Some help and advice on effective web design
The advice given in the following articles is a distillation of all the bits of knowledge I’ve picked up over the years.
If you want to check up on my advice then you will find it repeated in a number of resources. And if you take a look at the search engine guidelines you will see the same advice given there as well. So it seems churlish to ignore it.
Anyway, enough of my waffle. The following guides should help you with many aspects of your website.
But before you begin, it might be worth reading the not so secret rules of effective website design.
Building the Site
- The Design Process
- Building a business website
- Getting Started with WordPress
- Logical document structures
- The homepage
- Navigation guidelines
- Writing content
- Getting Started with eCommerce
- The checkout process
Hi Graham at Aerin, we’re thinking of upgrading our websites and moving from existing designers to new ones. My team seem happy to kiss goodbye to all the editorial real estate we’ve built up over 7 years and start from zero. I think this is commercial suicide – it’s taken a lot of hard work uploading all the copy/images. What will our customers say when our Google rankings fall away? What about our SEO stats? It’s scaring the crap out of me, but no-one seems too concerned, mainly because it will cost loads more money to port the old content over. I realise this, but IMO we stand to lose a whole lot more. What do you think? Appreciate any help you can give, regards, Mike, editor of Aerospace Manufacturing.
Hi Mike,
You are right to be scared. Moving to a new platform can kill your business unless done properly. But the good news is you should be able to import all your content into whatever CMS you decide to use. And it won’t cost a huge amount either, there are any number of companies that can convert one database into another.
I use wordpress because of its huge support network. I moved everything across from an hand-built system to WordPress a few years back and didn’t lose any ranking. So it is possible – and of course you already use WP for your Editor’s Blog so you know the system.
If you want to give me a call after 3pm I’d be happy to quell your fears.
Hi there.
I’m looking to switch servers (currently with Vistaprint & realising their lack of everything) & wanted some advice on the best website builders to use, primarily those which offer ease of upload on the sort of images I currently have on my website.
It doesn’t have to look similar to the current site (I have a few new design ideas) but ease of use is key, as the site is updated regularly, with events deleted & added on a daily basis.
I’ve tried Godaddy & find their jpeg upload restricting & hard to use.
Keen to keep costs down too.
Any advice greatly appreciated!
All best,
Bobby
Hi Bobby,
Try WordPress. It’s free and has more features, themes and plugins than you could ever want. Images are a doddle to upload and display and there are loads of event manager plugins you can install. The learning curve is quite steep (for about an hour) but after that you will wish you had discovered it years ago. All you need is some hosting – which you can get for less than a tenner per month. I’m hosted with OpenMind but they might be a bit OTT for your needs. So try Vidahost who also have a good reputation.
If you want to try WordPress I’d be happy to help out, just give me a call sometime.