Website Designing
I'm standing at an elavator waiting to go up. Suddenly, an attractive lady comes out of some office. And she goes to the vending machine next to the elevator. Of all the things she could buy, she buys a bottle of water from the vending machine.
That isn't unusual in itself - many people buy water from vending machines every day. But if you take the whole floor plan into account, it is enlightening. Because right accross the vending machine is a good old water cooler. The lady could have taken 3 steps and drink water from the cooler for free. Yet she spent $1.25 to purchase a bottle of mineral water.
Its not that the water from the cooler is undrinkable. In fact, it is filtered water too. The difference is not so much in the water. It is in the packaging of the water! Packaging changes the whole perception of people and they get willing to spend good money for something that is free.
Imagine if free water can be repackaged and sold for good money, how much more money will you be able to charge if you package your information products in a neat little website?
Creating Quick & Professional Websites
Even if it is your first site, don't just put on a slip-slack amateurish website. Your website is your first impression. Just like you wouldn't go to an important meeting in slackish drooling cloths, you shouldn't showcase a poor website during your first virtual meeting with your client.
Learning how to design websites well takes a lot of time. But you don't want to be a full time web designer. So here are some shortcuts which won't make you a master designer, but will enable you to design decent enough websites.
HTML & CSS
You are moving to China for ever. But you don't know Chinese. So what do you do? You go buy a Chinese learning CD and start learning some Chinese.
Its the same online. If you want to earn decent money online, you should spend some time learning the basic online languages. I'm not saying go and learn online programming. That not only is hard but totally unnecessary too. But what you should learn is HTML and CSS.
- HTML is the basic language in which all webpages are coded. Here is a nice beginner tutorial for someone who knows nothing about HTML - HTML Goodies
- CSS is what will make your page actually look good. Here is a CSS tutorial - Introduction to CSS
There are quite a few softwares that will automatically create your html and css codes for you. But even if you use such softwares to design websites, its a nice idea to spend a weekend or two reading about HTML and CSS. Because then you'll know how to do minor things like adding contact forms, autoresponse newsletter forms and payment buttons to your website in a jiffy.
Once you know a little bit of HTML and CSS, then you can start using one of the web designing softwares.
Website Designing Softwares
There are quite a few softwares that make the web designing process simple. Here are a couple of them:
- Dreamweaver - this is easily the most impressive web designing software. But its quite expensive. If you really like web designing, only then should you buy it. Most of you won't be using even 10% of all its features.
- NVU - doesn't have all the features that Dreamweaver has. But its quite good for creating simple websites. And best of all - its free!
The Trick to make your Website look Professional
There are only two tricks to make your website look professional:
- Keep the layout clean and simple. No flash or javascripts. One simple table with a good looking font. (I use Garamound for text and Verdana for headlines.)
- Add colour (but not too many. Don't make your website into a rainbow - 2-3 main colours is good.) Simple colours are what fills in the life in a webpage. Use a good colour in the "header" (the top part of the website). Make links colourful through CSS.
(Hint: Use this website NetHotsheet.com as your template. Feel free to copy its simple style.)
You could also add colour to the website through pictures and graphics. But add flashy graphics and people will leave your site. There are 3 kinds of graphics that not only will make your website professional, but will also improve the number of sales from your websites.
3 Kinds of Power Graphics
- Logo. Add a logo to your pages and people will think your site is professionally made. Creating logos is not a job for non-designers and getting them made locally can be quite expensive (unless you find a college student to do it for you). But you could get your logos made for only $149 from this site: The Logo Company.
- Covers. Book covers. DVD covers. Covers for all your information products. Adding a cover to websites have known to increase sales too. You can buy a software like Cover Software Pro to design covers. Or you can hire a web designer like ECover Design to design covers for you.
- Headers. Usually, I don't invest in headers. But a few internet marketers I know don't design their websites without first creating colourful headers. They claim that headers improve their sales. A good header makes a good first impression - so it might lead to improved sales. You could create your headers using softwares like: Header generator.
Note: Its not at all necessary to add logos and covers and headers to your websites. I've had websites do well without them too. But they do help in making your website look better and increasing sales. What I do is create a website without all these graphics and try to sell the information product. If I sell 4-5 copies and it seems to me that the product will do well, then I go forth and invest in designing logos and covers for the website.
Website Templates
If you don't want to create websites at all, you can simply download and use some ready made templates too. I usually don't use website templates because most of them are crap. They make your site very amateurish. And if you find a good free template, you'll also find a 100 other people using that same template. But if you just don't get the hang of designing simple websites, then you could use them.
Outsourcing Website Designing
If you want no hassle and don't want to design websites or customize web templates, then simply hire a web designer. Here are two very good web designers with a lot of experience that I personally know:
They've created websites that sell products like hot cakes for dozens of people. You could go to their websites and contact them and get a website quote.
You could also hire another web designer through this website:
You can place your project over there and get web designers from all over the world bid and compete to do the designing.
Uploading Websites
Once your website is made, then its time to upload it to your web hosting server. File Zilla is a good software to do the job. And its free too.
Install the FTP software and then use the FTP path and your hosting username/password to open your web directory (your web host will provide these). Then simply drag and drop the files from your computer into that directory.
Once you have a good clean professional looking website layout, its time to put your site onto steroids. Its time to create a autoresponse newsletter to convert people who visit your website into buyers.
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