There are many things to be considered when creating a website and it also depends on what the purpose of the website is, and what do you want to achieve. However, there are some golden rules that will apply to all web design regardless the nature of the website.

Choosing the appropriate domain/URL:

First step of creating a website is choosing a domain name/URL. The advice here is the simpler the better. And also it's important to include the nature of your business within the domain. For example, if your website is selling books, you should have the word book within the domain instead of some fancy words that sound cool but have nothing to do with your business.

Knowing your target audience:

You can create the website the way you wanted, however, this does not guarantee your potential customer will like it. The important thing here is to know your target market which means designing the website to attract specific groups. For example, if you are promoting high end perfumes for women that are aged between 40-60, the graphic and copy writing of your website will be very much different from selling perfumes to teenagers. According to research, when visiting a website, people only spend less than 5 seconds to decide whether to continue browsing the website or looking for another site. And this all depends on if the website is ''catchy'' enough.

Designing a user friendly lay out:

The lay out in your website should be as easy to use/understand as possible. Planning ahead is the key, only put down the links/buttons/header that you think is absolutely ess
ential. Draw all your ideas down on a sheet of paper and you can see how it would look like on your web page. Also, think about your customers: will they like it? Unfortunately it's not how you like it. Is it easy enough to use or to find the information? This way, you will not waste all your time keep changing the lay out when new ideas come up and end up with a web page that is over complicated.

Making sure the website functions properly in all the browsers

Browser Compatibility is vital. Without this, your customers can't find you or even when they find you, they can't view your website properly which means all the effort you put towards to it will be wasted. At the moment, there are two browsers you need to think of: IE and Firefox. You need to make sure your website can be found and work properly on both. It is not uncommon for a website that works on one but not the other. When your website is not compatible with the browser, it could results in graphics are misplaced or even worse, your website can not be fund at all and all your hard work just a blank page.

To make sure your website functions properly, once the site is set up ready to go, ask your friends use different web browsers and search for it and see whether it's easy and straight forward to find, if there is a problem, you can fix it right away rather than wait until the website comes to live because for some fussy customers, you only get one chance, they will not come back visit again if they had negative experience with the site.

There are still many things you need to consider when designing a website, without a doubt above are just few of them. However if you can follow my advice, you are not far from creating a professional website. Have fun!