The color scheme of your site should relate to the topic of your content. A law firm wouldn’t want bright, loud colors anymore than an extreme sports club would want peaceful earth tones. If you’re not sure what color scheme is best suited for your site, spend some time doing searches for other sites with similar topics and see what appeals to you. It’s always best to stick to just a few colors.

Keep the page layout simple and consistent. Have a clear, easy to follow navigation. Notice how to your left you can access any section of this site from any other section. Visitors like to hop around, and you want to make the site as easy for them to use as possible. “Next” and “previous” page buttons aren’t enough. The most common complaint from visitors regarding poor navigation is that they once saw content they were interested in revisiting, but were unable to find it again.

Don’t use too many graphics. Unless your content is all about the images, such as for a photography site, keep the images scarce and well placed. While a few well balanced images will make the pages more interesting and appealing to the eye, too many will slow down the load time of the page and distract from your true content. Stay far, far away from using a lot of animated images. Again, while some may be needed to compliment the content, nothing looks more unprofessional than a page full of blinking, jumping animations.

Of course you want your site to be fun for the visitor, but overkill will simply cause fatigue for the visitor. Keeping it simple keeps it clean!

So now you know what you’ll be creating you site with and where you will put it. Now comes the fun part. Deciding what content will be on the site.

But, you say, I know exactly what the site is going to be about! Perhaps so, but do you already have your copy written? Do you know everything you want said on the pages and what images you want included? If so you’re ready to move forward. If not, take the time to do this now. You will find that you will change your mind in small areas many times as you’re creating your site. Save yourself a lot of time by sweating over proper wording and things of that nature now instead of having to backtrack later.

When choosing wording for the site, keep a few things in mind.

First, remember that the reader will probably not have as much knowledge about your subject as you do. Once you write your copy, wait a while then read it back to yourself. Is there any wording that would confuse someone without a solid knowledge of your topic. If so, consider if that content is necessary. If so, find a way to simplify or explain the parts in question. Be assured that if you are talking over the readers head, he will not be impressed with your superior understanding, he will simply leave.

Stick to the points. If the visitor has taken the time to come to your site and spend time reading your content, then he has a genuine interest in your topic. Try not to get off on things totally unrelated.

One of the most important things to keep a reader reading is white space. One huge chunk of text is intimidating to the reader. People are far more likely to read the same content if it’s broken into bite-size chunks.