case, means using the minimum possible amount of menus, pictures, and design elements. Do you really need to have every page on your web site linked from your index (home) page? Are 10 images absolutely necessary?
Always remember that, with the exception of web sites made specifically to be creative, people are not coming to your site to gawk at the beauty of it; they are coming to your site for a service or product, and overly complex designs only act to impede their navigation to the product. This brings me to my next point…
It is very important that you use a clear and easy navigation scheme. Meaning, every page should have the same main navigation menu, with the menu options always in the same order. If your navigation menu isn’t clear, your potential customer is not going to bother trying to figure it out; they’ll just go to another web site. Chances are, your web site is not unique, and there are most likely many others on the internet selling a similar service or product. So, you can’t afford to annoy your customer with a sloppy navigation system.
Navigation menu options should be clear and concise. The average web user only spends a few seconds trying to figure out a web site, before they get fed up and move on to another. So, you need to make sure they know where each menu option will take them at a glance. Don’t confuse them with unclear terms. Don’t make them read a lengthy description. Use a simple, easy to understand, 1-3 word term for each option.
The meat of your web site should always be content in the form of cold hard text. The exceptions to this are sites that showcase music, videos, or pictures. So, unless the user is expecting to listen to music, watch videos, or look at pictures, then they should be reading text. Therefore, your text is the most important part of your web site. And, because it is the most important part, you absolutely need to make your text is easy to read.
This means you shouldn’t use an odd color scheme, or weird fonts. You should always use dark (usually black) text on a white background. If you must use a dark background, make sure you use light (usually white) text. You should never put dark text on a dark background, or light text on a light background. Under no circumstances should you use an image for your text background, or for that matter, as any background.
Not all users have DSL and cable connections; in fact, a very large portion of them don’t - plenty of are still using slow 56k modems. That means that, unless you want to lose the 56k portion of your clientele, you need to make your web site friendly for slow connections too. To do this you’ll have to ditch those fancy flash animations, and large pictures. Preferably you’ll want to keep individual images under 30k, and even those you’ll want to use sparingly.
For example, on the page you’re looking at now, there are a total of 4 images: one for the logo, one for the buttons, one for the donate button at the bottom of the article, and one for the image at the top of the each article. Together they add up to roughly 30k. A good way to keep the size of a page down is to use CSS instead of tables and images. You can make some really nice looking pages using nothing but CSS (this website is completely CSS), and because they’re all code, they load very fast.
There you go; follow those six steps, and you should have a nice looking website, or at least one that doesn’t look completely amateurish. Now all you have to do is come up with a bunch of content, think of a pretty design, and write a lot of code, and you’ll be on your way to the kind of financial freedom only professional looking web sites could fail to give you.
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