Step 3. Designing your website

What should I consider when thinking of an appropriate design for my website?

Two key things to bear in mind; your design should reflect the professionalism of your company, your products and services and compliment your current branding. The design also needs to enhance the message you are trying to communicate in a strong and powerful manner.

 

How do I come up with an effective design?

Start by doing some online research - look at both competitor sites and other websites that have strong appeal. You are not looking to copy someone else, but assess the attributes that make those sites successful in terms of the presentation of information, the ease of use regarding navigation throughout the site and the complimentary use of images, photos, icons and videos etc.

 

Avoid wackiness!

Many people are drawn to the attraction of having fancy gimmicks and animations on their site. Banners that fly in and out when you arrive at the homepage, flashing buttons and miscellaneous widget thingys! Unless these items are absolutely necessary in order to help communicate your primary message - leave them out. Most of the time they provide nothing more than an annoying, time consuming distraction for your viewer and the only person likely to be impressed by them will be you!

 

Have confidence in your designer ...

Before you enlist the services of a web design company, thoroughly check out their previous work, get a feel for the type of design style they deliver - every company is different and its a matter of finding one that best suits the look and feel your after. Once you are happy with your descision, provide them with a detailed brief, samples of sites you like and then let them create the magic. Try to avoid micro-managing the design yourself. Continually adding new elements or changing the overall structure part way through the design process can result in your site looking clumsy and disjointed.