Website design is just as important as any other design work you`ve had done. While it might be a little different from coming up with a logo, creating a website that accurately represents your company is definitely something that needs to be done with care.

There are a lot of things that you`ll need to think about as the design of your website progresses, but here are the three most important ones.

1. Navigation. A website design that is frustrating to use will simply drive people away. Make sure it`s very easy to get from one page to another and to find what you`re looking for.
2. Eye-pleasing. While you will want a professional look for your site, do make sure that it`s not hard on the eyes. If your website design is easy to look at, people will stick around longer.
3. No mistakes. Whether you are writing your own web content or hiring a freelancer, double and triple check for grammatical and spelling errors. Nothing makes you look less professional than a number of typos on the main page.

Keep these in mind while you are working on the website design for your business and you will end up with a site that people will enjoy visiting.

There are a variety of factors involved in good website design, but if you aren`t familiar with the ideas behind marketing online, you`ll need to brush up on them. Here are some of the most important areas to consider when having a website designed.

• SEO factors. This includes meta tags, properly placed sidebars, titles, etc.
• Look. You want your website design to be nice to look at, of course, so this is a consideration. Think about how professional it should be, as well.
• Ease of use. It should be easy to find every page. Don`t make your visitors hunt for links.

The website design that represents your business needs to be professional, friendly to both human and search engine visitors and well designed so there are no errors. Finding the right design might take a while, so it is worth it to work with a professional web designer.

If you`ve ever been to a badly designed website, you know it. The colors might not work together, the text is hard to read and some fonts are too small or too hard to read. While not all websites have these issues, it`s a simple fact that if a website design is difficult to look at and understand, no one will stay on the page. It`s just too easy to click away and go somewhere else.

Proper website design doesn`t just have to do with visual elements, though. While this is what will appeal to your visitors, there are plenty of other important things to consider in website design.

Navigation is something that should be carefully considered. Is it easy to get around your website? There should be a link to the home page on every page of the site. Having a good navigation system is not only good for your visitors, it will also help the search engines index all the webpages.

SEO actually begins with the website design, so be sure that your designer is incorporating meta tags, headers and other important bits of information right into the design, making it SEO friendly. The right designer will be able to create ideal website for your business.

Should your blog theme and website design match? From a branding perspective the obvious answer is Yes. But that may not always be the best answer. I think it really depends on the purpose for your blog.

I’d say that any blog that exists on the same domain name as your website should have the same design theme. It acts as an extension of your website. But a blog that is on a separate domain name may be something else entirely different. It may or may not have the same design theme depending on its purpose. But when?

Ultimately, only you can answer that question, but here are a few helpful tips that might help you decide:

• If the primary purpose is to promote your website then you can make the design the same as your website’s
• If the content is similar in nature then give them a similar design
• If it is the only blog you have and its purpose is to drive traffic to your website
• If the brand is important enough that you want your blog visitors and your site visitors to see the connection
• If the blog is product-based and you want to ensure that the product is connected with your company name

There may be other reasons to give your blog the same design as your website, but these are the most basic reasons that I can think of. Think long and hard before you start a blog with a different theme than your website. Blue Chip Marketing Tips is its own brand, a separate brand, from Melberg Marketing even though I use this blog to promote the latter. The content is similar to the website and many of my readers know the two are connected, though it isn’t absolutely essential that readers know this. I’m using BCM as a branding tool on its own. That’s an editorial decision and it’s worked well for me. Will it work for you?

Linking out is a tough question to ask. You always have to ask yourself before linking to another website, “What will my site visitors gain from this link?”

Keep in mind that any link out of your website has strong potential to send visitors elsewhere. You really want to keep them on your website, right? Well, yes, but there are times when you might want to link out to other sites. But when and where?

First, never link to another site from your home page. Home page real estate is such valuable real estate that you don’t want the first thing your site visitors see is a link to another website. That’s like an invitation to leave. Don’t open the doors for them.

When you do link from your site to another website, make sure that it’s for the right reasons. You don’t want to link out if it provides no value to your users. You’ll also want to think twice before linking to your competition. That seems intuitive, but some new webmasters will do it because they heard that linking out can give you more authority. You have to really think about who you will link to, and why.

Before you start building outbound links from your website to others, consider these questions:

• Is this link valuable to my site visitors?
• Am I sending site visitors to the competition (even third-party sites can be a careful disguise for the competition; check to see who sponsors it)
• Is there a way I can gain an inbound link, or reciprocal link, from this exchange?
• Would it hurt my business if this link is clicked on a lot?
• Who, ultimately, does this link benefit?

There are two extremes with regard to outbound linking that you should stay away from: Excessive outbound linking and no outbound linking whatsoever. There are times when you’ll want to and shouldn’t, times when you don’t want to and should, and times when it is crystal clear that you shouldn’t. But you should always give due consideration to your motives for linking out and consider who it stands to benefit.

If you’re thinking about building a website for your business then I commend you. It’s a big step for a lot of companies and one that will do you well in the long run. Before you do, however, think about everything you have to do before you start building.

Let’s go through the list, shall we?

1. Do some initial competitive research - It helps to landscape the playing field before you get too far into your plans. Know who’s doing what and take the first step to filling a niche.
2. Keyword research - Without keyword research you won’t get very far.
3. Find a hosting company - There are tons of hosting companies out there. Which one is right for you?
4. Learn HTML or hire a designer - Someone has to build your website. Is it you? Someone else? That decision needs to be made early on.
5. Think about your marketing plan - Yes, you should do this before you build your website because marketing online is somewhat different than marketing off line. Some marketing plans may require that your website have certain amenities. Know your options before you begin.
6. Choose a design - It can be a template or a custom design, but you’ll need to figure it out before you build the site.
7. Have a content plan - The days of building a website and writing the content as you go are over. You’d better know what the website will be about and how you will approach the topic before you get started.

After you do all of that, are you ready to start building your website. You are close, but before you go right into it, check over the details of your plan again to see if you have any holes. Make sure your holes are filled in because it cost you some money down the road.

One way to make the user experience better for users of your website is to customize your 404 error page.

The 404 error page is that pesky page users get when they type in the wrong URL or click a broken link. They were looking for something and didn’t find it. The default for most 404 error pages is a white background with the words “Not Found” scrawled across it. It’s not attractive.

You can customize your 404 error page to help your users find what they are looking for. Here are a few tips to help you do that better:

• Design your 404 error page to look like the rest of your website
• Include your navigation bar on the 404 page
• On some page of your website you can ask your visitors, “Did you mean …” then offer a selection of links close to the URL that they typed in
• Include a site search box
• Add a sitemap to your 404 page
• Use the 404 widget

Webmaster Central now has a widget to help you customize your 404 error page better. You can only use it, though, if your 404 error page is already customized. You can’t use it on the generic 404 page.

The 404 widget adds the following information on your customized 404 error page:

• a link to the parent subdirectory
• a sitemap webpage
• site search query suggestions and search box

The idea is to help your visitors find what they are looking for. Your 404 widget provides essential tools to help you do that. It’s a great tool provided by Google Webmaster Central.

Templates are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can build a website fast using a template and make it look the way you want it to look with no problems. But not all templates are created equal.

The one thing to look out for when you use a template is the source code. You want to make sure the template is easily crawled by the search engines. Otherwise, it won’t matter at all how attractive your website is.

A good template should be written with html, not Flash, and not primarily in Javascript. CSS and php are OK, but in my experience they work better as support rather than primary code. I’ve seen good templates based on tables, though you get a lot more code with tables than you do with CSS and that will increase your code-to-text ratio. Still, if you are building a local website where the competition is slim then that won’t matter much. In a more competitive field you might opt for the CSS over the tables.

The best way to use a template, however, is to modify it for your own purposes. You might take a template and use it exactly as it is, but I’d recommend altering it whenever possible for several reasons:

1. You don’t want your website looking like everyone else’s. While it is highly unlikely that two people in the same industry will pick the exact same template and make their sites look just alike, it is possible. Take the extra step to prevent that by altering your template somewhat.
2. A modified template is more unique. You will undoubtedly have special needs that will have to be considered. Altering a template to meet those needs will make your life on the Web much easier.
3. You learn more. When building your website, you don’t learn anything by taking a template and using it as it is. You’ll learn a lot more about coding if you practice and the best practice is on a template where the code is already laid out for you, but you have the option to modify it. That way, if you screw something up you can alway go back to the original version and start over.
4. SEO. This is the most important thing. Not all templates are SEO-friendly. You want yours to be. By modifying the code, if your template doesn’t start out search engine friendly then you can make it search engine friendly with the right modifications.

That’s it. Have fun with your new web template.