Almost anyone will tell you that a successful website is all about design, design, design. That said, the amount of conflicting information about web design, as well as constantly-changing standards, can make it tough to learn new web design concepts, and stay up to date. Thankfully, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to find the most up-to-date, effective information available online.
Photoshop can be a great resource for web design. Dreamweaver is less well known, but is another program you should look into.
As a web designer, you should reach for perfection. Perfect sites don’t exist in practice, but adopting this mindset forces you to always aim higher and create better websites. This is a great attitude to have no matter what type of site you are building.
White is the most common background color online for a reason. If you use a white background, your content can end up being simpler to read — and build trust in your site. However, intricate designs on your background can distract users and give your site more of an amateurish look. When it comes to backgrounds, simpler is generally better.
While overall design of your site is important, people come to your site primarily for the content. Keep your site simple and easy to navigate, and only include positive, relevant content and information. The simpler your content, the more quickly it should load.
Offer to store personal information for returning users. When a visitor fills out a registration form on your website, for instance, your site should hang onto that information, and use it to fill out data fields for the visitor on subsequent interactive pages ahead of time. This “sticky” information can make the process easier and smoother for visitors and they’ll appreciate it.
Use a layout for your site that you can work with and that is basic so that you understand the fundamentals of web design first. Starting simple will allow you to add more advanced techniques as you expand your site, giving you a chance to learn each one by one.
A successful website needs to work for visitors using any browser, so it is important to test your web pages to make sure they display properly in different browsers. Something that functions fine in Firefox, might not even appear on the screen of a computer using Internet Explorer or Chrome. Therefore, you should check how all the pages of your website display in all the major browsers on the market, before turning your site live.
Run tests on different browser applications to make sure your site works on all of them. Every browser will interpret the site slightly differently. Some of the slight differences can cause navigation to be difficult for the user. You can find more about which browsers are most in use and focus on them, so hunt down this information. Test your website on all of these browsers, including the popular mobile web browsers.
Sign up for forums, newsletters and podcasts that discuss web design to help you keep up with the trends. For rookies and veterans, newsletters come in handy.
Ask somebody to test the functions of your website at every step of your design process. Each addition or change you make, needs to be double and tripled checked by multiple people. Perhaps you think the loading speed of a video is fine, or that the colors are harmonious, but someone else might tell you otherwise. Always seek out different, outside opinions.
Use a coordinated color scheme, and consistent fonts, for your overall site design. If visitors encounter changes in the fonts and colors utilized as they move from one webpage to the next, they could end up being confused. In fact, these kinds of changes could lead visitors to believe that they have wandered off your website. Employing consistent graphics and fonts throughout your site can prevent this problem. For start-to-finish cohesiveness, use identical schemes throughout your site and on all company literature.
Hosting a website yourself is seldom a good idea. Having an experienced team of experts running your server for you, including upgrading the software and dealing with hardware failure, will leave you time to focus on your site itself.
Having an attractive and effective website is important. A website that is easy to navigate helps visitors stay longer because they know how to find information. You want to give important information, but keep things as simple as you can so that there is no frustration when people are using your website.
Good meta tagging practices will help your website draw in larger numbers of visitors. Your site can show various search engines exactly what your site is all about when you have meta tags. If you use irrelevant meta tags, instead of tags that describe your website’s content appropriately, search engines will classify your site incorrectly and you won’t get a lot of traffic.
Make sure that you include efficient search capabilities when you’re designing a large website. Try having a search box in the upper-right of your homepage that allows searching for terms on your site. You can add search functions to your site with Google and FreeFind.
Most of the amazing domain names have already been claimed. You may want to consider buying a domain name from an auction site such as Sedo. These sites can offer a wealth of site names that are up for sale or abandoned.
Try to steer clear of free web hosting a commercial website so that you don’t cause issues or lose business. Free SOUNDS good, but the annoying ads and other restrictions placed on you by the host can become overwhelming. Not only can this interfere with your business philosophy and web design, it can also chase customers away.
Quality web design is the key to a profitable website. Both the amount of information available on this topic and the changing nature of that information make it difficult to always know the state of the art. Thankfully, the article you’ve just read has given you the knowledge that you need. Use the tips and tricks in this article, and apply them to a website that has already been established or to a brand new one.