Tips to create a good looking website

Creating a website is something anyone can do today with the advent of many application or website generators available today. But, creating a appreciable and good looking website needs a lot of thought process and skills. The following would help:

1. Think of a theme or idea for the website.

What does your site speak about or what do you want the site to speak about? Put yourself in the shoes of the visitor and think why you should visit this particular site and not one of the numerous others? Always try to offer something extra that a visitor needs or wants. After you close your thought process on this, proceed to point no. 2.

2. Now that you have the idea ready, what else do you need?

An idea itself is not enough to create the website. Give a thought to web design. Design is a process of visualizing the idea by finalizing the layout, colors and more importantly the content. Colors and their combinations are very essential, since if you end up using the wrong ones, the visitor may have difficulty in reading the content which is the most important part of the site. The visitor will leave, never to come back. It is important to visualize the web site design on paper or a image file to get a proper preview.

3. Finding a web-host.

You can host your site for free; there are many sites which offer this in lieu of placing an advertisement on your site. If you are running a business, it is advisable that you get your own web host. It is not very expensive to do so.

4. Start off with web development.

Now that your web design has been finalized after numerous changes, it is time to develop the site as per the design specification. Knowledge of basic HTML becomes essential to create a quality site. There is no need to get into the tags and formats but it is necessary to know what HTML is and how it works. There are numerous HTML development engines available which work on the WYSIWYG guidelines, a basic knowledge of HTML will help you create a better website. This knowledge will come handy when you try to fix the errors on your site.

5. View your handiwork.

While viewing your webpage do not forget the important factors:

1. Loading speed – Is it fast? 2. Is it easily navigable? 3. Is the content error free? 4. Is there anything that visitors would need or find useful?

This is only the tip of the iceberg. These factors are extremely important and most people seem to ignore them resulting in a poor preventability. The idiom “First impression is the last impression” holds good while you try to publicize your site.

6. Create the rest of the pages.

Create the rest of your pages with the above points in mind. Follow the hierarchy and don’t get confused.

7. Make your site go live.

Preview your pages and after being satisfied, upload it to your web host. The next step is to promote your site. Promoting is required to inform others about the presence and content of your site.

The process of web design and development is a cycle. To make people visit your site again and again, it is important to update your site at least every two weeks with good and latest content available to you. Make sure the updates are interesting.

For more information and tips on creating a good looking and functional web site, please visit cobbwebdesign. com.

Good web site design

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There are very few web pages on the internet that clearly state what is good web site design and what is not good web site design. That's because it's completely subjective, like what is beautiful and what is not beautiful. So it takes a highly opinionated strong ego like this one to step in there and say "OK folks, this is what it is." Now I jumped on board the internet back in 1994 after I began to believe that not only would it be "The Next Big Thing", but that it actually does offer the human race the potential to connect all our minds together in an entirely new way. When I decided to create my own web site, I first had to take a good look at as many music and other web sites as possible in order to learn what not to do before I could visualize what I should do. I've visited thousands of web sites since then, I've talked to countless net surfers about what they like and don't like, and we all tend to agree on some major points:

Bad design includes the following qualities:
1. Text that is hard to read, including use of tiny fonts against black backgrounds and illegible fonts against picturesque backgrounds.

2. Anything that slows page downloading speed. Net surfers are impatient and they will exit out of any site where pages take too long to download or have plug-ins that have to be downloaded in order simply in order to view your page.

3. Lack of a clear "Mission Statement" on the home page. Web surfers want to know immediately what a web site is about. They don't want to have to read several pages to get it and then decide the time spent wasn't worth it.

4. Lack of clear instructions on the home page explaining how to get essential information from the site. Web surfers want to surf with speed, not study in a library.

5. A home page that requires you to click on something to enter the site (that's called a portal page). What's the point? You've already entered. Why in the world would you care to enter twice? Would an architect design two doors you'd have to go through to get into a bathroom? Would a sane contractor ever build it that way?

6. Confusing site organization, difficult navigation, dead links.

7. Boring writing. Not much can be done about this one. Creative writing isn't available from a web site designer at any price. If they were creative writers they wouldn't be doing web site design.

Good design includes the following qualities:
1. Text that is easy to read. Don't be afraid to use a large bold font against a light colored background.

2. The fastest downloading speed possible. If you're going to have a lot of photos, consider grouping them into one photo section so that people will expect that portion of your site to download slowly. Avoid gimmicks like flash graphics. And for goodness sake, don't make people download a plug-in just so that they can view your page.

3. A clear mission statement on the home page explaining what the site is all about.

4. Something on the home page that explains what the other pages are all about.

5. A home page that is a home page - none of that "enter" nonsense.

6. An organized site that has structure which can be easily understood.

7. Entertainment value. This is where good writing skills come in. Think of your site as if it were a novel or a hit record. You have to grab our interest immediately and then hold it by entertaining us. There's no better way to do that than with your personality through your writing.

Design professionals may try to project your personality but they often prevent it from shining through by using the same techniques they use on their other web sites. It's much better to be yourself and create something which they might call amateurish then it is to end up with something that looks and reads like everybody else's web site. Understand that the internet web site is the last true art form of the 20th century, so try to be creative. Think outside the box. And then create your own box.