Hey everybody! A lot of people in today's society are using websites for personal and business purposes, to share and gather information. Therefore, if you are looking to create a website, whether it is for personal or business use, you should design the site in a way that it will be effective for you and your visitors. I would like to take some time and talk about a few techniques and tips you can use when designing your site.

For the past week I've been browsing the web and clicking on external links from other sites such as Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, etc. In doing this, I've noticed a lot of sites that could be designed a little bit better to create a more user friendly, hassle-free experience. Some sites were harder on the eyes, while others took way to long to load. I have even seen a couple sites where I had no idea what was going on or what the purpose for the site was. These are issues that can be corrected by taking a little more time to work on the site before publishing and doing some research to see how you can design a website that visitors will enjoy and hopefully return to. This is especially important for businesses. Take this for example: Have you ever been to a website that took a really long time loading pictures, flash, videos, music, etc.? How long did it take before you said "Forget it! I'm leaving this page"? My point exactly. It gets pretty annoying and that's why you should be careful not to jam your website with a lot of objects that will slow your website down. That's just one way to keep your visitors satisfied. Let's go further into effective website design. I recently wrote a blog on successful business writing and stated that the message in your writing is very important. The same applies to websites.
  • You should be able to identify your audience
  • Establish your purpose
  • Formulate your message
  • Select your style and tone.

IS YOUR SITE EASY TO FIND?
Make sure visitors can easily find and remember your site. Create and register your domain name. For example, the domain name for Clint Productions, LLC is clintproductions.com. It is simple, easy to remember, and it gives you sort of an idea about what we do. Be sure to check domain names with the same name as your company, because their may be instances where you may need to come up with a new name. Make your web presence known by submitting your site to search engines and directories like Google, Yahoo!, dmoz.org, etc.

IS YOUR SITE EASY TO NAVIGATE?
Navigation tools such as indexes and menus help tremendously when navigating a site. Your menu should be visible so visitors can see and quickly access the information that they want. Navigation bars and hyperlinks are also effective. Be sure you don't have any broken links. Don't you hate it when you click a link and an error pops up? Expect your visitors to hate the same thing. Broken links could drive your potential customers away.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU UPDATED YOUR SITE?
Be sure to update you site. This is especially important for returning visitors. If they visit your site every few days and see that nothing ever changes, they have no reason to check back because they think it will be exactly the same as last time. Implement things like news updates, articles, product reviews, and design revision. Give your visitors something new to look forward to and create some anticipation.

Before we cover a few more techniques in designing effective websites, I am going to create some anticipation for you by telling you to stay tuned for part 2 of this blog! There is more information to add to this that you do not want to miss out on.