Before you even think about starting to create your website you need to discover what type of audience and users you're wanting to target. So to do this you need an idea already in mind on what your website will be. So then you can figure out who will want to view it, this is a good idea to do first as then you can change your ideas customised to the audiences' needs.
Usability
The usability of your website is key, the more simple the website is to navigate around the more users will use it. The best way to do this is to keep it simple and make a clear path to where the users can get to.
Language and Terminology
Now this may come as a shock to you, but not everyone speaks or reads the same as you. So you will need to make sure that the language that you use is simple and easily understood by everyone, so don't use really big fancy words unless you really need to, but that comes under terminology. If you need to use a term that is associated with what the content is then it will be fine, as long as you include some sort of explanation into what that word means so the user doesn't get too confused about it.
Design
Now when you're creating your website you will need to take the design of it into consideration, this includes colour, images, type and consistency. You will need to use the best colour for your target audience and what suits the content of your website, so for example, if its a sporting website, the best colour would probably be a green since green is an active colour that represents sports. For type you will need to make sure that the text that is used is simple to read and that the kerning (the spaces between each letter) and leading (the spaces between each line of text) are at the correct distance so the user doesn't get lost or read a line more than once. In terms of images, it's best to use your own so you avoid any copyright claims on images that are used since this could becomes quite an issue for you. If you don't own the image, make sure you get the owners permission before using it. The images that you will use will most likely be again associated with what type of website you're running. Now to keep your users familiar with your website, it's best to keep all your pages the same, rather than creating random pages with different colours and type on it.
Navigation
Okay so navigation is a big part of your website, if you didn't have it, the user wouldn't be able to interact with your website. Now you will need to know about the primary, secondary and tertiary navigation. Now Primary navigation is the main navigation that you see on every single page you go to, so that means the Secondary navigation is another navigation that you can only see by clicking a link on the Primary navigation, and finally Tertiary navigation, this is where you can see it by clicking on a link from the Secondary navigation and this is the only way you can get to it by following this sequence. When positioning your navigation, the best place to put it is at the top left, this is because when a website loads it always loads at the top of the website, so that will be the first thing the user sees, also scientists have done experiments to find out where the most viewed place is when viewing content on a website, from their research they have found out that the left side if the most viewed side, which is again making the navigation placed at the left the most important place.
Use of Colour
Now I've already talked about colour before when designing your website. This is so important I'm going to mention it again. When creating your website you need to use a colour that is most popular among your target audience, using a different example from before, if you were to create a website for a Make Up Artist you wouldn't use blues and greens for the website since they aren't essentially feminine, so instead you will most likely use pinks and purples, since they are more associated with females and attract more female members.
Taking in consideration your websites main colours, lets stick to the pink colour, since this is a vibrant colour you will want to make your text stand out the most, so maybe using black text on a pink background wouldn't be the best idea, since it's quite difficult to read it. So think about a colour that is quite far away from pink, I would say that using white text on a pink background would be the best option, due to you being able to read this text a lot better than the black text on a pink background.
Lead Lines
What are lead lines? They are mostly involved in images, but they also can be included if you're using images within your website. Lead lines are the imaginary lines inside an image that lead a viewer to the part of the image the photographer wants them to see. In terms of web design you could use an image that has these hypothetical lines to attract the viewer to notice your navigation more or to see your testimonials (if included on your website) more.
Depth of Field / Focal Point
Now again these are more common in Photography, but can be applied within web design. Depth of Field is basically the part of an image that creates depth between the foreground and the background, in Photography it's normally displayed by an object in the foreground that is sharp and then the background behind it completely blurred out, which is making the focal point of the image the foreground. Oh, what's focal point? Well the focal point is the part of the image that is the most in focus, this what the photographer wants the viewer to see first.
Rule of Thirds
Again Rule of Thirds is more common in Photography, but it can be applied in web design. Rule of Thirds is an hypothetical grid that divides the image/website into a 3 x 3 grid. Now where the grid crosses, these are the focal points of the image/website, this is where most of the content will be best placed. Now again people have done research with the Rule of Thirds on which cross is the most commonly looked at, the image that is displayed below is what the percentage of the image they looked at the most.
Now as you can see the top left is again the most viewed part, so if you create a hypothetical Rule of Thirds grid, you will see where to include the most important content of your website.
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