Designing a Website -
Professional Page Layout

Think of your website's index page as your storefront "window".

If the design does not follow accepted marketing (and design) techniques it will not serve you well.
Your opening page (or any of the pages on your site for that matter) MUST immediately satisfy the viewer's question:

"WHAT IS IN THIS SITE (PAGE) FOR ME?"

You have 10 seconds to "capture" the male visitor and 14 seconds for the female visitor.
First though, I would recommend reading http://htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/wsdg.html and taking a close look at the questions Joe says you MUST answer before you write one line of text or code.

Question One: Who Is Your Site For?
Joe goes into this in more detail in the link above but basically he asks if your site is for your visitors or if it is to satisfy the authors desire to express themselves with graphics or coding tricks.
Initially, visitors do not care if your business has been around for 200 years, nor do they want to see half the page filled up with an image of your new location.
New visitors want information related to the search that brought them to your site in the first place.

Question Two: What Is Your Killer App?
This is a bit off the wall but you can decipher it to mean:
What Do You Want the Site to Do?
Will it act as a simple Public Relations vehicle, or will the site sell your products/services?

Question Three: What Is Your Identification?
By this Joe means what is it that defines and identifies your site. You need to define your graphics, colors, font, and the way your site displays, the character.

Question Four: Who Is Your Competition?
Question Five: What Makes Your Site Different?
Why will people visit your site rather than your competition's websites?
You have to give them a reason to stay.
Better information is key.

If you have products that need a description - give a good one.
The more information that is available the more likely I will be able to make a decision.

I cannot put enough emphasis on designing your home page.
Here is another article:

The First Fold Makes Your Site! (Or Breaks It.)

Written by Bob McElwain - Full eBook "1001 Newbie-Friendly Tips" at right.

Visitors to your site are not looking to make a new friend. They don't want to chat. And they don't give a darn what you think about anything, least of all your product. They only want to know:

1) What's in it for me?

2) Why should I believe you?

3) Why should I buy from you?

They will answer the first two questions to their satisfaction within seconds. Only if they like these answers will they even consider the third. And at least a partial answer to it must come easily, or they'll never see your sales pitch.

Use your space wisely.

• DO design your web page around your keywords. This is THE most important ingredient for top listings on the major search engines.
• DO make your page easily readable. Be careful when using background/text colors.
• DO NOT make your main page slow to open by using too many graphics.
• DO NOT design your site in "frames". The major search engines do not like them and using them will most likely result in poor rankings.
• DO use a full screen display. Do not* design for fixed resolutions. Designing for fixed resolutions wastes valuable "real-estate" when visitors arrive using higher resolutions.  This can be done easily using tables. Set your table properties to display at 100%.

WebMaster Tip:  A comprehensive article on page widths can be found at http://webreview.com/2001/03_16/webauthors/index01.shtml

• DO NOT overpower your website with your logo. No one but you and the graphic designer cares.
• DO answer the viewer's reason for being at your site in the first screen displayed, WITHOUT scrolling.
• DO NOT use a "Splash Page". These serve no purpose and just remove the viewer one step further from the information they are seeking.

• DO NOT say "Welcome to our website". Again no one cares.
• DO include an "opt in" email form on your pages. The top center or top right side is the "sweet spot".
  "Opt-In" email databases are the 2nd highest means of generating sales. (The major search engines listings are the first).

WebMaster Tip:  A free email autoresponder service is available from Get Response
Another service is also available from Postmaster On Line This service offers up to 50 timed autoresponders and offers a one month trial for $1.00

• DO NOT plaster your pages with banners. Your visitors are not coming to see advertising. Business related banners are ok but use them wisely.
• DO use a means of tracking website visitors.

WebMaster Tip: WebTrends is one of the premiere visitor tracking tools. They offer a free "demo" service which can be found at WebTrends Live

• DO NOT use an automatic page redirect. The (major) search engines will not index the page.
• DO use technology to promote your page. Autoresponders, see Get Response, promotional software
• DO make certain that your page(s) displays correctly using both Internet Explorer and Netscape.

And last but not least:

• DO use a professional website design program.

WebMaster Tip: I use Microsoft's Front Page as it is a flexible tool for web design. I have tried most of the professional design programs and find that FP suits me the best. One drawback to FP is that the hosting company has to have Front Page Extensions (FP Extensions are basically "drivers" for the advanced portions of the pages. They are required for the forms, counters, and so on.) installed for the advanced features to work. Front Page webs CAN be FTP'd to a non MSFP equipped server.
For those of you that do not wish to use Front Page, CoffeeCup html editor would be my choice. Click CoffeeCup, read what they say about it and try the program from HERE. (We downloaded this for you also).

Page Layout Explained

Authors Special Note: Experience has taught me to use a professional website design program. After trying many different programs I chose Microsoft's Front Page. There were many reasons for this but primarily it came down to ease of use, excellent navigational structure outlines, and configurability. There is also a lot of technical support available for users of this program, both in newsgroups and websites dedicated to the program.

As you see the layout shows 4 "borders". Each border is actually a Server Side Include (SSI) that is reflected in all the pages on your site. When a new page is designed you can specify which borders to include.
This is one of the options available in Front Page. This can also be done manually through the use of SSI. More information about SSI can be found HERE.