How to Make Your Own Web Page

By Alice Seba

Almost everyone seems to have his or her own page on the internet, and it could be personal or for business. It is not very difficult anymore, and also cheaper, to design your own page. Only 'techies' used to build web pages. Some time ago you needed to know HTML (hyper-text markup language) to create a page, but nowadays there are many possibilities for creating websites that don't involve teaching yourself a difficult code. One program to use is Microsoft's FrontPage, which is a WYSWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get). This software have been developed to build web pages as if you were writing a document, and includes easy drag and drop features for images. With some practice you can make it look the way you want it to, or, for a more professional design you can buy templates to use.

As you now know that any lay person can build a web page, is there anything else you need to know before building your own web page?

Your Web presence will require a domain name. This must be bought and will be the name by which you or your business is known on the Web. Google's domain is google.com.

You'll also need a website host: a business that will be able to put your Web site files on to the World Wide Web and is called a Web host. They will require a monthly payment.

The next stage to build your Web page

WYSIWG software can cost hundreds of dollars and allows you to build web pages that provide basic information to your visitors. If you are looking to have more interactivity and features to your web page like: message board, shopping cart (allows you to securely sell products on your site), mailing list, coupons and other options, you may want to look at a more comprehensive web building service, like the easy site builder at internetbasedfamily.com. This service allows you to create feature-rich and professional looking web pages in a matter of minutes. You can also purchase your domain there and they will host your pages on the Internet. There is a 10-day free trial to help you ensure it's the right web-building tool for you.

All in all, building a website isn't as complicated as you may have thought previously. All it takes is some point-and-click web building software, a domain name and a web host.

About the Author:

Looking for an even easier option to build your web pages? Take the comprehensive easy website builder for a 10-day free trial. You can choose from over 1200 templates and your account includes all kinds of interactive features including: message board, shopping cart, mailing list, coupons and more.

Deadly Web Design Planning Mistakes

By Drew John

Websites can fail even before a single line of code is ever written. The success or failure of your website will very much depend on the competence or incompetence - of your web designer & how dedicated or lame they are in preparing your website for your market. 95% of sites will never make page 1 or page 2 of SERPs. Here are the worst web design planning mistakes in order:

(For resources supporting this article please see my blog: Top 60 Web Design Mistakes of 2009)

1 - Lack of Keyword Research - This is a cardinal sin - how can you attempt to write a website without knowing what your visitor's search for? Getting this wrong will mean that you will not rank well for the best terms, hence you will loose out on valuable organic traffic. There are many free keyword research tools at your disposal - use them!

2 - Lack of Competitor Research - without competitor research you won't know whether your page 1 competitors have 30 or 30,000 backlinks, and you won't know if their websites have 3 or 300 pages. The term 'mortgage' has 189 million pages listed in Google - moneysupermarket.com who are usually number 1 has 306,000 backlinks - hence it would be unrealistic for anyone other than a team of professional SEMs to compete. Simple research takes minutes and could save months of wasted effort and wasted cash.

3 - Same as the Next Guy - By making your website the same as everyone else you are not telling your visitor what's different, hence you are setting your website for failure. Plan to be different and insure you convey your differences quickly - think about improving your: content, visitor experience, site navigation & any special offers you might have when planning your website - making this effort in the planning stage really pays dividend later

4 - Lack of Good Content - fail on this point & it doesn't matter what else you have got right - many visitors use search engines to resolve a problem: this could be: find a product, find a supplier, find a service provider etc - hence answer your visitors immediate question & provide plenty of supporting content. The more thoughtful you are with your content the more likely your visitors will turn into business

5 - Lack of Page Planning - failing to plan each of your pages correctly will cause you a problem with 'on page factors' - these affect your position in search engines. The following should contain your researched keywords: page names, directory names, titles, descriptions, headings, footers, menu text, link text & paragraphs. Your menus should be simple/ text selectable & your primary keyworded heading should be displayed high on page. Your contact details should always be found easily.

6 - No Plan for Marketing - if your aim is to write a website which will drive business through web traffic and you haven't considered how this traffic will magically appear then you haven't made a marketing plan. Depending how competitive your industry is - you may need to build 10s, 100s or 1000s of backlinks using web partners, directories & blogs. This may take hours/week/years hence you will need a plan with timescales.

7 - Poor Choice of Hosting - cheap hosting deals overseas may not necessarily be good for your website as many search engines today use 'Geo Targeting' in some manner in their ranking algorithms and you visitors may find your website slower than your competitors. Where possible use host with servers located in your home country & look at live review sites before making a decision. If your site is geared for high traffic and/or overseas trade then use a dedicated server and insure you host has good peering agreements with the countries that you are likely to do business with. Always check your host's IP address to insure the servers really are based where the host claims they are.

8 - Poor use of Colours - using drab or exotic colours could make your website look amateur - you have an average of 3 seconds to make your first impression hence spend time planning your colour scheme. Remember that its not your personal taste that counts - its your visitor's. Take care though as certain colours have major significance in some countries. Insure your colours are well matched - you will find plenty of websafe colour match utilities in Google.

9 - Choosing Strange Fonts - could make your site hard to read especially for people with poor vision. Wherever possible use basic fonts such as Arial & Helvetica. If you must use alternative fonts insure the text is large enough, clear & it matches your website theme.

10 - Selecting your URL & TLD - wherever possible choose a domain that contains your researched keywords then select the correct domain suffix (TLD) - use .co.uk for a UK company .com for e-commerce - you will have trouble indexing an Indian domain (eg .co.in) in the UK . Here are come common UK domain suffixes:

.com - commercial/ecommerce website (UK &/or International)

.co.uk - corporate website

.net - larger network website - typically used by web hosts

.biz - for business-to-business websites

.org.uk - organisation, group or charity

.info - informational site

.name - for an individual or group

.ltd - for ltd company

About the Author:

The author is an Ecommerce/Web Design Consultant with 12 years experience in the Web/IT Industries. He works with designers for many large PLC's such as: Vodafone, Coca Cola & Npower - see web design Birmingham for more information.