Design My Own Website

A lot of people want would love to build their own website.  Websites are still a very romantic vision, a place of ownership on the internet.  It’s almost like a stake of real estate.  However, many people do not know where to start.  There are a lot of facets but it really is not difficult when you decide, “Hey, I want to design my own website”.

Here are some key things to think about when building your own website.

1) Find A Good Web Design Software

While many people want to go out there and learn web design from scratch, including HTML, Javascript, and even some back end programming, this really is a lot to ask for a “normal” person.  I come from a computer science background so it might be easy for me, but this is my career.  If you ask the normal person to do it, it’s a lot.  This is why most people pay for web designers.

But in most cases, this is not necessary.

There are many WYSIWYG editors out there (What You See Is What You Get) which run on your laptop or computer.  Not to mention there are many web-based website builders (my favorite is WordPress!!).  These are good enough for about 80 to 90 percent of the sites out there.

2) Learn About Web Usability

Depending on the purpose of your site, you need to think about your users, not you.  It is similar to opening a store and avoiding sellings things YOU like and instead sell things your customers will like.  A huge mistake for website owners is to put too much of their ego into it.  It needs to be about your customers.  So imagine when you browse other people’s sites and think of the things that annoy you and the things that help you.

Often, simpler is better in the eyes of users and search engines.

My favorite web usability books: Web Pages That Suck and Son Of Web Pages That Suck

3) Learn HTML (and optionally Javascript)

Why do you need this if you have a software?  Well, it definitely helps if you want to tweak things or add them.  There are many free javascript goodies out there that allows you to add polls, guestbooks, and more to your site.  Not to mention many of the ways to monetize your site are in javascript form such as Google Adsense and Paypal buttons.

Knowing basic HTML is very helpful, and the more you know, the easier these type of tasks will be.

4) Link Your Pages To Each Other

Surprisingly, this is a very important step.  Not only for the people browsing your site so you can provide them with related pages on your website, but search engines like this also!

5) Learn Internet Marketing

Depending on the goal of your site, if it is to get a lot of visitors from search engines and from the general internet at large (versus say a private site): As more and more websites get on the web and more and more users are out there, it is becoming important to learn how to market your site.  This is a big mistake I made early on because I was just too old school and thought a good web design of a website was everything.

Consistent effort with internet marketing will get traffic to your website

You need to learn some basics of internet marketing and search engine optimization so that you can get your site found.  Designing your own website is not good enough in many cases any more.

A beautiful site which cannot be found really doesn’t matter now does it?

Hope these tips have been helpful as you consider how to build your own website.