Web page design may appeal to the creative side of you, but at times it can seem a little overwhelming and leave you in awe. As you become educated about it, however, you will see that it is not as hard as you thought. With the ideas provided further in the reading, you will have a basic understanding of how you can design a site that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional.
When developing a website, you must check out how it looks in various browsers. If you just check it from you personal computer, what you see may be vastly different from what others see. Design your site with the limitations of the different browsers in mind. You may also want to view your site using a different computer operating system to make sure that everything is compatible whether they are using Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Pay attention to the colors on your website to make sure they match. Choose a font and color that will help your words stand out from the background. In general, a light background with darker text is much clearer than the reverse situation. If you can’t decide if the colors are right, ask someone you know for feedback.
One critical part of great web design is ease of navigation. Ensure that links are easy discovered and displayed in a prominent location. Menus can also help with site navigation. Make sure that you have links posted to every page of the website. This will allow visitors to easily navigate the site.
Check for broken links before publishing a page. An error page after clicking a link is very frustrating for visitors to your page. Check out your links manually on your own, or use a program for the scan.
Keep personal information handy in the event that it must be re-entered by a repeat visitor of your website. An example of this is if someone fills out a form to register, and then has to fill out other forms for other things. If the person’s info transfers from one form to the next, it will be much more convenient and less time consuming for the user. This “sticky” information can make the process easier and smoother for visitors and they’ll appreciate it.
Despite the type of site you are going to have, you definitely want to keep the loading time under ten seconds. This will make people want to stay on your site. Make sure online visitors obtain the information they need rapidly.
Your visitors should be able to see your content regardless of the browser they are using. Test your pages with different browsers to make sure it is displayed properly. Different browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Chrome may not display content the same way; what works in one might not work in another. Check how each page displays in the major browsers before your site goes live.
Make use of keyword research. Of course, you want to put up good, solid information. However, you also must draw visitors in to your site. Making use of keywords is what drives traffic to your site and makes it successful.
Use free alternatives to pay web page design software whenever possible. While it is widely thought that pricey software and tools are the only solutions to building a quality website, there are actually vast amounts of free software and tools available on the Internet. Both of which can help you as you start the design process and to keep your site up and running. All that is required from you is a little bit of effort in finding and choosing the free tools that will give you just what you’re looking for.
When you design a site, try to stick to just a few web fonts. Think about how the various fonts look on a standard computer display. Tiny fonts can be difficult to read. Verdana is a font commonly used because it’s easy to read in an array of colors and sizes.
Page size must be kept small. The users with poor Internet speeds will have a tough time if you do not. You do not want your page viewers to be stuck waiting for every page to download, or they may end up abandoning your site.
Search Engines
Don’t use frames if you want a site search engines can crawl! Frames are good for some situations, but they don’t allow your content to be indexed. If the search engines can’t view this important information, then you’re not going to fare well in the search engine rankings. If that happens, you will not get as many visitors.
Include strong meta-tags on every page of your site, if you want to get more visitors to your site. Good meta tags help search engines understand and categorize your website’s content properly. If you have poorly thought out the meta tags that have no reflection on what your sites content is, you will not be getting many visitors.
Make sure to ensure priority of your user’s needs. The web designer must know what the readers are looking for at all times. Usability, user experience and interaction are all important. It is essential that you don’t drop the ball on this. Look at things the way your readers would see things when you go to design a page.
At this point, you probably see that designing a website is not really as confusing as you thought. Learning more about web design will help you create a website that lives up to your expectations. With the help of this article’s advice, you can be well on your way to putting together an outstanding website of your own.