It amazes me how many times I've seen people wanting a website "like this". Where this indicates another existing site. And every time, I have to give a slight sigh and shake of my head. Turning to other sites for inspiration is definitely a wise thing to do. In fact, when you are designing yours, the second thing you should do (after keyword selection) is type a couple of your keywords into the search engines and look at what the businesses at the top are doing. These are your competition. More to the point, they are the most successful members of your competition.

But saying that you want to be like this site or that business is not a viable decision. First, bear in mind that there is already someone else who is doing that. And this person or group or business has been doing it for longer than you have, and are ranking higher on the search engines than you are. That latter condition is, hopefully, temporary, but given two organizations with similar purposes and designs, it is the more experienced group that will get the majority of the business.

The other problem with saying you want to be like someone else is that it doesn't give your web designer much information. I've had more than a few clients send me links to sites they like, which is well and good, but so rarely does that provide me with any real information about what they want me to incorporate into their site.

Do you like the layout? The graphics? The colors? What aspects do you favor? Use others for inspiration, but don't stop at a link. Determine what parts you like.

And then decide how to work such aspects into your design. And then figure out what you don't like. Consider things that you could do better, that might be improved upon. Look at two different sites; think about how one's layout might complement the other's functions, especially when both are used to present your products.

The goal is to make your website uniquely yours, but to use and take advantage of proven methods. You don't want to play entirely by the rules of others, because playing by the champion's rules is a sure way to lose unless you are simply better at the game. If you can compete in your own style, taking what benefits you, discarding the rest, and adding your own touch, you have a much better chance of being recognized as a unique entity in your own right. Otherwise, you run the risk of being marked as such another of the millions of .coms using the same forms and functions, the same styles and layouts.

It can be hard to come up with ideas, and it will always be time consuming to figure out which ideas work. By using other websites for inspiration, you can get a number of proven ideas quickly, which can be added to, deleted, or modified to suit your site. Be they colors, graphics, layout, even code, you can take advantage of the results created by others to help you figure out what you want your result to be. Used properly, as a single step in the process, this technique can only improve the finished work. But used as the process itself, and you end up with an easily-ignored impersonation of an already successful competitor.

About the Author

Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in creating highly customized, visually impressive websites at affordable prices.