Create a Website? Who Me?

Do you really think you can create a website? No? Not true, of course you can! Most people wrongly believe that they'll never be able to create a website. The terms geek, guru and nerd spring to mind and you already feel intimated. Then you think about how to design a website and worry that it takes a lot of training, time and effort. Not to mention a boat load of programming skills!

Nothing could be further from the truth! I won't lie and say that it takes no time and effort, there are some skills that you will need to learn, but it's not as hard or time consuming as you may think. There are lots of programs and helpful sites that can take you step by step through the process of designing a website and then building it. You don't need to break the bank hiring a web design company, With a few skills and some forethought you can build a website yourself.

Where do I start?

Your website does not have to be complicated and loaded with loads of flash animations, videos, graphics and the latest audio feeds. In fact these types of sites are often difficult to navigate, slow to load and not very nice to look at. Adding some multimedia into your website design can be done at a later stage, often the best and most successful websites are the simple sites and this is where you should start.

It's all in the planning

Before you dive in and start trying to create a website there are a few questions you should ask yourself. Go and get a pen and paper, then answer these next few questions.

Why do you want a website? This may seem like an obvious question, but take some time to think about it. Answering this question will help you identify new opportunities and leads directly into our next question; What is the purpose of your website? This is the most important question to answer as it will drive the whole website design process. You'll design a store front site in a totally different way to an information site.

Next try to determine whet your main products are going to be and write them down. This will help you with the website design and navigation. Finally who is your audience? The language you use and to a lesser extent the style of your site will be dependent on this answer. You'll use different language and look and feel if you're trying to appeal to teens of college students than a website designed to appeal to business to business.

Pulling the website design together

Now go through your answers and on a separate sheet of paper start grouping your products (or information if its an information website) into main categories. These will all become web pages and form the first tier of navigation off your main page. Make sure the focus here is in keeping with the purpose of your website. There may be some further sub categories and these can be your second tier web pages that flow naturally from the first tier.

For instance if your main site is about golf, first tier web pages will be things like golf clubs, golf shoes, golf bags, golf accessories and golf courses. A second tier may come off golf accessories that covers golf balls, golf tees, golf club head covers etc. Keep the design of your website navigation clean and easy to follow so that your visitors can find what they want quickly and easily.

Don't forget to add a contact us page and ideally a site map so that a visitor can see how the whole site is laid out and jump to the area they are interested in. Now you have a good idea of why you want to create a website and you have an outline website design, it's time to find help with putting it all together. Site by Numbers is a great program that can help you with this just take a look!

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