Everything you needed to know to create a website

(part 2 of 2)

Basic Layout and Content of the Site

For professional websites you need to decide:

1. Who is the target market?
2. How will the site be used?
3. What content will be most effective?
4. What appearance will be the most appealing?
5. What will encourage repeat customers?

Colors

You can start by picking out the colors you would like to use for your site. You can either base the colors on the colors in your logo or use other colors. It is suggested to have up to 2-3 different colors on the site. You can also use the same color but just different tones of it on the site.

Background

The background on your site could be plain white. Simple is always the best way to go. You could have a light color or even a slight pattern. Anything more intense is often distracting to site visitors.

Menus

Next you can choose whether you want your menus going down the left side of your website or horizontally across the top. The main menus found on every site are usually: home, contact, services. Your site has to be broken down into logical sections such as these

Home page

Your home page can include:

1. Brief overview what you do
2. Short description of how your clients can or have benefited from your services
3. President's bio
4. Testimonials

Or some or more of these items could be found on separate pages linked to from the home page.

Services and/or Products

Your Service and/or Products page can include

1. List of all services and products you offer and the details about them.
2. Pictures to better describe your services or products.
3. You can even list all your services as links to separate pages.

Contact Us

Your Contact Us page can include: phone number, fax number, email address, mailing address, your instant messenger ID. You can include a form that allows the visitor to enter their information and any questions they have for you, which can then automatically send an e-mail to your e-mail address.

Other Pages

Other than that everything else added is custom to your company and what your company offers.

If you do not have a lot of information to put on the site, you could have:
  Testimonials Page from clients about your service. If possible use their first name and company to add credibility to their words.
  Resources or Links has useful links related to your company or service.

If you have a larger website, you could have:
  A Site Map which is a page that has a link to every other page on the site so that visitors can see every possible page to visit.

Other pages you can have on your site:
  A Portfolio is good if you are a designer, photographer etc because you may want to display your work.
  A FAQ page stands for Frequently Asked Questions, and it answers common questions about what you do or about your business

Content

When you sit down to write your content have your website layout already planned, so you know what content you need to write. If you have problems coming up with your content you can always hire someone to help you with it. This is called a copywriting service. It is highly recommended that you have someone edit for both mistakes and rewrites to improve the content.

Photos

Personally taken photos do not usually turn out too well on websites. Websites need high quality photos for them to look clear and crisp. You can use sites such as www.photos.com. There are some websites out there that you can get free photos from like www.royaltyfreephotos.com or you can use a search engine to find websites that offer free photos. Sometimes when you purchase computer equipment it can come with a CD full of good quality photos you can use. (Such as a business card maker).

The suggested items above can help you get well on your way to creating your website and promoting your services and products further, or simply learning the linguistic lingo of the technical talk.

Read Part 1 of Joy's article!