Creating A Professional Look

With a professional looking site you instantly create credibility with the customer. With good design, clear text and easy navigation visitors instantly feel more comfortable to hand over their details. Having a privacy policy, refund policy, terms and conditions also make a site look much more professional. If your site looks like an amateur has done it then your sales are going to seriously suffer, as will your reputation. If you have a big budget you can hire designers to do you whole site for you, making everything look great. If you are on a budget and doing most of it yourself there is a low cost option that'll have your site looking like the professionals have done it.

Option 1. Professional design template

So your a DIY web entrepreneur you can make a web site, update it, add content. But at the end of the day your not a professional designer. So even though your site looks better than your average hobby site, it certainly doesn't look like a professional corporate site. This is where a professional template design service is the answer. It won't break the bank, and it'll give you a very unique professional looking site. Unlike choosing a template from an archive (which other sites will probably be using) you'll have a design framework to build within that's been specifically laid out for your needs. There is a template design service available from CosmicSiteDesign.com. For a reasonable price, you can have a custom made website produced for you from one of their top designers. Whether you are creating a brand new site or your old one needs an overhaul. Once you have a professional looking template framework to build upon, you should find your web design skills also increase.

Option 2. Full professional site design

If you have the budget you can pay web designers to design and make your whole site for you. If you choose this option you must take note of the following points:-

• You will still need to provide the information for the site
• You will still need to run the site
• You will have to deal with customers
• You will have to pay the designers every time you want an update
• You will have to pay for research time if you want the designers to create the content for you

Some of the points may seem obvious, but it's surprising how often people hire a web designer to work on a site, then provide little or no copy to go on the site. Although it may be clear in your mind how you want to site to look and what content it should contain the designer will not unless you give them the right information. If you tell them you want a site that looks like this.com and that.com, with content like theother.com then you are going to have to pay for their research time looking at what content needs creating. The bottom line is if you want the site to turn out the way you want it, then you're going to have to put the time in and provide the information required. Hiring web design does not mean the designers build and run your whole business for you. CosmicSiteDesign.com offer affordable full site design services.

Tip 1. Advertising banners

If you are selling products or services then you shouldn't really have any advertising banners. If you feel you must limit it to one per page. If you have a content site and your revenue comes from advertising banners then you'll need to have more, but still keep them limited. If you have to many adverts then no one is going to click them, and no one will be coming back to your site. Instead it's best to favor text links that go in the content you are providing. If you are using banners to promote yourself then it's worth getting some made professionally. Banner from companies such as Ad Designer may be free, but they will harm your companies reputation.

Tip 2. Error pages

We suggest that you customize error pages, instead of using the standard 404 or 500 error pages. Add a link where visitors can report the error to you. This will suggest to visitors that you take a lot of care with your site and will fix it promptly when errors inevitably occur. If your site is on an apache web server you can set custom error pages by editing (or creating) your '.htaccess' file, and uploading it to your main public folder. The command to add to your .htaccess file is:-

ErrorDocument 500 /500.html
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

/500.html and /404.html being your custom HTML error pages.

Tip 3. Server side includes (SSI)

Server side includes are the best way to keep your site updated quickly and efficiently. You often have a part of a web page that appears on all the pages of your website, such as the menu or navigation bar. Instead of adding the HTML to each page, it can be put in one HTML file and included into each individual page. So when you need to update your sites navigation bar, the change only has to be made once rather than trawling through lots of pages changing the detail in each. SSI do not effect your search engine ranking and can save you an awful lot of time. For example our navigation bar, top link and bottom page links are all SSI.

Tip 4. Regular updates

A regularly updated site shows to your customers that you care about your site and check it daily. This will encourage them to buy as it suggests that your service level to them will be as good as it is to the site itself. Regular updates also help with search engine rankings as they keep a log as to how often you update your site and add new pages.

Tip 5. Bookmark icon

A bookmark icon is a nice way to add a bit of uniqueness to your link. Browsers such as FireFox will also display your bookmark icon in the url when a visitor is on your site. Quick and simple, all you need to do is name your icon favicon.ico and upload to your public html folder. If you need some icon making software then you can download WiseIconMaker for a free trial.