Design Desk

Creating a Good Website

There are two aspects to creating a good website. The first is that the site looks good, is suitably designed for the theme/business of the site and is easy for people to navigate. The second aspect is the ability of finding it when searching for the theme or topic of the website using the search engines.

Both of these aspects need to be combined for the website to be successful. There is no point in having a beautifully designed website that nobody can find and there is not much point in having a website that is hard to find information on. Both of these aspects need to interact to create a strong, successful site.

Basic structure 

Home - An intro to the site with info about your business, services and /or products.

About Us - Your mission statement, history, etc.

Products / Services - Core part of the site where you explain your products or services.

Links - Links to resources, reports, related sites, etc.

Contacts - Your contact information.

Search Engines
The way most people find information on the internet is by using search engines. The engines search for information based on text. We put text into the search box and it brings back information based on our text.

For this reason the more information related to your business or topic that is on your site the better chance you have of appearing on the search engines results pages. This is often why some site are not visited, there isn’t enough information for the engines to index, so there is little point in showing it in their results. You’ll find more detailed info on our Search Engines page by clicking here.

Free Inforomation
In most cases free information is a very useful method of driving traffic to your website. Information is a great way to advertise your business, especially if the information you provide is useful. This kind of information can come in the form of
Guidelines,
Procedures,
How to – use your products or make the most of your service,
Instructions and any other helpful information.

Good sources of content

Proposals
Quotations
Company Brochures
Letters of introductions
Sales material

Keywords
When writing material for your website keep in mind the words people will use in a search engine to find your topic or business. These words are known as keywords and should be used throughout the text on the pages of your website. Each page on your website should focus on a specific keyword and the text on this page should reflect this chosen keyword.

Testimonials
Another good source of content are testimonials from clients. These help build a relationship and trust between you and the visitor to your site. It helps them get to know you and with positive testimonials they are more likely to do business with you..

Photos
Photos and images are a good way to visually present your business. For some businesses a picture paints a thousand words. A good image will show the reader the type and the quality of your work. It can also show an atmosphere and give a feeling for your topic or business. Photos can be essential in helping to add interest and break up pages with a lot of text.

Please keep in mind that Design Desk will supply a suitable photo when we build your website and we can also source or create other images suitable for you.

Other Websites
The above ideas are only a few examples
of how you can create a more interesting
and informative website. A good way to
find out what else you can achieve is to
simply look at what your competitors are
doing on their websites.

If you come across a website you like for
any reason, copy the address and email it
to us with comments like:
Good colours on this site,
Can we have an image like this?
Nice layout on this site.