Building a Website: Website Design 101

By Chris McGinn

Print Story | Email Story
Add to My Digital Landing

Related Articles

• 2009 Holiday Gift Guide: For the Women
• 2009 Holiday Gift Guide: For the Men
• Introducing Twitter Lists
• Building a Website: Selecting a Domain Name and Host
• Mac Snow Leopard: Built for Speed

Designing a website has never been easier. Templates and tools from web hosts and sites like Google Blogger and Wordpress make it simple to get a basic site up and running. However, even though it is easy, there are still pitfalls to avoid and sometimes it is wise to call in professionals.

Make A Plan

?Before you begin creating a site, you must do some planning. Ask yourself what you want your site to do:

• Are you planning to provide basic information about your company?
• Do you need a portfolio of recent work?
• Are you going to be selling items and need a way to checkout customers?

Ultimately these questions direct how many pages your site will need as well as which platforms you can use to create your site. For example a basic blogging site is not going to fit your need if you require a multi-page site with a shopping cart function.

At this stage, it is helpful to create a basic map for your site. Essentially this is a drawing or a text document that lays out your site's structure. Generally you have a home page and then a series of primary pages linked from this main page, such as "About Us," "Products/ Services," and "Contact."

You can go further with this architecture to consider what secondary pages might be needed. For example, a "Product" page may need subpages for various categories of product followed by additional pages for each product description.

Planning out this information will help you as you build your site or as you discuss your plans with a professional web designer.

Scope the Scene

The next step after you decide what information you need to communicate is to start surfing. Begin by finding some sites you like, and then take it a step further.

Ask yourself:

• What do you like about this site?
• Is it the color?
• The font?
• The layout?
• The features?

Being able to articulate the information is critical to creating a site you love whether you design it or hire a professional.

Today a lot of sites incorporate interactive or multimedia elements such as Flash components. These features can be simple to add if you have a basic understanding of website creation. Also sites that sell templates for websites also have templates for individual elements such as a Flash splash page or portfolio feature.

While you are looking at sites, don't forget to scope your competition. What features do they include? Do their sites look like they were created by professionals or amateurs? Also, what keywords or descriptions have they added to their site code.

You can view a web site's source code by selecting "View>View Source" from the browser's menu bar.  Within this text document is the skeleton of the site. It describes how the site was created, what information the site is providing to search engines, and what links are included.

After you've made some plans and gained some ideas of what you like, now it is time to start building.

Get Started

When you set out to build a website today you do not necessarily have to have much knowledge of HTML, CSS or other coding languages.  Blogging sites like Google's Blogger, Wordpress, and Typepad offer very basic set ups that only require basic word document formatting skills and they take care of the rest.

However, if you want to take it up a notch, you can use templates from these companies or those of most web hosts. Some of these require a little bit more knowledge in terms of coding, style sheets or image management but others are basically "plug-n-play."

You can also start from scratch or use templates from a web development software such as Microsoft's Front Page. Finally, you can hand it off to a professional and let them set up the site and incorporate elements you can manage later.

Build a Foundation

The key to a good site is a good foundation. Just as you want a solid base for your home or business, your website requires the same.  In this case it is your basic site design and your home page.

Your website should be flexible enough to allow for updates as your information changes or your company grows. For example, if you plan to have a retail site with constantly changing inventory, you will need dynamic elements that interact with a database to keep the site up-to-date with the latest items, quantities, and prices.

If you have a business site, consider areas where you might want to update recent news releases or images.

Also, take care in designing your home page as this is the proverbial front door to your business or home.

• Does it reflect the image you want to convey?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Can visitors find the information they are looking for?
• Do I have links to my primary pages and important secondary pages?

Finishing the Site

Once you have designed your pages complete with informative text and exciting images, it is time to upload and test your site. There is no real substitute for testing your site in its real environment -- on the Web. Some development programs have preview options that give a general idea of how your site will behave using different programs such as Firefox or Internet Explorer.

It is important to note that people who view your site may see different things depending on what program they are using to access the Internet. For example, images may shift, text may render differently or columns may line up in unexpected ways.  Minimizing these differences can be a trial-and-error experience.  Fortunately, most basic sites will behave as expected. 

Sometimes issues arise for things as simple as the names of images being misspelled or including capitals in one place and not in another. If you have a problem, start with the easy change first. Try relinking images and web links. Be sure to always save a copy of your most recent changes in a safe place before you start making alterations just to make sure things don't get worse!

Once everything on your site has been proofed and tested, it's time to announce your site to the world and invite your first visitors.