The mere act of buying a domain and hosting it does not make a functional website. Though you have options that offer drag-and-drop design capabilities, if you want your website to be robust and functional on all fronts, you will need to spend a little more time in its design. You may even need to get some help, especially in Australia, where only the most intuitive sites get rewarded with visits.
Start working on these parts of the website to have it ready in no time:
Basic Framework
Even before you bought your domain, you may already have an idea of how you wanted the website to look. Turn this into a series of usable plans for your web design company and network breach or penetration testing to use as a reference when they get to work. Go ahead and design the homepage’s basic appearance, as well as how you want other top pages to look. It does not have to be polished, as that is the job of your designers, but a rough draft of what you expect to see will help them design the site to your satisfaction easier.
The basic framework may include colour schemes you want to use, placement of menus or the presence of banners on the homepage. When it comes to securing the website, these plans will help the security provider navigate the pages and see potential flaws or weaknesses needing attention.
Menu and Categories
Most websites have a menu, and to organise site content, you will need categories. These should be easy to see and access for users if you want them to stay on the site longer. If they come in looking for something specific, your site should be intuitive enough to get visitors on the landing page relevant to their search. Have an idea of where you want the navigation to be located, and list the top-level categories you want to use.
It may only be a matter of word choice for some companies, so choose the ones that make the most sense for your website. Each category in your menu may have subcategories, and this will change the way you structure the menu display. Do note, however, that menus should be at most three levels deep, to make them easy to navigate.
Breadcrumbs
Your pages should not be a maze, and your website should not be an endless pit. You do not want users to get lost on their way to checkout. Breadcrumbs help them know exactly where they are and what they did to get there. To make it easy for them to find their way back, make homepage links accessible on any page. For e-commerce sites, give them a link to their cart wherever they are, so they can fast forward to completing their purchase even in the middle of looking at another item.
The overall structure of your pages should also be optimised, and they should follow a pattern. This means using naming conventions on your URLs. You’ll also want to check that you are using dynamic links properly, as they may lead to problems if you change one link but not others. Dynamic links are handy when you move domains, but used incorrectly; they may be appended incorrectly to the homepage, resulting in broken links.
There are several things to consider from the conception to the completion of a robust website. Work as a team when checking everything, and leave no stone unturned.
