3 Secrets to Designing Your Website

When designing your primary objective is to have the visitors to your site enjoy their visit enough to want to stay. You want them to have a great experience. In order for that to happen, there are three things you must do: make your website easy to navigate, have a great design, and make the loading time fast. No one will stay on a site that takes forever to load.

First, you must make your website easy to navigate. Keep in mind who your audience is and put yourself in their place. They shouldn't have to hunt for your toolbar. Keep it in this same place on each page. Never make them search for the information they're after. Make it easy to find. Keep hyperlinks to a minimum. No more than three. Your hyperlinks should open in a new page, so that they can easily go back to the previous page.

Second is your website design. Again, put yourself in your visitor's place and keep it simple. You want your audience to enjoy their experience. Keep loading time short. Some say that each web page should be different, but I don't agree. You don't want them wondering if they've somehow been sent to a different site. Keep the same look and feel to each page. Have your navigation bar in the same place, and use the same header on each page. Keep balance between text and images on the page. Play with the site while you're building it to make sure images are well placed and fit the text. Your text size and the type of fonts (Tahoma, Verdana and Georgia test well) you use should be relevant to the importance of the subject. Look at your page. Have others look at it and give you feedback.

Third, page loading time is important. You don't want your visitors leaving, because it takes too long for the page to load. Although many people are now using broadband, there are still those who use dial-up internet connections. We have to keep them in mind as well. We want to make everyone's experience a good one. Text loads quickly, but where you can make a difference is in the images that you use. Use an editing software (IrfanView is free and easy to use.) to reduce the image size without losing quality. Because we want to have enough images to attract our visitors and we don't want to slow down the loading time, using image editing software is going to be one of your favorite tools.

In designing your site, keep these three things in mind and you'll be on your way to a great site. For more frugal and free ways to build your business and your website go to: http://www.frugalebizproducts.com

Marilyn Parmelee is a published author, pastor and internet marketer. She helps author's, nonprofits, and small businesses develop a web presence. To find out more go to http://www.frugalebizproducts.com