Flash websites are easy to make and they should be easy-to-use and pleasing to the eye. Use these seven tips to make your website enjoyable and attractive.
1. The name of your website is important, as is the URL. When you build a free Flash website with Wix, the name of your website is part of the URL. Carefully consider what to call your website to help people identify what the website is about and to make it easy to find in searches. Don’t make it so long that it is cumbersome, but don’t make it too short, either. You need to strike a balance between the two and have it be a name that is easy to remember.
2. Take time to do keyword research. Keywords are very important to a website because they are one of the items that search engines use to index and rank your site. You can use Google’s Keyword Tool or WordStream’s tools to research popular and relevant keywords for your free website.
3. Use headings and subheadings to group information and catch your visitor’s attention. Vary the fonts and colors of your headings and subheadings, but don’t get crazy. Only use two to three colors to keep your website from looking jumbled and messy. Don’t go crazy with your fonts, either. Use a maximum of three for headings, subheadings, and text and use easy-to-read fonts. You can use a bit of a fancy font for your headings, but don’t go overboard with a lot of scrolls and swirls. Also, make your text a color that people can read. Light-colored text is hard for many people to read so it is best to use a dark color.
4. Quality content will draw people to your free Flash website and keep them there. It will also keep them coming back. The best SEO and the slickest design means nothing if people get to your website and find dull, uninteresting – or even worse, plagiarized – content. Make your content engaging and original, and keep your keyword saturation to between 2 and 3 percent. Let your keywords fall naturally in your content so that they do not stand out. You’ve probably been to websites that have several typos, use archaic language, and are stuffed with so many keywords the content makes no sense. Do not fall into this trap. If you don’t want to or don’t have time to write your own content, hire someone to do it for you. It will be well worth the investment.
5. Links that work are one of the top items that search engines look at when they crawl your site with their programs called spiders. Working links are also important to human visitors so that they can navigate your website easily. All of your pages should link to each other, and you should have outbound links to relevant websites and inbound links from articles, blogs and videos that you have posted on the Internet. All of these help the usability and SEO of your website. Check your links periodically to make sure they work and fix any that are broken.
6. Good design, which is easy with the Wix website builder, makes your website appealing and easy-to-understand. Don’t fill up each and every space with text or images. Leave some white space to group sections together and make your website look organized. Good balance is also important. Like a painting or a drawing, your Flash website needs focal points. You can use a symmetrical balance and have equal components spaced horizontally and vertically, or you can use an asymmetrical balance and have components of different sizes balanced horizontally and vertically. How you would achieve this is to have a large item on one side balanced with a smaller item on the other side. Both types of balance are visually appealing if done correctly. Use the drag and drop feature of the website builder to move your components around until you feel your pages are balanced.
7. Each website needs a contact page and a contact form. If visitors have questions or comments, they need a place on your website to contact you. You might also want to include a comment form to encourage a sense of community and to connect with your visitors.
Use these seven basic items to make your own website and make it appealing and easy-to-use. Remember to have fun with your website and look at it from your visitor’s point of view to make sure people will enjoy using it.
