Has to always been your desire to design your own site but you’re clueless on how to begin? Can you not afford to hire a professional? The following article is the place to start because there are a lot of suggestions to help you create the website you have always wanted.
Look at your site in many different browsers. What you may see might not be what other people see. This means that you need to understand which browsers are most widely in use today, and check the site in each one. Checking your website with different operating systems and browsers will help ensure that it works for everyone.
Add a prominent tagline to your website. Using a tagline simply means that you will need to come up with a quick statement that lets visitors know what your site is all about. Making use of clear taglines becomes important when the page is visited. You have a short amount of time to catch the visitor’s attention and get them hooked.
Fixed navigation panels are a good way to allow your visitors to easily navigate your site. This means locking down the site’s navigation panel into position when the visitor scrolls up and down the webpage. This is ideal for both visitors and marketers alike, as desired actions are executed much more quickly.
Pages Load
Speed is vital when it comes to the Internet; therefore, you should ensure that your pages load really fast. If a visitor has to sit and wait for several minutes while your pages load, they are almost certainly going to click away from your site and go somewhere else, and they probably will not come back to your site.
Make sure that there is a site feature that will allow users to seek for specific content. A search box is essential. If you don’t have one, they may go to another site which does. People look for these search boxes in the top right corner of the page, so place the search box in that area.
If you want to maximize the potential of your website design, ensure that your pages appear correctly on all web browsers, so any visitor can view them. Some things that work in Internet Explorer might not work correctly in Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Test every page in each browser before you let your site go live.
Make sure that you regularly remove outdated and inaccurate content from your website. If your page is promoting a special event that happened 6 months ago, you have already lost readers. Users are going to want to spend time on websites that have been cared for, and when old information is kept up it shows that the site is not being paid attention to. Create a schedule that will help you manage information and specials, and remind you to take down useless items.
No matter who your target audience is or what your site is intended for, you should always aim to keep loading time to ten seconds or less. You want your site to load quickly on the browser of whoever is visiting your page. Most visitors want instant gratification, so give it to them.
Make sure that your front page is not too difficult to read. People who are shopping around decide quickly whether to use a site or continue searching by viewing the front page. Use descriptions about your company and it’s goals.
Make sure your website is easily scanned. Usability tests indicate that the majority of online users fail to read content in its entirety, scanning instead for bits of information that are of interest to them. Emphasized text is more easily scanned and helps readers along, also better ensuring they return. The top of the page is the correct placement for your highest quality information. Your visitors will enjoy their time on the website more.
Bearing aesthetics in mind, you should remember to keep file sizes small. The size of the files making up your website is the direct cause of your site’s load times. It is always better to have your website load as fast as possible. Remember that not all people who visit your site will have a high-speed connection to the Internet. Check out your website on all types of connections, including a dial up connection.
Alt Tags
As you add images, use ALT tags. These tags provide several very important functions in that they describe images for people who browse the Internet with graphics disabled, and provide descriptions for people who are visually impaired and utilize tools that translate images to voice. If part of a link, you can include information about the link intention. ALT tags are the only way your images are going to help you with your search engine rankings.
Retain user information so that people don’t have to waste valuable time re-typing information into forms. 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. Doing this will make everything much easier for the people that visit your page, and they will definitely appreciate the time saved.
Do not forget to test your site on several major browsers. Different browsers will read and display a site in different ways, which can have some unintended results for site visitors. There are now many websites that you can visit to find out which web browsers are most commonly used by internet users. Use all popular browsers to test your site, including the mobile web ones.
A website counter is outdated and not attractive. You might care about how much traffic your site is getting, but visitors to your site don’t. Get rid of visitor counters and encourage social media interaction instead.
Enroll in a periodic web page design newsletter to help you to occasionally re-focus on your website development vision. Newsletters are helpful to both beginners and experienced designers.
Try learning about and using shortcuts as much as you can. Many things have shortcuts when it comes to web design, and by taking the time to learn them, you will find faster ways of doing many different tasks. Even HTML codes can be used to implement quick content updates.
Read some web page design knowledge online. This means you should do everything you can to learn as much as you can about website development. Without learning tips and tricks from the experts, your web page could end up being poorly designed and won’t garner any attention.
Everyone has heard about Photoshop, and they know that they have to learn it in order to become successful with web page design. Dreamweaver is less well known, but is another program you should look into.
Ask your friends who know web page design if your knowledge about graphic design and server-side coding are relatively complete. It is difficult to keep all of the details of website design in mind, and it is common to become confused while designing and miss a thing or two. That’s why it’s good to have knowledgeable friends “proof” your site for you.
Familiarizing yourself with Photoshop and using it from the very beginning of your web designing efforts can improve the results you achieve right from day one. By using this type of program, a novice designer will be able to make high quality looking websites at a fast pace. It can take a lot more time to build a nice site if you don’t use top-notch software.
Using the above tips will make sure you design a website that makes you satisfied. Whether it is to promote you or your product, your website is the smartest way to make it happen. Enjoy!