Top 10 do’s and don’ts for creating your own website
If you have ever brought or rented a house, you will remember the grind – furniture to be placed in the exact spots, change the paint colour (pink isn’t your style), and the uniqueness that makes it your house. Well, that is how you approach building your own website, placing icons at the right spots, change what you don’t like and certainly have a bit of you. Here are 10 do’s and don’ts for creating your own website
Do’s
1. Choose a Good Domain – Your domain name says a lot about you. So it is imperative that you find a name that is inviting, catchy and memorable. Remember you wish to have a name, which gets potential users in and not drive them away.
2. Plan Your Website – Like with anything, it is necessary for you to plan your website. Establish key points; identify your audience, the purpose of your site and how you will monetize it, if at all.
3. Your homepage says a lot about you – Say you are building a product website, what should be the key are of focus be? Quite simply, it must be the product. Create inner pages that are interactive and informational of the product and your company.
4. Don’t go cheap on photographs – It is really simple isn’t it, a picture is worth a thousand words. When it comes to websites the same rules apply. After all, photographs let visitors insight as to what you and what your website is all about.
5. Matching Colours matter – The tone of your homepage plays a major part in appealing potential visitors to your website. One way of succeeding is by avoiding too many colors.
6. Optimize your buttons – It isn’t necessary to have buttons, but if you plan to use them, then you better use them right. Remember, buttons are like call to actions (CTAs) to visitors meant to enter other pages, promotional items, product galleries, and so much more.
7. Be User Friendly – Website users are like people who browse a magazine; if it interests them, they stay. If you information is too long or located somewhere that is not obvious, users will move. The best way to ensure you’re visitor is getting the best information, is making the pages easy to scan.
8. Update Content – If you are a blogger (especially), then is necessary for you to update your content. Remember, people are visiting your website as it is fresh.
9. SEO is rewarding – As much as you invest on your website, invest on SEO. After all, don’t you want more people visiting your website? SEO can literally put your marketing on autopilot, allowing you to focus on improving the quality of your business.
10. Be Unique – Like anything you do, keep a bit of yourself.
Don’ts
1. Never Plagiarise – Be original, don’t be a copy. Don’t flick copyrighted images and text without permission. Do not plagiarize other sites. Make sure your content is unique.
2. Place irrelevant ads across your page – If you are hoping to make money out of your website, then don’t be too excessive with the advertisements. Who like advertisers anyway?
3. Don’t unnecessarily make people think – As we have stated earlier visitors coming to your site will not wait for long, if the content is half hazard. So go back to the drawing board and get it right.
4. Don’t keep long paragraphs – Believe it or not there is a manner to writing. 1000 paragraph articles will just not be applicable to readers to read. In fact, it may just drive them away from your website.
5. Going on and on about nothing – Yeah, we get it, this is your first website, so you have a lot to say. Please don’t, users want to know what you’re selling, not what you went through.
6. Avoid Different fonts – Page titles are in times new roman, content for those pages are in Calibri, navigation links are in Tahoma and the sidebar is in Lucida Fax. Imagined that and ask yourself how ugly it looks?
7. Don’t get musical – Yeah, we get it you want the website to have a character. Let your design do the talking and not the music. Music files are typically pretty ‘heavy’, and take time to download, which will make users to move on
8. Avoid Coaxing People to Download a New Browser – Using special features and plugins that are browser-specific will alienate many users from your site. Leave it simple.
9. Don’t Write Bad Code – Right good clean and valid code and if you are a Web programmer, you better. If you are only a beginner, use an HTML editor that generates clean markup, such as Adobe Dreamweaver. 1
10. Leave the Site Incomplete – A good website is never finished. Rather, it keeps getting updated; its process of evolution never stops. Add fresh content, improving design and layout or add new features.
