How to design a good website

Website design means different things to different people. A computer programmer is going to see website design quite differently than a graphic artist would. However, there are some common features of all good website designs.

Place only good content on your website. A good website design begins and ends with the content on the site. No one is going to stay on your website if the content is not useful, compelling, or interesting. Your page should be a unique experience for visitors and should not be the same as every other website out there. There is no way that you will keep traffic coming to your site if your content is not appealing.

Don't have any annoying or unappealing images or backgrounds on your website. Your website doesn't have to be some sort of artistic masterpiece, but it also should not give people headaches when they look at it. You know that you have all seen those types of websites that you can't look at for more than 30 seconds without getting dizzy or having to squint. When coming up with your website design, be sure that you don't have any annoying backgrounds or unappealing features like clashing colors or unreadable text.

Make things easy to find. Not everyone who uses the Internet is computer savvy. In fact the majority of people who are looking for information on the Internet are totally computer savvy. If you want people to keep coming back to your website, you need to make is so that everything is easy to find. Even if you do attract computer savvy people to your site, they don't want to waste time having to look around to find what they need.

Keep your website design consistent. Again, it doesn't matter what color scheme or theme you choose, but make sure that you keep it consistent throughout your whole website. Your website design should not differ from one page to the next. This only confuses your visitors. Also, place common features such as links to other sites or the contact information in the same place from page to page.

Make your visitors feel welcome. If you want to keep people coming back to your website, you need to roll out that welcome mat to them. Be sure to include feedback forms and a contact page in your website design so that you readers can get in contact with you easily. Reach out to your readers and listen to their ideas and feedback.

Try applying these basics to your EzWeb123.com website and you shouldn't go far wrong.

Copyright © Peter Moore 2009 - EzWeb123.com

How LinkedIn can help you promote your website

So you want to start networking and you have heard your friends talking about LinkedIn and how it can help you to promote your business but you want to find out more. Could LinkedIn be for you or is it just another site for other people?

LinkedIn is a free social networking site, aimed primarily at businesses. It allows business owners, sole traders and other professionals the chance to link with like-minded people and grow their own community or join with others.

Using LinkedIn can help you to promote your EzWeb123.com business website and your services to potentially millions of people all over the world. You connect with one person and LinkedIn will show you who that person is connected with and you are then able to create a spider’s web of connections in just a matter of moments. You’re only ever about two links away from thousands of people.

You can often find jobs through LinkedIn and you can also start discussion groups, inviting people to share thoughts and discuss ideas about your own products or services as a way to generate interest. It can be a great resource portal for business information and really is just like an online gathering of busy working professionals. You may just meet someone on LinkedIn who could be the next link to your most lucrative job or who will help to promote your business for you. The site is self perpetuating and the snowball effect that takes place is quite astounding once you get started.

Before promoting your website on LinkedIn, however, you do need to make sure that your website with EzWeb123.com is looking in tip top shape. EzWeb123 can help you to do this with its team of dedicated staff who provide online support around the clock. The website building package will assist you in not only setting up your website but will also give you the tools with which to customise it, enhance it and having it looking like a quality business website to rival any other.

Because EzWeb123 gives you the tools with which to promote your products or services in a complete package, your job on LinkedIn becomes so much easier. You have your fantastic looking, fully functioning website and the platform on which to promote it around the world. Watching your network grow and the number of connections you have on LinkedIn increase is satisfying for any business owner. Watch the number of visits to your website take off and, in turn, hopefully watch your business expand.

LinkedIn is just one of many social networking sites on which you can promote your EzWeb123 website and it’s all right there for you online, at the click of just a few buttons. You don’t need to be a techy – let the experts do it all for you!

Copyright © Peter Moore 2009 - Co-Founder of EzWeb123.com

Why good navigation is key to your sites success

You are about to design your website and your head is full of ideas of how it will look, the colours, the images, the overall effect and impact it will have on your audience. But have you understood the real importance of the navigation system that you have used in your design?

The value of good navigation architecture in the infrastructure of your website should not be underestimated. Good website navigation architecture is the most important job in the development process for any web designer. Many website designs are not constructed with page rank considerations in mind and this is where they will fall short in terms of search engine rankings.

In layman’s terms, page rank is measured by how many links any website page has from other website pages. There is a complicated science behind it with mathematical equations to boggle the most intelligent of minds. However, what it all boils down to is that your website will rank much higher up a Google search if the navigation layout is well designed. Optimal navigation layout should allow both search engines and visitors the best of experiences - a human being will search a website in a different way to a search engine spider as the latter can only read html.

Any good website designer will first ask their client who their audience is before they begin to design the website structure and create their site map. Users will benefit from an easy-to-navigate system and will become quickly confused by difficult and conflicting sites. The types of pages which are useful to a designer as navigation tools include: home pages; index pages; navigation bars; next/previous navigation – these are all useful ways for promoting products and services, as well as driving traffic to other pages. During the initial design process, it is also important to decide whether to have multiple levels of navigation, using sub menus, or whether a flatter navigation level is the better option.

Some of the benefits of having a good navigation scheme are that there will be fewer clicks in the click path, the content will be clear and is more likely to be read, and the visitor will be able to see more clearly where they should go for the information they need. In essence, visitor usability will be optimised. They should always be able to get to the information they require with ease and with minimal searching or you will lose them and they will go elsewhere.

So in reality, it is all in the design process. Laying it out up front and planning the design well will make the rest of the process much easier and the end result will be higher page rankings along with the most important bit – an altogether better customer experience.

Copyright © Peter Moore 2009 - Co-Founder of EzWeb123.com