8 Simple Steps to planning your site

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What makes a website good? The answer is simpler than you think. This guide will teach you how to achieve the ultimate combination of content, design and functionality and create your dream website.

Contents

Important Website Elements

Everyone has their favorite websites to visit online. These are websites you are happy to visit again and again, not only because of the information they provide, but also because of their easy navigation and the web design that appeals to you and provides an overall positive web experience.

"So how can I build a killer site like that?" Well, you've come to the right place! We’ve written a few tips to help you get started on your new  free website:

Great Web Designs: Visit websites that you like and consider what you like about about their web design. What kind of websites do you think your users visit often? Study these sites for inspiration and design ideas. After completing your research, use Wix’s web design tools to create a professional-looking and visually stimulating free website.

Easy Navigation: The internet is supposed to be simple. No one wants to get lost and stuck and everybody wants to find what they came for. Consider your user's needs and let those needs guide your navigation decisions. The most important information should be reached with a minimum number of clicks. Use clear menus and buttons and provide your visitors with links on each page for a simple and natural flow.

Choosing Prime Content: A website’s content is often what attracts you to it in the first place. Whether your users seek homeopathic remedies, a tutorial on how to build a website or photos for interior design, the website's content is the primary attraction. Another fact about content is that search engines are crazy about it. The more premium content you provide on your website, the more visibility you achieve on Google, Yahoo! and the other search engines.

Methods to Improve Your Web Content:

Quality writing:Clear and clever writing will keep your readers smiling.

Updated content:Sleepy content is boring, both for readers and search engines. Wix's website builder makes it easy to update your website as often as you like. Simply login, go to your website account, edit anything you want and click save. The changes will  be updated automatically on your published site.

Offer your visitor some added value:  Focus on the benefits of using your product or visiting your website. One way to do this is to offer them something extra - something beyond what they would expect to find on your website.

Keep these notions in mind and you’ll be on the right track to creating your dream Free Website.

Road Map: Mapping Your Site

To build a website, you need to start with a blueprint. When an architect creates a blueprint, he considers the function of the element he is designing. An airport’s blueprint looks very different form a library blueprint, for instance.

Your website’s blueprint is the outline for your site, ultimately providing you with a web design master plan.

Iron Rule: When making your free website with Wix's website builder, a superb design is important, but you also have to publish quality content. After all, content is the main reason visitors choose to visit your website. On the World Wide Web, content is king. Content helps search engines rank you, and in turn, helps your ideal users find you.

Things to Consider for Your Roadmap:

1. Function: What will your site’s function be? Will it be a personal blog, an online gallery or exhibition or a promotional website for your business?

2. Information: What sort of information would you like people to find on your website? What should they find on the homepage? Once you determine your website's main subject matter you’re ready to start organizing its content. The deeper you delve into the process of creating and finding appropriate content, the more exciting the website building process becomes.

3. Navigation:

  • How many pages should your site have?
  • What order should the pages be in?
  • How will users navigate the site? How should the menus, interactive buttons, displays and functional tools work?

Important questions that need to be answered.

4. Design: Your web design should, to a large extent, be derived from the function, information and navigation you decide upon. Choose a Flash template that suits your needs best and keep the design clean, but not boring. Think about the type visitors you want to attract. What type of web design would they appreciate? How can you please them and even surprise them?

Once you have your roadmap ready, you can work quickly with Wix.com’s Free website builder  to customize a Flash template and design a beautiful and efficient website.

Flash Websites, HTML Websites & Wix Sites

Stepping into the great Flash vs HTML debate

For years there has been a dispute in the web design world between Flash advocates  and HTML supporters. These days, however, the dispute is slowly coming to an end, as Flash now offers both its unique capabilities and new HTML features.

HTML has been the traditional website format since the 1980’s. Flash websites, on the other hand, use a new technology and create dynamic and smooth web experiences. Many of the biggest companies have been switching their websites to Flash websites, and Flash is becoming a website building standard.

Reasons:

Dynamic Memorable Visual Experiences: Flash is more sophisticated than HTML, Flash websites provide an incredible visual experience, and allow you to create a dynamic and memorable website for your users.

Greater Freedom: Flash provides you with a level of freedom that is not found elsewhere. For instance, you can place objects anywhere you want without having to deal with tables and all sorts of coding nightmares… yuck!

Greater Interactivity: You can create an interactive Flash website: rollovers, color and image changes, incorporating mp3 and wav files, movies, background music and tons more. Perhaps all these features together are too much for you. No problem – just don’t add them. But unlike HTML, at least its easy .

Videos and animation: Incorporating animations and videos is much easier in a Flash website, and they tend to look a lot better than with basic HTML elements.

Wix's Free Flash websites have even more to offer:

Search Engine Friendly: During the dark ages, one big Flash challenge was the difficulty in getting search engines like google to index it. Wix has taken care of that, so now you can build your website with Wix and rest assured that your site is being read and crawled by search engines & by your visitors.

Easy to Update:Inserting modifications into a Flash website used to be difficult. With Wix, those days are over. With Wix, modifying your free website is as easy as editing a document on your computer. All you need to do is login to “My Account”, find your published Wix websites and edit them any which way you like. Don't forget to hit save and your changes will automatically be updated on your Wix website. Simple.

If you want to make a free website, using the Wix editor is a very good way to go. With its highly professional and user-friendly features, you’ll be able to create a dynamic and rich web design that is both easy to update and search engine friendly. How lucky can one be?

Quick Tips for Choosing a Domain Name

The domain name is your website's address. It's the URL, the words you type at the top of your browser page right after http://. Choosing your domain name is super important!

The domain name is the first impression for the majority of your website's visitors. As you probably know, first impressions are quite hard to change, so in order to make a good first impression, we advise that you spend some time searching for the perfect domain name.

Here are a few tips for choosing a domain that’s perfect for your free website:

Keep it simple: Your domain is your guests direct pathway to your website. Keep the name as simple and straightforward as possible, so they won't get confused. Avoid words with tricky spelling.

Be catchy: Creating a catchy name will make it easier for guests to tell their friends about your website.

Stay Relevant: Make sure the name is relevant to your site.

Short and sweet: Long domain names may be more explanatory, but they won’t be much fun for your guests. BecomingABuddhistTheEasyWay.com may be better off as EasyBuddhist.com – a much friendlier URL.

Keywords & buzzwords: Try to incorporate keywords and buzzwords related to your website's topic (try creating a list of your favorite related words and testing them in different combinations).

Choose carefully: Avoid using a temporary name and changing it afterwards. This will only confuse and upset your regular guests.

Wix  Tip: If you’re using Wix's free hosting service (it’s free, safe & simple), your domain name will look like this: www.wix.com/username/your Wix doc name. To create a great name, we recommend you rename your Wix website document using a keyword related to your topic.

These tips are meant to help people find and enjoy your Wix site without difficulty. Although choosing the perfect domain name may take a while, it will be worth your while to stay the course. After all, a fantastic and original name will help define and distinguish your free website right from the start.

Website Hosting

One of the great benefits of creating a free website with Wix is that we also provide the option of free hosting.

That means you can design and build your own website using Wix’s Flash website builder, AND use Wix to host your miraculous creation when you are ready to publish online.

What should you look for in a host?

1. Flexibility: We provide the hosting, but you’re still the boss.

2. Safe & Secure: If you don’t want your site to crash from time to time, you need a reliable hosting service. Your site is safe and sound on Wix’s servers, guarded by a firewall and a load balancer.

3. Free: Hosting can be pricy, but not with Wix. We have a free-of-charge policy.

If you would like to connect/use your own domain you can upgrade your account to premium. Learn more here

Benchmarking - How Do You Compare?

What are your ratings when compared with your competitors?

Benchmarking is the process through which your business practices, your website or you yourself are rated against other players in your field.

Benchmarking is an important part of creating and improving a website. Benchmarking helps you to set goals for yourself. It motivates you to create the best personal website or business website you can.

Once you have the first draft, you are already set to begin benchmarking (using a comparison survey to evaluate your progress, for instance). So this is how it's done:

1. Search & find competitors: Go to a search engine like Google or Yahoo and run searches on the most popular keywords related to your website.

The goal here is to find other websites that are the cream of the crop, the jewel in the crown, the best of the best in your field. You can also type in your competitors’ names and see what keywords they are using to attract visitors.

2. See what they offer: Examining the industry’s standards will help you figure out how high you need to aim and where can you improve.

3. Do it better! Don’t be the same as your rivals, be better. Explore your competitors’ weaknesses, find inspiration in successful websites from different fields, implement new practices into your own web design process and aspire to bring something fresh and captivating.

Remember that benchmarking is a valuable exercise during all each stage in a website’s development. In order to maintain the highest standard of quality, you must constantly benchmark and update.

As you build and update your website, continue to benchmark. In the online world, the bar is always rising. Make it your goal to be a leader in your online [1] niche.

Keyword & Keyword Selection Tips & Tools

An overview and reference to some cool keyword tools

Everyday, millions of people around the world search popular search engines like Google and Yahoo. What are they looking for?

What they're searching for are commonly known as “keywords”. Each search term can include one or more keywords that are related to a specific topic. For instance: “baby strollers”, “Mexican food recipes”, "how to remove stains from carpets" and so on. A good keyword selection can boost the traffic on your free website substantially. You probably heard this before, and you'll probably hear it again: on the web, content is king. It is your content that is being read by search engine crawlers, which then compare it to all other relevant websites and decide how to rank you.

That's where keywords kick in. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating a business site or a personal site. Using keywords that are related to your website in the site's content can elevate its position in search engines and increase your traffic. This does not mean you should turn your site into a keyword dumpster. Keywords should be used moderately and appropriately.

But how do you choose the right keywords?

Keyword Selection is the art of choosing the best keywords for your website. These keywords should include words and phrases that are both commonly searched for AND  related to your website.

If you want guidance with your keyword selection, there are paid services and plenty of consultants you can hire, but unless you’re creating a massive business website, we don’t recommend it much.

Instead, we recommend you spend some time doing your own keyword research. You'll find good free Keyword Tools here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

Wix Tips:

Check out your competition: If you’re having trouble getting started, find your competitors and check out which keywords they are using.

Use Keyword Phrases: Keep in mind that most people perform multiple word searches, which means more than one word. So keyword phrases are generally better choices than one keyword. They also allow you to be more specific about all the wonders your website has to offer.

Spread 'em: Use keywords in your website title, description and domain names.



Market Targeted Web Design

Know who you’re writing and designing for, and this will help you express yourself with clarity and purpose.

You can create the best website ever, but if you don't keep the target market in mind, it just won't work. So, who are the visitors you hope to attract to your free website?

If you’re designing a business website, you may want to consider your ideal business clientele and what they might expect to find on your site. Focus and ask yourself the following questions:


1. What actions would you like them to perform while visiting your site? Do you want them to purchase products, to provide contact information, to subscribe?

2. What language are they accustomed to –  technical, formal or conversational?

3. What information and products/services attract them?


If you're making a personal free website, you're aiming for a different target market, which is a little more difficult to define.

Take for example a webpage created by a single mother. Her target audience may be other single mothers. On the other hand, the website could be designed to inspire children of single mothers, to generate awareness to issues concerning raising children as a single mom or other relevant issues. Each subject would lead her to choose a different design.

Once you’ve figured out who your target market is and what they wish to find on your site, you can begin to build a website with a clear focus.


Some quick tips on how to design for your target market:


  • Design your website as a clear roadmap for your target market. They should be able to find exactly what they are looking for without having to dig through the entire site.
  • Create a simple website menu (e.g. “About Us,” “Products,” “Contact Us”) on each webpage for easy navigation.
  • Keep the text and pictures relevant. 
  • Benchmark: Browse through websites that appeal to similar target markets as yours to find inspiration, expand your ideas and keep ahead of your competitors.
  • Learn which keywords your target audience searches for and integrate them into your content and design.

See Also


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