Building a website for a small and medium enterprise can be a stress free experience If handled efficiently. Follow these 10 basic web site design tips and they will make your task much easier.

1. Own Your Project: Its your site, your investment on the line. Be prepared to lead and keep the momentum heading towards a realistic launch date. Be patient but firm and keep directing the flow towards your end goal. If you dont have the time to manage the construction of the site, hire someone who does.

2. Choose Your Color Scheme and Layout: Search the web and choose a few sites featuring the colors and layouts you like and a few sites with colors and layouts you dont like. Otherwise, you might be presented with a design or color scheme that is not what you had in mind and that will be force a major delay in your site launch date while you start from scratch again.

3. Decide on Theme and Images: Choose your images with a common theme in mind and make sure your concept is easy to understand. Run it by your friends and family, if they dont get the idea immediately, you need to go back to the drawing board. There are lots of great images you can purchase on the web, however, make sure that the theme and the backgrounds of the images are consistent. Merging light and dark backgrounds can make the best images look out of place. You can find a great variety of royalty free images on Fotosearch.com.

4. Plan Your Site Structure: Write your site structure down on paper or use an excel spreadsheet; otherwise, it might get out of control. Keep it simple but scalable so you can continue to add pages as the need or demand arises.

5. Hire a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Firm: Your developer should have SEO experience or be working with an SEO firm. You want your links and content developed around keywords and phrases that customers are actually using to search for your products not industry insider terms that your customers are not familiar with. An SEO firm will guide you through the process. You can find top SEO firms advertising on Searchenginewatch.com or go to Google and type in search engine optimization and visit some SEO sites.

6. Meet Suggested Deadlines: A good web design firm will give you target dates for images, content, keyword development and site structure. Be prepared to meet the proposed deadlines at the agreed time or you will be put on the sidelines while the developer works with a client that has their act together.

You know what you want; you have assembled a team of experts and You understand the perils of keeping your teammates waiting

You are good to go!

7. Begin With Keyword Research: Participate in the keyword research but trust your SEO partner. Start with Google Suggest, a free keyword tool. Start typing your keyword phrase. Google Suggest will show you a drop down list with numerous alternative keyword phrases that might be valuable to your business. Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool provides free results as well

Once you have exhausted these tools, Wordtracker.com is a terrific paid subscription software that can lead you into profitable directions you may never have imagined.

8. Start Writing Your Content Now! Did I say now, I meant right now! Now that you have your keyword phrase list, you will soon discover what an onerous task it can be to write the content for an entire site. A better idea might be to outsource the content to a good writer. You can edit their work before you site goes live and your SEO firm should have a hand in the final product. You can find a list of award winning content writers at TopSEOS .com. should you decide to outsource your content development.

9. Dont Assume Anything: Just because you have given instructions to one of your teammates dont assume that they are being executed. Keep a list of items that you have delegated and check to see if they have been completed.

10. Edit The Site Yourself: Once the site is complete, review every page for spelling mistakes, graphic mishaps, incorrect internal linking and unnecessary links to the SEO or developer sites. Review your site in Internet Explorer and Firefox to make sure it is consistent both web browsers.

Anticipate delays in your project but keep the pedal to the metal until the site is operational. Dont compromise on your vision of the site but be flexible enough not causing major delays in the construction. Finally, track everything. Your new site will be drawing web traffic to your business; you need to know where your visitors are coming from.

Barry Byers
Vice President
Search Engine Academy Toronto & Montreal