Your design goal is to keep the website page user friendly, pleasing to the eye, and filled with current and quality information.
On Homestead
, as with most hosting companies, you will be taken to the design page. Your first step is to choose a website template. Some companies offer just a few but others, like HOMESTEAD, offer a large selection. Don't be overwhelmed. Just think about the purpose of your website and take into consideration you can change the layout and fonts so you want to look for the header you like and the general color and layout. The template I chose for saving money had nothing to do with money. It was for a nursing home. I liked the general layout and the versatility of the header (top of the page banner area) and I like that the links were on a divided left side of the site. The colors were pleasant so I kept them making a few changes as I built the site. Most templates come with five pages and preset links to these pages. Setting your links as you work on the page is important. It is very frustrating for visitors to see a link and find it does not work. They will probably leave your site for one that is in good working order. AS you work on your page you want to be very careful to check for spelling and grammar mistakes. If words are misspelled and not written in a logical progression of thoughts, you will loose 'credibility'.
Most templates have a spell check, and use the same kind of format as does MS Word or Works. HOMESTEAD uses a side bar for editing. To add text you click on the A in the tool bar that appears over the top of the page and edit on the right side. Its pretty straight forward. When you are creating dialog for your website content, I would suggest you get it all set and then leave it for a couple days. When you go back and reread your content, you may see things you could not see before. That is just something any writer does.
HOMESTEAD allows you to create a 'logo' for your header area. It is very user friendly but if you need help there is an excellent support team always available. They are always eager to help any way they can. There support is the best I have ever encountered. The header (banner area) appears automatically on every page of you website. For the minimal pricing plan, which I use, you are allowed five pages. Any extra pages are an additional monthly cost. I did not feel it was necessary to use a full page for 'about us' or a full page for 'testimonials'. This just did not fit with my type of website. If you are offering a service, this will be important to use. Anytime you offer a service or sell a specific product you will want to have quality testimonials available for your visitors. If you are using your testimonial page or your products page for other information, you can rename your pages in the navigation to reflect these pages and then delete the testimonial or product page you are not using. This way you make the most of your five page allotment.
Building your content keep in mind you want the visitor to be able to easily understand what you have written. The page needs to be easy to maneuver and needs to download quickly. Visitors will not wait around for cute graphics to download. Make sure all the links are working correctly and when possible set your links to open in a different page. Get as many of your friends to look at your new site and let you know if they encounter any problems or have any difficulties in following your content. As you build your pages, make use of the page markers you can set (links within the page to other places). This way you can give small snippets of information with a link to see more instead of a long, long continuous page. Not many people like reading lengthy pages on the Internet. You are not writing a book but giving 'instant' info. At this point please follow my link to: OPTIMISING YOUR WEB PAGE TIPS and then onto STEP #4: Creating Blogs With Affiliate Links
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