Give your DIY Website a professional polish…

© 2008 Cheryl Alldredge  All Rights Reserved

Many hosting services now offer simple website builder tools that you can use to create a simple website. While these tools suffer from quirks and limitations that can try your patience, if you’re not ready to hire a professional to build your site, they do offer a workable solution. Here are a few quick tips that will ensure your DIY site doesn’t turn into that sweater you were sure you could knit—the one with the uneven sleeves and odd clumps of yarn here and there. It might have turned out comfy enough, but you’d never wear it to a professional interview or pitch session. If you want a website that projects a public image you can be proud of, just follow these two simple rules: be consistent and keep it simple.

#1 Be consistent!

Use a common banner (or page header) for all pages on your site. This tells visitors clearly that they haven’t left your site.

Keep navigation in the same place on all pages so it is easy to find and won’t be confused with other content on your site.

Use the same font, size, and color for most of the text on your site. Colorful or interesting headings help organize information but only if all other text is consistent. Keep in mind that if you don’t define the font information the site will be displayed using the visitors Web Browser defaults. This is okay if all of your text is left undefined, but if you define one paragraph and not the next the fonts will be inconsistent and give your site a sloppy look.

#2 Keep it simple!

Unless you are a budding artist, stick with one or two colors you know work well together. Take inspiration from simply styled sites you love and don’t stray far from the safe zone.

Avoid flashy animations that don’t directly relate to the goals of your site. For example, well put together book trailer videos are a great addition to an author site, but dancing macaroni or special pointer animations can detract from your visitor’s experience. Sure, some people will love them, but many will find them annoying and pointless. Dial-up visitors will have to wait longer for your “tricked out" site to download. Skip these tempting gimmicks to avoid looking amateurish.

Keep page layout simple. A single column design can be quite elegant with a few simple dividers and images dropped in to break up the text.

Consistent + simple…a formula for success!

Whether your personal style is comical or classy, these two rules can give your DIY website a polished look to rival the pros.