Most people under estimate the design of their website. That’s because most people tend to think in functional terms of the underlying site. They also tend to have their own perspective on the site – on what they would want to see. But design is a very important aspect of your website. It isn’t a “frilly” thing that shouldn’t be considered. Let me give you some reasons that you must consider design and then move onto some ideas for getting a good design.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means. I just want to impress upon you the need to take a step back and consider some things. First, design can help you think through the usability of a site. I can distinctly remember going to some nightmare sites in terms of usability. They are the ones that have flashing neon colors, music playing in the background, links in places where you can’t find them, etc. You last about .0012 seconds on the site because it is so unusable. Instead of thinking about what you want to randomly put into your site, think about how the user will use your site. Think through where they would look for things, like navigation. Make it easy for them to use your site. You may even want to get the most non-technical folks to help you. Grab like 5 people who use the internet, but have no technical knowledge on how it works. Get men and women – and folks who are different in other ways like age, race, etc. Build a mock-up site. Have them critique it.

Now, after this you should have a much better idea on what to use and what not to use. Now, think about how you want to present this site. What color scheme do you want to use. Different colors give rise to different emotions. Also, think about how you want to dress the site or skin it. Do you want to promote a brand? Do you want to make it really personal? What is your goal with this website? All those things should dovetail together to give that goal momentum. So, give the user exactly what they want, in an easy to find manner, with great usability, that pushes your goal forward. That’s what design can do for you.

Now, you just have to think through how you want to get that design done. There are many routes here. If you have a large budget, you can hire a professional and get their expertise. They can walk you through your vision and give you an incredible end product. But, you may have a very limited budget. In that case, look for sample templates or think about hiring a college or high school student. You could easily hire a college design student to do the work.

Good luck!

• Layout
• Color
• Font/Typeface

Layout is important when you build a web site as this provides the limits/boundaries of site content and the flow of the site. A builder site web application can be useful for layout as it makes things easy for you to keep the layout and flow the same on all pages of the web site you build. Layout will also create an impression/feel for the site. If you look at a circle, you may have thoughts of openness, adjustable, more free. However, when looking at a square, you may have thoughts of structure, strict, confined. Thus, the shapes used for your layout (such as the navigation, body, and footer parts when you build a web site) will have an unconcious impact on the user browsing. Keep in mind that the shapes may not be defined immediately with lines but parts put together build the overall structure and layout of the site.

When you build a web site, the color also plays an important rule as colors also create various types of feelings. You’ll notice that a lot of tech companies use the color blue, web hosting included . This is because the color blue promotes a new, advanced, innovative, technical feel. If you choose to build a web site related to home trends, colors to consider may be shades of light green or light reddish brown colors. Before building your web site, you may want to visit sites that obtain similar content and take a look at the type of color schemes used. A builder site web application is also helpful here as it will more than likely pick a color scheme for you when you choose the overall theme of the site.

Font and typeface, just as color, provide a specific type of feel when you build a web site. When you look at sites that have a ‘modern’ feel, what type of font do they use? Likely they use a variant of the font Arial, or another type of a sans-serif font (opposite of serif fonts, that have an extra ’serif’ at the end of strokes on letters). Keep in mind that your font choice when you build a web site will provide extra meaning and feelings about your site. Again, a builder site web application may be helpful here with pre-defined fonts based on the overall theme.

However, when using a builder site web application for your site design, please keep in mind that you may not have the type of freedom you have when you write the code for the site yourself. But then again, writing the code yourself requires some knowledge in at least HTML and likely a programming language such as PHP or Perl. Have fun with building a web site

We will also be having some question and answer session for exisiting customer on how to get the most from your hosting plans. And some announcements when Loudsign trots out a sharp new service or feature.

So get ready, we have lots to talk about!