The blueprint of your website is your storyboard. However, before you start constructing your website there are many steps that you need to pay attention to. Planning is the key element to the success of your website. The following tips will help you in building a robust website:

Website Planning Tips:
When planning your website the most important factor is the site layout structure. You can choose from a single column website layout to a three column website layout. The header and the footer is a must. Once this is done, you need to develop the content and the graphics that will be added to each webpage of your website.

Once you have developed the first draft of the content, the next step would be to get it reviewed and edited by a copywriter. A copywriter is best suited because they know how to get the message across to the visitors and also capture their attention. The next step is to involve the services of an Internet Marketer who specializes in search engine optimization. The Internet Marketer will focus on the keywords that need to be used on each page such that the keywords are found in the Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords, ALT Tags and Header Tags. Also, repeat traffic generation techniques like viral marketing, permission marketing, special offers, etc would be used by Internet Marketers to ensure repeat visits.

The final step is to involve the use of a graphic designer who will develop the look and feel of your website. Once these are all completed, you can then start the programming of your website.

Content Tips:
Ensure that your contact information is present on every page of your website. This should include your business address, email address, phone and fax numbers.
Avoid the use of “Page Under Construction”. This will add no value and in fact it would hinder your placement in the search engines. If the page is not ready, don’t host it.
Avoid the usage of background music. There are a good number of people who surf the net from their office and this could compromise on their discreetness.
Don’t forget to mention about the Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy and also the Payment Security Information. All these add more credibility to your website.

Text Tips:
Don’t choose the font size of your site to be too small, as it would make it difficult to read. Setting it to be big is also not good as it would appear that you are shouting. Avoid using “All Caps”.
Keep the text brief. Most of the visitors have the habit of scanning through the text. Therefore, it is important to use bullet points and ensure that your paragraphs are not big but medium to small. It makes reading easy.

Color Tips:
It’s important to maintain a consistency between your offline and online image. The corporate colors, logos, marketing material etc, needs to be consistent.
While choosing the colors of the font and the background, a dark font on a light background makes it easy to read. Choose your color scheme carefully as there is nothing worse than an unreadable website.

Navigation Tips:
It is important to build a website that is easy to navigate. The interlinking between the webpages must be consistent with your home page. Your visitors should find it easy to navigate to any page they want.
It is important to include sitemaps. These not only help the visitors to go to the specific page they are looking for but also help the spiders to crawl your website easily.
Adding an internal search tool is a good feature that you must keep in mind. This would help your visitors to query so that they can get relevant matches based on their query.

Graphic Tips:
Each and every webpage of your website must be limited to a file size of 50 KB.  The file size should be a combination of graphics and text. Your site should be able to download on your visitors screen within 15 seconds.
Make use of thumbnail graphics in case you have many images on your webpage. This would reduce the download time and your visitor will not have to wait too long for the webpage to download.