You’re not building your website for yourself … it isn’t designed for you, it’s designed by you for your customers and for the search engines.  Stand in their shoes when it comes to your design, ask others what they think, seek several opinions.  It’s about finding out what they want?  Answer that question with confidence and you are well on your way.

Make my own website that works for your customers and the search engines and you’ll truly be in business.

Your customers want you to build a website that:

1. Has a simple design with a lot of white background
2. Adds relevant and informative information
3. Is easy to navigate and easy to read copy
4. Offers updated and new information
5. Has ads kept to a minimum
6. Works with the search engines

Hit all these targets as you’re building a website and customers will appreciate your site, and the search engines will too.  Some may even recommend their friends to your site.  A perfect example of this is Google.  When you get online it’s difficult to imagine how something so simple could be a billion dollar company. The lesson to be learned here is to apply the same rules to your design.  Build a website that clearly communicates your product to your customers through simplicity of design.

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Design traps to avoid when you make my own website:

• Flash, busy pages, lots of noise and other distractions

These may seem exciting at first, but if you plan to stick around and read through the site it becomes distracting, then annoying.  It may be appropriate for your product or service, however it may be an expensive and unnecessary adventure which often turns customers away.

• Non specific content

Stay on topic.  What are you trying to tell your customers on a particular page?  Are you banner ads relevant to the subject?  You want to maintain consistency as you build your website … all throughout your design and content.  Placing a banner ad for doggy biscuits on a real estate site is only going to serve as a distraction and confuse your customers.

• To much information overwhelms your customers

How much is enough?  If you have enough information to spread across two pages, create a new page. Clutter = confusion.

Building the Website

This can be the most expensive part of the your whole operation.  Programmers and designers may charge hundreds or thousands of dollars for this work.  There are several ways around this and will involve more of your time, but much less money!

Once you have a website design in mind, your options are to either;

• Do it yourself – cheapest but more time consuming or
• Get someone else to do it – expensive and does not necessarily mean that they’ll take less time.

A great way around this is DIY software and I think  <javascript> is the best.  It’s easy to use and allows you to quickly assemble a professional website yourself.  Remember you can always upgrade if things start to take off.  Ensure you follow the above guidelines when designing and building your site, regardless of how bright those flashy lights are, it’s not what your customers want.  Simplicity is the winner.

Consider the following pointers to build your website:

• Make your site Search engine friendly
• Find several other sites you like in different industries and use them for inspiration
• Keep your target market in mind
• Give yourself enough time to understand the basics

Continue Course – ‘Internet Marketing Promotion’ Course – Next Step 2.   Website search engine optimization

• Step 3.       Keyword SEO
• Step 4.       increase site traffic
• Step 5.   Website conversion
• Step 6.   Email campaign software
• Step 7.   Articles submission
• Step 8.   Pay Per Click bid
• Step 9.   Adsense information
• Step 10. SEO link building
• Step 11. Search engine optimization
• Step 12. Search engine optimization consulting