Planning and designing your website are necessary before actually building the website! Don't just start hammering away before you know exactly what your categories and layout will be. Make a table of contents of the information you will have on your website. Include articles, news, tutorials, etc.

Where to Start

You will save time and effort by sketching out your website on a piece of paper before you start. It doesn't have to be fancy, just make a box where your logo and content will go, your graphic images, navigation bar or menu, your advertisements, newsletter, and other links, etc. Check out some of your favorite websites to get an idea of how you would like your own layout to look like.

Some basics

• Make sure that all of your main navigation categories will be accessible on all pages.
• Make it easy for your reader to jump back to the main page and to different categories.
• Keep everything consistent
• The color and layout of your pages should be the same
• Use colors that compliment each other and your business (see the color picker below for 'sets' of great color combos)
• Your font size, color, and titles should all be the same throughout your website.

Help in choosing color combinations

Use proper website colors. You can find ready make color combinations which are web safe, and also compliment each other, make sure they match with your websites purpose! Check out the psychology behind each color. Here are some online tools which will help you pick the perfect colors for your website. website color scheme checker

Adding Clipart and Images - Look Professional

You may want to also add some nice photos or clipart to your website. There are plenty of free clipart websites. Depending on your website and how professional you want it to look, I would highly recommend Clipart.com You can signup for an account for 1 week, and download photos, clipart, bullets, fonts, etc. The fee for the service is minimal compared to the quality and ease of finding the images that you want for your website. A nice clean professional photo or clipart will potray your websites image, so it is important to choose properly.

You may want to try making or editing your own images. Photoshop is well worth learning if you are going to be editing your own images. A great book on editing your own graphics is Web Graphics for Non-Designers. An easy read and has a lot of great information on design, layout, color, and of course image editing.

TIPS:

If you are trying to sell your products in an online store, make sure that your products are the front and center of attention with professional photos of your products. Would you ever buy a product if the photograph was blurry or clearly amateur?

Don't use busy backrounds that will take away from your information or products, or use them sparingly.

If you offer an informational website, you may want to concentrate on making all the information easy to find and navigate, and quick to load. Don't add a fancy introductory page that only delays from people getting to the information that they are looking for.

Try to keep in mind what your visitors will want to see when they come to your website. Start by thinking about the things that annoy you when you go to someones website. Bad color combinations? Difficult to read bright font on a dark backround? A navigation bar which is hard to find? A long introductory page? Look at some of your competitors' websites. How do they portray the product or information that they are offering.