3 First Steps to Designing a Website

When you're thinking about the first steps to designing a website, you may not know where to start. Although you'll want to let your creative ideas flow, there are a few general rules you will need to follow first - especially if you are a novice at website design.

It's like building a house. Get the foundations built, the walls up and the roof on - then you can let your imagination run riot with the interior decoration! Here are three basics you need to consider.

1) Your website should consist of a header, the first thing your visitor sees. It will display, at least, the name of your website and a tagline which tells your visitors, in a nutshell, what your site is all about. You should also have a navigation (menu) bar and a main page area where you will place your content.

2) Your website's 'Look and Feel' should be the same throughout. This means color schemes should be the same, the font should be the same, and the navigation should be consistent on every page. Your visitor should feel that your site is completely integrated. If they navigate to a new page to find that it has a completely different design to the rest of your site it could make them feel uncomfortable and disoriented - to the extent, perhaps, that they'll want to click away from your site.

3) Each page on your website should link, in some way, to every other. Your Home Page will link to the subpages via your navigation bar, but then you should also place a link on these pages back to your Home Page. This ensures that the search engines will be able to find every page on your site.

Robin Ive is the creator of Build A Website Buzz a resource for advice and tools for website design, building and management. Please visit at http://www.buildawebsitebuzz.com