"Do-it-Yourself Website" Warning!
Guidelines for Good Design
Technology has made it possible to build your own site quickly, but there are still design guidelines that need to be followed, or else you may lose visitors. Studies have shown that if your site does not make a good first impression within the first five seconds, you will lose your visitor to another site where the information is more clearly presented.
If you're building your own site, please take a minute to visit our Common Website Mistakes page. Here, you will learn what not to do to when designing your site.
Website Terminology page.
Many sitebuilder applications boast that "anyone can do it" and "you don't have to know any coding." Sure, you can click on a template, move some pages around and type in some content, but it is also important to know how to:
upload pictures and resize for proper screen resolutioncustomize and upload headersset-up well thought out and organized navigationcreate links - internal and externaluse photo galleriesset-up blogsuse keywords and metatags and understand how they affect your search engine rankingsubmit your site to search engines and local online listings (If you don't do this, it will be very easy for people NOT to find you on the web).Additionally, for eCommerce sites:
offer shopping cartsaccept paypal and/or other forms of paymentdisplay your products with pictures.Many times, what starts out as something "fun and simple", can become very overwhelming and time consuming. So make sure you have the time and the know-how to design your site to help your business and not hurt it!
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