They say you need a website these days to be taken seriously on the internet. There is no doubt a professional looking website establishes your credibility online for your home based business ideas website. But how can you get that done if you don’t know anything about web design? There are plenty of alternatives and choices that will help you with a good looking website design.

It can cost you hundreds of dollars to have a custom built website designed by a professional designer these days. Depending on your needs, that may be the only choice you have. However, if you don’t need all the bells and whistles, you have choices you can make that will give you a website design you can be proud of for your home based business ideas website. Here is a guide to making that choice:

First, look for local designers in your area by opening you phone book, doing a Google search or reading your newspaper. I found someone in my area that specialized in website design to design my blog. Make sure you shop around. Don’t pay $500 for a website design from a large company. Try to find a local person that runs their business out of their home office. The won’t have the overhead expenses that larger design companies would have, and would be more flexible to work with.

Choose freelancers for your home based business ideas website carefully by going to elance.com. You’ll be able to post an outline of your project, and thousands of freelancers will have the opportunity to bid on it. That way, you should be able to get a great deal. You will also have the ability to chose that designer based on ratings, past projects, and experience which will give you your best bang for your buck when it’s all said and done.

Be sure to check out GoDaddy.com. They offer a website design service you can do yourself called Website Tonight. You can chose from a simple template of 5 pages, all the way up to a template of 999 pages, hosted with GoDaddy.com. You would also be able to chose your domain name with them too. It’s a ‘one stop shopping’ site for everything you would need.

You can also design your own home based business ideas website. It doesn’t take much to learn the basics of website design. If all you need is 5 simple pages, go to the library or search online for the basics of designing a website. Look for programs like Microsoft Frontpage, or Macromedia Dreamweaver to help you out. Soon, you might have a side business to help others with a good website design.

Here are some quick tips on how to make life easier for people visiting your web site. This will help keep them on the page and within your web site longer and more likely to take the action you want them to take such sign up for your newsletter or purchase from your online store.

Before we get to the top 11 tips, the key is that they all boil down to… “Use your common sense and keep it simple”

Put yourself in their shoes, they want to easily find what they are looking for. If they are new to your site it is even more important to follow these tips if you want your business to be successful online. Here are the top 11 tips from Web Gurus to make it easier for your site visitor:

1. Make sure images are not over powering and take away all the focus.
2. Ensure your headlines are enticing, interesting, and get people to read more of the page.
3. Make the text colour and size easy to read, usually this means black text on a white background.
4. Minimise the number of clicks to navigate around your site and include a common menu throughout your web site.
5. Use captions on images, just like they do in the newspapers, people love and expect captions.
6. Use text rather than images that contain text, search engines cannot read text embedded in images.
7. Include interactive features (more recently known as Web 2.0 features) such as a feedback or sign up form, blog, forum, survey, or glossary, etc.
8. Include a sitemap to make it easy for Google and other search engines to find the pages of your web site.
9. Use colours and that portray your image and the feeling your want your visitors to have when on your site. Check this out yourself, visit different sites and notice your emotional response.
10. Keep multimedia, movement to a minimum and keep their file size small, plus avoid flashing images, to most people these are a real turn off.
11. Proof read and spell check the content of your site. If you use a content management system like we do at Web Gurus, then after making lots of tweaks make sure you copy and paste the content into Microsoft Word and check the spelling.

Talk to your web designer or call ask Web Gurus if you’d like help implementing these top 11 tips on your web site.

With the advancement in Information Technology around the world, United Arab Emirates (UAE) has accentuated in making world-wide web a mainstream business platform for its local organizations and companies. However, the software solution providers, especially, the web designers in UAE face many challenges to cope up with their competitors across the globe.

Here are the top 8 mistakes that UAE based web designers make:

1. Lack of strategy and plan for the website
The lack of strategy and plan before they design a website is the biggest problem the designers face. The idea behind the website should be clearly defined and the target audience should be identified. When we define our users and their usability goals, we can then devise a better approach to design the website.

2. Complex designs
The web designers lack the real usability asset in their websites. They go for designs that are too complex for the visitors/users to understand. The website design and the content navigation guide the visitors/users and help them find what they’re looking for. The web designers should make the users feel comfortable when they are navigating through the website.

3. Contradiction of design and the theme of the website
You might come across those eye-catching websites that tickle your senses but that’s not all what a website design should be about. The contradiction of the theme of the website with the designs is also a huge hindrance to a user-friendly website. The design of the website should brand your company’s look and feel. For example, if you’re designing a law firm’s website and using a flashy design then it may not be able to deliver your brand identity to your visitors.

4. Lack of SEO in design
Search engines are the biggest traffic referral sources for websites. The web designers fail to design search-engine-friendly websites because they don’t realize that search engine optimization has paramount significance to a good website design.

5. Non-interactive designs
Some web designers in UAE often design websites that are not interactive; in fact, the design is just a dictation from the designer. The design of the website speaks out your business idea and converts visitors into customers. When a visitor feels that website is letting him do what he wants, that’s when your website gets starred. The web design should follow the principles of orchestration and hide redundant details from the user.

6. High scrolling pages
Most of the web designers overdo the page length incorporating stale text. Too much scrolling tends to loose the visitor’s interest in your website. Every time he wants to look up for something, he has to scroll up and down a million times, therefore, wasting the time and effort of the visitor. A good website design should be kept simple by maintaining a single concept per page.

7. Increased number of clicks
The most common mistake by the web designers is that they don’t reduce the number of clicks required to reach a certain page. The visitor gets lost into the hierarchy and don’t feel comfortable using the website.

8. Language errors and left justification of Arabic websites
Some of the web designers are not even adequately adept at Arabic; therefore, they don’t understand the most important difference between an English website and an Arabic website: English websites are left justified and the Arabic websites are right justified. The language errors in the content of the website may dissuade the users resulting in the decrease of website traffic.

If the web designers avoid these common mistakes, design simply and creatively; and follow the HCI guidelines, they will be able to achieve better ROIs. Going through this checklist will make sure that your website attracts more traffic.