Before starting on how to design a website effectively, how about clearing some basic web design concepts? Designing Effectively Now that you know what web design and related terms mean, lets get down to the real thing: Designing Effectively How to balance artistic design with practicality and functionality.
Use of graphics and content Unless your website is all about graphics, how to make them, edit them or just a bunch of links to graphics websites, I suggest you use graphics sparingly, especially the flashing, twirling kind. They not only detract readers from the content, but they also take ages to load. You do not want your readers to leave your website because your graphically attractive page does not seem to load fast enough. Then again, too much text is boring. So mix and match the graphics and text on your page, having enough white space so that the page is not plain annoying.
This is tricky because if your only marketing will be Organic Search/ PPC you may want a keyword spam type domain name. i.e.or whatever. If you are going to advertise your website in your print advertising, business cards etc. You want something someone can see and remember. You can rank any site with time and effort but as far as I know keywords in the domain name are still a factor in all the engines so it’s just a little harder. The best solution to this problem is to just simply have 2 domain names. One for print and one for ranking. Have your print domain redirected to the keyword rich domain name and you get the best of both worlds.
I would focus on building (or having built) a SEO friendly site that was easy to add content/new pages to as well as having a blog installed. I would make sure the site looked professional of course, I believe that having quality photography and a clean design are the two best ways to get a professional site. I would have a very limited amount of outgoing links on my main page and NO BANNERS from directories.
I would build my site so it entices people to contact me. I would have a contact me page, a Auto Email from MLS page, free CMA page, and of course I would have my IDX search accessible and I wouldn't make people sign up prior to using it.(This is debated but I find forced contacts to be a waste of time others disagree and I see there point as well) The reason behind this is a site that doesn’t convert might as well not be ranked. If you have 1 million visitors and only 1 person contacts you would probably be better off building a site that 20 people visit you but 10 contact you. You want a site that does both, you want to both a rankable site and one that converts those visitors to leads.