0 How To Build A Great Web Site Without Hiring A Web Designer

Most people who ask me for website making help fall into one of these next categories:

    1. People looking to create a family or hobby website.

    2. People looking to build their first profitable business website.

    3. People looking to create a successful commercial website.

    4. Website designers looking to improve their skills and offerings.

This article is mainly intended for people who want a successful website, but I believe anyone looking to create a website, regardless of purpose, age or skills will come away with invaluable, practical tips.

You're here because you want to make a website, right?

 I'm a web designer and, if you were to hire me, I would charge anywhere between $1,000 and $3,000 to build a small web site. But this article is about how to make a website for far less. But why would I tell you how you can make websites for less?

If you're like the vast majority of people thinking of building a website, then you don't have a big budget. That alone disqualifies you as a prospect of mine -- it means you can relax, I have no interest in making a pitch. A small budget, though, can still get you a good web site, provided you throw other ingredients in the mix as well. Let's look at available options together.

There is one universal truth in website making: To make a website you need either time or money -- or both. Time and money often substitute each other (you can pay $$$ and have a webiste up and running in 2 weeks or you can save your cash, spend your own time building a website and have it up and running in 2-6 months). How do you find the right balance between time and money? Here's how.

You can get a website by:

Hiring someone to create a website for you

    Professional web site design services are outrageously expensive these days.

    There are cheap designers out there, but the quality of their work is questionable at best.

    You can avoid paying a fortune to make a website if you are willing to give it a try yourself (see right).

Building a website on your own

(a) Take the long, time-consuming way of building it "brick-by-brick":

    This is the #1 reason people shy away from making websites on their own.
    It involves lots of time -- time needed to acquire the skills and time needed for the actual building. This is time you don't have or, in other words, time that would be better spent elsewhere.

(b) Take shortcuts, use whole "blocks" readily available and learn to put them together:

•     Takes a fraction of the time and is less demanding for people with no technical skills.
•     Ideal for situations where the website is a means to an end. You spend more time using the website and making it work rather than building it.
•     Provides the best balance between time and money.

I use option (a) but I'm a webmaster, I make a living from building websites. You, on the other hand, are not. You make a living from other activities and a website can, at most, help you do it better.
The Quick And Easy Route
Use A Builder To Create A Web Site

Taking shortcuts means using website builder software for help. These fall into two major categories:

    Website builders that only help with the technical side (creating and publishing pages, hosting, domain names, etc). These can be both online and offline, free and paid site builders.
    Website builders that also help with the non-technical, human side, the fun side (figuring out what to make the site about, attracting visitors, interacting with people, making money out of it, becoming popular thanks to it -- in essence, making it work).

Now, as a professional designer myself, I wouldn't touch a site builder with a barge -- mainly out of principle. But I do have good reasons not to use them. I can't complain about the free website builders (precisely because they're free) but some of the commercial site makers I've seen make me cringe.

They are complicated to use, redundant, most don't give a website a fighting chance and are ultimately useless. Learning to make a website with these paid site builders is frankly, frustrating and not worth the trouble (or the money). Most of the time, free blogs or free website builders do the job just as well, or even better!

If you need to create a simple website for your family and friends, then free options will work just fine. However, if you plan to sell your products online or attract people to a web site about something you feel passionate about and make it wildly popular, then it's important to look at a website builder that can really help you achieve that (instead of a website that only takes up space).

A few months ago, I came across this website builder and, for once, I was pleasantly surprised. Being a webmaster myself, I am reluctant to saying this, but software like this one could, potentially, turn the webdesigners of today into a dying breed. But I was skeptical at first. Very skeptical. I loathe companies who are quick to make a buck but give you little in return. So I started investigating.

First, I read up on Ken Evoy, the founder of Site Build It. I then researched the tools and information he gives you. I was surprised to see that he follows the same principles I use for all my websites, principles I had often come across scattered around the web, but never put together in such a coherent, easy-to-understand package.

This one paragraph on their website summarizes the basic reality of how people use the web:

    'Online, people search for information, look for solutions -- they are not looking for you. Give them what they want by converting your knowledge into high-quality, in-demand CONTENT. To do this, you create a theme-based topical content that ranks high at the Search Engines, attracting free, targeted TRAFFIC... interested, open-to-you visitors.

(I have a paragraph along the same lines printed and posted on my monitor)

Make no mistake about it, SBI isn't a get-rich-quick scheme and investing time, effort and passion are essential. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's something you must consider before settling for any website builder, no matter how good they may seem to be. Here is what makes Site Build It attractive:

•     It's perfect for beginners because it takes the techno-babble away and makes the site-building experience smooth, enjoyable and frustration-free. And if, at any time, you decide to become more technical, the sitebuilder can easily keep up with your newly found skills.
•     Puts the fun back in creating something you can be proud of. In a few months you'll have a popular website, a thriving community or a profitable web business.
•     The SBI community welcomes you among thousands of other beginners eager to learn how to make a website. Their support, advice and motivation will prove invaluable in building your success pixel by pixel.
•     It gives you the tools, motivation, support and above all, the essential intelligence needed to make a website, one that shines for years to come.
•     Good money-back guarantee (they refund you if at any time you change your mind, whenever and whatever the reason -- yes, I know it sounds too good to be true and yes, I did ask them myself).

Bottom line, there's just one problem with Site Build It: it's so much more than a simple website builder (which is probably all you were looking for). It's an entire 'how to make, learn, profit AND have fun' experience, but one that requires time and effort (much more so than money).
See How To Creating Your First Website
By StartNewWeb.com

0 How To Creating Your First Website?

Looking back at my first site, I know (now) that it was hideous. And it didn't make me any income. But it was mine. And it was the beginning of something great.

Seven years later, I now make a living as a full time webmaster. I earn 6 times more than most of the friends I graduated from university with. That first web site changed my life.

I often get emails from people who ask me to help them create a website of their own. Some can afford my services. Many want to do it themselves. I just know that they are headed towards a very long, painful learning curve. I've been there and made it, but I've watched many more fail over and over again.
Why? Because they want to build a site, just like I first did. And they never get that out of their heads. Even seven years ago, it was not about building a Web site. So what is it about?

It Is About Growing A Web Business

Fast-forward to now. These days, it is easier than ever to build a webiste. Literally anyone can put up a site. Honestly, if you can do a search at Google and get your email, you can build a web site.

It is that easy. But after you "put up your site," it is going to be a hard, painful year(s) of failure, almost certainly. So many people keep on trying, failing over and over, even falling for Get Rich Quick schemes.

So what do I tell those people who ask me about putting up a site? First, I "answer" by asking one simple question, "do you want to earn money from you site?". You should see the replies I get. Of course they do!

That opens the door, I hope, to tell them the most important thing I will ever tell them (and you). If you want to earn income online, if you want to build a genuine e-business, then you simply have to realize that you do not want to build a website.

You want to build a Web business. I learned this from the president of a company, SiteSell.com. Yes, I know that's obvious. But what that means is far from obvious. If it was, people wouldn't conduct themselves the way they do online. They would take it as seriously as starting an offline business (which can cost $10,000, $100,000 and more).

It Is So Important To Understand This Part Deeply

A website is just a vehicle to building a profitable e-business. I compare it to building an offline business. You don't build a highly profitable offline business by building a structure such as restaurant or a store, nor by renting the perfect office space.

There is just so much more to building a profitable business, online or off, than building the "container", which is all your website or restaurant structure is. There are several critical elements that all have to go together. Here are just a few:

    market research
    structuring the business correctly
    promoting and marketing

If you use those free sitebuilders that comes with cheap hosting, you will have a site. But you will not have prepared correctly. You won't build traffic effectively. You will not have pre-planned all the ways you can generate income from that traffic. I could go on and on.

And that is "just" the business part.

So what do I think about all those cheap hosts with slick sitebuilders and a grab-bag of useless tools (and all the expensive add-ons that hey want to sell you!)? None of them prepare you to do business, nor do they provide you with the ability to overcome the technical barriers such as HTML, CSS, FTP, CGI, Search Engine mastery.

Basically, unless you are extraordinarily talented, top-of-your-class smart, and unless you are prepared for a long, expensive learning curve, you do not want to "build a site" if your goal is to build a profitable, long-term, e-business.

How To Get Started On Your First Successful E-business

If you have already tried to build a site and failed because it did not become a business, I applaud your determination. Persistence is important, as long as you eventually find the right way to succeed online. If this is your first attempt, I'm happy you're here!

I'm going to boil down my seven years of learning into a small number of points that you simply must understand and do to build an e-business. (I apologize for sounding so insistent, but it's a shame to see most people fail for all the wrong reasons.) Here are the keys to building your first successful e-business:

Point #1) It All Boils Down To Process And Tools

If you use the wrong process, you doom yourself before you even start. I could take pages to explain this, but I'll send you to that company, sitesell.com, for an excellent explanation of Content-Traffic-PREsell-Monetize. (Don't go any deeper into their site. It has so much superb information, but I have more to tell you. So please come back.)

Once you understand the process, your entire approach changes. But you need the right tools to execute the process. These tools help you choose the right niche (and to avoid the wrong ones), to eliminate all the technical barriers that will stop you and allow you to focus on business, to do so much more for you that I can't even being to explain them all.

Now, I use my own tools. They cost thousands of dollars and took me years to master. I lost thousands more on the wrong tools (but that sounded good at the time). If I was starting over today, I would skip that learning curve and just use Site Build It! (the "It!" is the independence that comes from building a successful Web business).

This product has come so far over the years that I've followed it. It covers all the basics and is always on the cutting edge. They continuously add new tools, eliminating your need to follow all the latest trends, avoiding wasting your time on things that don't work.

They integrate every major trend, from blogging to social media marketing, into their product. Their customers benefit, often just by clicking a button to add the new functionality to their businesses.

Here's a list of the tools that they provide. Please review the list and explanations so you get a better idea of what's involved in building a successful Web business. Then come right back, please.

Point #2) Understand How Process And Tools Fit Together

This video shows how every small e-business should be built. It gives you the basics of what I've learned myself over the last 7 years. Instead of years, all it will take you to watch it is 30 minutes!

Point #3) Don't Just Start. Research and Choose The Right Product For You

Do you remember when I asked if the goal was to earn money? The answer was always "yes". Well, that means that those people want to be in business.

And that means you do research to be sure you choose a good home for your business. You look for proof of success. Real success. Not just a host that shows you pretty sites with nice stories, but no traffic. Look for real, documented success that grows.

Anyone (who is willing to work) can build a successful e-business, from a teenager like Nori, a 15-year old who makes enough to support herself through college to Claude a 64 year old "accidental" business man, who is having a blast building several income generating web sites.

Spend some time on that Web page with Nori's and Claude's stories. There are many other inspiring case studies there, too. None of them had ever built a successful Web business before. And notice how they even update their stories, some of them over many years.

That is success. First-time successful e-businesses.

Point #4 Choose An All-In-One Business Builder

You can waste a lot of time trying to keep up with all the Internet Marketing news out there. You can waste a lot of time (and money) on all kinds of tools. Unless you want to be a professional Webmaster like me, you don't need to do any of that.

Instead, choose a business-building product that...

    Delivers process and tools, all tied together to enable you to make step-by-step progress.
    Provides tons of proof of success with data you can verify.
    Helps with both the technical and "human side" of a website. These programs are ideal for beginners. They are also perfect for those with much "Internet marketing" experience but who have yet to succeed online.
    Has a helpful community and staff who act as great guides. They provide suggestions and practical help.
    Has a solid money-back guarantee -- if something happens which by circumstance won't allow you to continue, you get your money back.

There are very few all-in-one e-business creation and marketing programs. Of those few, only one has a 10 year proven track record that I highly recommend. In case you have not guessed yet, it is Site Build It.

0 How to Become a Great Website Builder

We're all looking for one thing on the web: information - content that is useful and valuable to us. The web was born to make information sharing easier, not to sell. Therefore, we ignore anything that we relate to selling: banners, graphics, animation. We focus exclusively on the information we are looking for.

Blatant advertising doesn't work on the web, but content that informs and educates us often makes us buy.
If you plan to make websites then this secret will help you create better, more successful and profitable websites than any web design software will. Give your visitors what they want, not what you want, and they will love you for it. You will earn their trust, they will recommend you to their friends and what's more, they will buy from you. How do you use this secret on your own website?

What People Want From Your Website

    People don't want to be sold to on the web. We can't turn off ads on TV and radio but when it comes to the web, we are all part of it, and we can decide on our own whether to accept advertisements or not. And most of the time, we don't.
    People look for information above anything else. Few of us are looking or willing to buy right away. Carefully written information, however, can persuade us to buy.
    Millions of web pages are competing for our attention. Make your own website stand out and watch it become successful

Build Your Website Following These Steps

Websites that are successful all follow these simple steps. They don't trick or cheat; they simply give their users what they want.


    How to pick a memorable website name
    How to make sure your visitors will find what they search for
    How to build good navigation
    Why use HTML and CSS to build web pages
    How much screen should your website use
    What background colors work best?
    What graphics to use?
    What should stand out on each page?
    How to make the text easier to read
    Why serve information in bite sized chunks
    How to use links on your website
    Why put load speed above anything else
    How to make websites popular with search engines
How To Pick A Memorable Website Name

Most good single word and two word website names are taken so, unless you can buy florist.com or loans.com, choose a website name that's nearly just as memorable:

    Avoid website names with more than 1 dash (e.g. www.red-california-roses.com)
    Get a short website name. Two words maximum, preferably one.
    Use real or made up words that are easy to pronounce and remember. Avoid words that are awkward to pronounce.
    Use a thesaurus to replace longer words with short and common words. Aim for 1-2 syllable words that even a 10 year old can say and remember.
    Find a website name that rolls in your mouth. Test this by asking your friends to pronounce and spell it.
    Pick words that also have an emotional charge to match the subject of your website

Buy variations and .org, .net extensions of the perfect website name for your own website. Some people may misspell it while competitors will try to steal it.

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How To Make Sure Visitors Find What They Search For

You must know what your visitors are interested in before you start to create content for your newly built website. The more your content matches what they are searching for, the more happy visitors you will have. Happy visitors buy more easily and gladly recommend your website to their friends.

Most people use search engines to look for stuff so use keyword tools such as Overture's term suggestion tool and Wordtracker's free trial to see what keyword combinations they use to find sites with your subject.

You can also see what people look for by checking out some of these resources:

    Discussion lists, message boards, forums related to your subject
    Feedback from visitors if you already have a site
    Public feedback on other related sites
    Guestbooks on your own website or on others
    News sites such as Google News
    Published interviews
    Government statistics or published on other websites
    Public surveys
    Blogs
    Polls
    Specialist communities
    Online journals
    General communities like Orkut, Ezboard and then drill down to specific groups
    Groups and clubs such as MSN Groups, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups
    Things people ask on Google answers
    Chat rooms, IRC networks

There is gold in doing this sort of research. You will get to know your visitors better than anyone else and be able to address their questions more easily and accurately. You will also never run out of ideas what to write about.

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How To Design And Build Good Navigation

Navigation works in the same way aisles in a supermarket do. They take you to the stuff you want to buy. But sometimes the signs above the aisles don't make it clear where the stuff you want could be. This is why it is so important to create good navigation on your web site.

If the information is not organized how people expect it to be, they might never find what they were searching for, however good your content might be. You can't afford to make it difficult for your users to go through your pages.

Put links where people expect to see them. Build a horizontal menu bar with 7 options maximum. Put it at the top of the screen. Create a left hand side menu to list options at deeper levels.

If you have more than three levels, you might consider hiding some of the options from the level above. Listing only local options related to the page people are on.

Always keep the main menu visible. Avoid drop down menus. These don't always work and can confuse people Remember to use breadcrumb navigation to let people know where they are in the structure of your web site and a bottom text menu for easy access.

Also embed links in your content to related pages, products or external sites.

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Why Use CSS To Build Web Pages

The source code can make a website good or bad and it decides: how fast the web site loads, how it looks on other browsers and how search engine robots get to the content.

HTML is the language used to build websites. It is simple to learn how to make your own web site with it. You can do amazing things with so little of it. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can create and control the style of the page (colors, sizes, spacing) but also the layout (the position of text, navigation, graphics).

Use these tips to make your own website source code as effective as possible:

    Don't use tables to control placement and layout on your web site. Use CSS instead.
    Don't use font tags in the HTML document. Create a CSS file that controls font color, text size, weight etc.
    Use CSS to control the way your website looks as much as you can. This makes it very flexible to manage and change

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How Much Screen Should Your Website Use

Some websites that don't use up all of the available space. Building liquid designs fixes this problem of by making the layout fit the screen. Whatever the resolution, the content fills the entire screen and avoids waste. It also avoids parts of the website being invisible to users because it cannot be resized fit on their screen.

There are many advantages of liquid design and also various techniques of building it.

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What Background Colors Work Best?

Years of testing have shown that black text on white background works best on websites. We're used to read black text on white paper and the screen is simply a different kind of paper. Avoid to create your own custom graphics to use as background. Your visitors will find text on a background with patterns difficult to read.

Images have many colors and it's likely that the text color will blend in with the background. This makes part of the text impossible to see and read. Frustrated, your users will leave and they will not give your website a second chance. There are many more websites offering what you do.

If an image must be used as background it should not disrupt reading. Make sure the text color contrasts well enough to be easily read. If your text is white, for example, make your background image dark.

Often, the best choice for a background has proved to be a single color. When choosing the background color remember that users will not see it the same way you do. Screens of different quality have different settings and colors don't appear the same from person to person.

The rule of thumb is to build a website with dark text on light colored background. Some argue that the background should not be completely white, but just slightly darker. On some screens the black and white contrast is far too strong and tires the eyes. You don't want to give your users a headache.

Test your web site in black and white before making any final changes. If text, navigation and other features are clearly readable, then it will work for all your visitors. Convert a snapshot of the website to gray scale and try to work where everything is. Can you read text easily? Is navigation obvious?

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What Graphics To Use

"How do I make my own website successful?". The secret to a successful website lies with words. The power of the written word is astonishing: it can make us laugh, it can make us cry or it can make us buy. The web is based on words and we look for our content every day, most of the time just because we want information.

Accept the fact that words are the core reason people visit your website. Graphics don't sell products, words do. Carefully crafted marketing talk can help persuade more than the nice graphics produced by any web design software.

Graphics should be used only when they are essential to communicate something that is not possible to with words alone. If you want to sell products then show pictures of the product in use. Use pictures to help visitors imagine themselves using that product.

People tend to ignore graphics that are used especially at the top of the screen because they associate them with ads. If you want to make people look at your graphics then create a web page with pictures embedded in text.

Avoid using graphics that have no relation to the surrounding text. This will make people lose confidence in your website.

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What Should Stand Out On Each Page

A common mistake is to try to attract visitors' attention with everything you've got: graphics, animations, banners and advertisements. You're trying to keep them at your web site by confusing them and making it difficult for them to decide where to go next.

Make it simple for them to find what you came for. This is the realistic and effective approach to building a website.

Create a list of important features to go on every page. Decide which is the most important element. On some pages it might be the marketing copy, the special offer link or the buy button. Make it singular, keep it down to a single important element per page.

If you want visitors to look at the special offer, don't distract their attention with other banners and graphics. Their attention span is very limited. Unrelated graphics often distract from making the sale if your website is commercial in nature.

Have someone glance over your web site and pay attention to where they look or click first. If it's the "Buy now" or "Special offer" link, or anything else that takes priority on that page, then you've created a successful page. If they first glance at the flashy graphics at the top then you've probably lost their attention.

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How To Make The Text Easier To Read

The fonts that work best in print are serif fonts (e.g. Times New Roman). Serif fonts are extremely detailed fonts that don't read well on screen because of low resolution. Most printed material, however, is using mostly serif fonts because it's very readable on paper.

The type of fonts that work best on websites are sans serif. These are simplified type letters created to be very readable at small sizes and on most screens. You too have probably found it more difficult to read a web page written in Times New Roman than in Verdana or Arial (sans serif fonts).

Using the same font size throughout your text proves not only monotonous but discourages users from reading the entire page. How to make your text attractive to read? Make sure to use different sizes and colors for headings, subheadings and paragraphs proves and give plenty of space in between.

People who wear glasses should be allowed to increase font size for easier reading. Nearly all browsers have an option to increase text size but only if the web page is designed to allow it. This is one of the most common mistakes made.

Putting the font size in pixels instead of points or ems disables this feature. It makes the font size fixed and that can be too small to read for partially sighted people or for those wearing glasses. If they can't read the information they came for, they will go to a website where they can. No one is willing to strain their eyes to read information that they could probably find somewhere else.

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Why Serve Information In Bite Sized Chunks?

Breaking up the information in smaller paragraphs can greatly cut the time people need to scan the content. People scan first to see whether what they search for is on that page. Long blocks of text can put people off from reading through.

No matter how good the screen or the conditions for reading are (e.g. colors, light), it is still much more difficult to read on screen than on paper. Writing for print (such as books or brochures) is very different from writing for the web.

Emphasis and briefness make content on the web attractive to read. A web page should have a primary heading describing very briefly what the page is about. It should also have secondary headings for each important section.

Break the text in short paragraphs (3-5 lines), use short phrases that read quickly and use as few stop words as possible (e.g. and, to, when, etc). Try to use words with few syllables that even 10 year olds can understand. Use a thesaurus to find alternatives to long and pompous words or both.

Dashes and bullets are excellent tools to increasing readability while bold and italics can make key points stand out. One and a half or double paragraph line height can be used but never use single line height or the text will look too crammed.

Your visitors can figure out what the page is about instantly and take in key points at first glance if you help them. Not only do you have to get your point across quickly but also make your writing concise. The more you say in less words, the more you keep your visitors focused on your website. Try to cut out all the fluff and, as Strunk and White say in "Elements of Style", make "every word tell".

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How To Use Links On Your Website?

People learned early on that links were the blue, underlined phrases you can click on. Visited links were purple. All other text was black. Designers, however, started using other colors for links and text to blend in better.

Nowadays we see links that are not underlined, have the same color as the rest of the text. The use of visited link color has dropped too. Links should stand out and cry "I'm a link, you can click on me!"

Don't take up the example of people who don't pay enough attention to links. Build your own website with these tips in mind:

    Users expect links to be blue and underlined and text to be black. Keep these colors if possible.
    Links should always stand out and be easily distinguished from regular text.
    A color other than regular text should be used for visited links.
    Text color should contrast well with the background.
    Create a special effect on mouse over to emphasize that they're looking at a link
    If possible use web safe colors.

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Why Put Load Speed Above Everything Else

Your own web site should be all about load speed. Building your website for the widest possible reach means your website has to be blazing fast. Pages have to load nearly instantaneous even on slow modems.

Cut load times to a minimum by doing the following:

    Take out any graphic that doesn't add to the user experience. A useful graphic is one that present the information in a way that is not possible using words alone. Anything else is just one extra delay between your website and your visitors.
    Source code weight is another source of extra load time. Thanks to many website software packages you might pay little or no attention to it. With a little do-it-yourself work, you can reduce source code bloat and keep your design as visually appealing as before.
    One way to put your website on a diet is to remove font tags and use CSS instead to style your text. You can also learn to convert your layout from tables to CSS. This can reduce file size by up to 50%. The resulting files are much easier to update and manage.
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How To Make Websites Popular With Search Engines

Most people use search engines to find the information they want on the web. If you can get top rankings for keywords that match the content of your website you are guaranteed to see a spike in visitor numbers. Some people use less than legit methods to rank high but their success can only last a couple of months.

One way to make sure you can dominate the top of the search engines in the long term is to:

    Learn how to make your website easy to use by visitors
    Focus on giving out useful information
    Make sure your navigation works well
    Try, as much as you can, to follow the guidelines the W3C gives to make websites accessible and usable.

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Conclusion

Users don't notice when a website works well for them because they're too busy taking in the information they came for. They do notice, however, when the pages take too long to load, the text is hard to read, that top right image is blinking all the time and they have no idea where to go next.

This is not a step by step 'how to' to making a great website. Following this advice, however, will help you make your own websites as well as those of others easier to use. If your websites are commercial in nature, then the advice will make you bring more money. And if you use a web site builder you can concentrate on improving and adding content to your site rather than getting stuck learning all the tech behind it.

No extreme or unreasonable measures are required, just common sense.

By StartNewWeb.com