Website Design

If you need to learn how to design your own website, or would rather have someone do it for you, here are some recommendations.

1. Do it yourself

If you want to design your own website, then you're going to need to know HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). If you have no knowledge of this language, or if you have some, but would like to learn more, here are some websites with very good, easy to follow tutorials.

Basic Design
www.davesite.com/webstation/html
www.htmlgoodies.com
www.w3schools.com/html
www.pagetutor.com/html

More Advanced Design
www.c-point.com
www.sitepoint.com
www.hotscripts.com
scriptsearch.com

HTML Editors
An HTML editor is the software you use to create your web pages. Here are the most popular ones.

Dreamweaver is the best HTML editor there is. It has all of the features you will need. Professional web designers use this same software.

Nvu isn't as advanced as Dreamweaver, but it has a lot of great features and it's free. So if you're just starting out, this is a great place to go.

My Free Website Builder is another HTML editor that is intended for beginners. It has pretty much every feature you will need, and it's completely free. It also comes with a user's guide and a free report entitled "Top 100 Website Conversion Tactics", which may be very helpful to those of you who are having trouble getting customers to buy.

Note: If you're going to be selling something on your website, then it's important to add good sales copy to your site's design. Click here to learn more about writing good copy that will convert to sales.


2. Hire a designer

If you're not interested in designing your own website, or if you just don't have the time, you can hire a web designer to do it for you. This will be more expensive, but may be worth it to you in the end. You'll get a professional looking website, and save yourself the time. Check out these websites for information about hiring a designer.
www.gofreelance.com
www.elance.com
www.templatetuning.com

If you need some more complex programming done for your website, try RentACoder.com. They have over 175,000 coders who can help you.


3. Templates

If you want to do it yourself without a designer, but you're having trouble with some of the design and graphics, you can always save yourself a lot of time and effort by using a template for your website. Here are some websites that have a lot of templates to choose from. Many of them are available for you to purchase the license so no one else will use the same design on their website.
www.templatemonster.com
www.site2you.com
www.adamssite.com
www.templates.com


4. Website Hosts

There are also some website hosting companies that you can sign up with who also have templates that you can use to design your site, as well as a complete web business solution center. Check these out for some convenient all-in-one service.
Yahoo's Merchant Solutions
eBay Prostores
Hostica.com