Every website should have a clearly defined purpose. The purpose of this website is to provide small business owners information about creating a website and how I can help them in that process. Everything flows from there. For a retail business a website might be to provide information to potential customers about what they sell and how to find your store. For a homeowners association the purpose might be to provide information about living in the community. Everything starts with this and flows from it.

You generally have a very short window of time to attract a visitor's attention before they move on or hit the Back button. Your home page is critical in converting a first time visitor into a customer, reader or participant. Ask yourself:

"If someone just saw my homepage for 20 seconds what would I want them to remember?"

In the case of my site I want the words "Features", "Learning", "Process", "Resources", "Design", "Contact" to jump out at you - those are the words I want you to associate with Timothy Web Design and these are the links I want you to naturally click on.

So the answer to the next question "If someone visits my home page and was interested - what do I want them to do next?"

Generally the answer to this second question is what information will convince a visitor to become a customer, client or participant and if that doesn't happen during this visit what information will make my site memorable and increase the chances of visitors returning later? Links to this information should be prominent on your home page For my site "Features", "Process" and "Design" are the pages I think will make you interested in becoming a client. "Learning" and "Resources" are prom in ate because I hope those pages will make you remember my site in the future or possibly tell a friend.

These secondary pages that are linked from the home page should be engaging and memorable. For this site I try and engage potential clients by helping them think through the process of building a website. I'm answering questions and hopefully raising new questions that they will want to contact me about. In addition I provide free learning materials and resources for building a website. The combination of the two hopefully makes my clients feel a connection to my business and gives them a reason to return.

A good image on a website is worth much more than a thousand words. Good photos give you the chance to put a "face" on your words. This face might be you and your staff or it might be photos of work you have done or photos of your store or products. Likewise tasteful artwork, icons and images can bring a site to life.

In many cases actual photos taken by you will not be the best option. There are many great stock photo and image sites with excellent images for sale. They can seem expensive at first, but quality images make a huge difference in your website. See our Resource page for links.

If you are going to take photos for your website I would encourage you to consider using the services of a photographer. Many professional photographers have very reasonable rates for small jobs, but a serious hobbyist will do very well for web photography. Remember buying an expensive camera does not make a person a photographer. Ask to see samples of their work and consider three things about the photos - how is the central subject of the photo presented within the entire photo, how does the lighting contribute or detract from the image and do the colors look natural and crisp?

I hope this helps you think through the process of creating a small business website. If I can be of assistance, please feel free to contact me.

Recent News

05.12.2011

I have released two new video series on the basic skills needed to use Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 to create a small business website. The second series covers intermediate level skills needed to create table and CSS based layouts.

07.01.2011

I have released a series of Start to Finish web design tutorials. In these courses you will see how to create a website from scratch for a small business or organization.

Client Testimonies

"After a bad experience with another design firm company, we were nervous about picking a company to do the redesign of our website. Timothy explained the process we would go through on our redesign from finish to end, took all of our concerns into consideration and created a road map to accomplish the project with the budget we decided on and the timeframe we wanted."

"Timothy Web Design took the time to listen to what we needed in a website and the image we were trying to present to our customers. The end product was exactly what we were hoping for and more."