Web design skills can help you earn money. Learning the art of web page design allows you to design for both yourself and a wide range of clients. The time you dedicate to working on these sites can be all on your own time, which is great if you want to be free while you make money.
Be sure to use proper graphics when designing your website. PNGs work much better than bitmap images, which are huge. For simple text buttons or graphics that aren’t photographs, use PNG for files that are 256 colors or larger. Use a GIF file for anything less than 256. JPEGs are good to use for photographs.
You will want to make sure you stay up-to-date with new information on website design found in various places around the Internet. You can find the answer to almost any website development question by simply searching with your favorite search engine.
Avoid the overuse of different fonts when you are designing your website. Also think about how fonts look for different people. Small serif fonts like Times New Roman can be difficult to read on small screens. Most websites opt for sans serif fonts, like Verdana, that looks fine in different sizes and colors.
In order for your website to be successful, it must work properly regardless of the browser that is used. You should therefore make certain that all of your web pages are thoroughly tested on a variety of browsers. What works in Internet Explorer may not necessarily show up correctly in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Monitor how the pages look in major browsers before taking your website live.
Maintain normal-sized pages. Not all website visitors have blazing connection speeds and will get frustrated and lose interest if your site takes a while to load. There’s no reason to make viewers wait.
Retain user information so that people don’t have to waste valuable time re-typing information into forms. For instance, if someone fills out a form using personal information, he or she should have to enter that same information in again when he or she goes to fill out an additional form. Creating “sticky”‘ information in this manner makes the whole process much more simple and smooth, and your visitors are sure to appreciate the time you save them as well.
Think about using navigation that is clear and easy. Navigation link placement is very important and ensures visitors stay on your site. You must build a site that is neat and clean and easy to navigate so that your visitors will enjoy it.
A website that appeals to many is within your reach using the different types of programs available. A professional website is within your reach when you use these tools. If your site doesn’t look nice, you won’t get many visitors to it.
Research keywords. While your primary focus should be providing website visitors with useful information, you also need to gain a customer base. If you want your site to be successful, you must understand how to use keywords properly.
Alt Tags
A well-written “About Us” page is worth the effort. Often, a website will contain a boring, half thought-out page to cover this. Spice things up. Share some information about yourself, your inspiration and your web design business.
Remember to use ALT tags on any images you use in your website. These tags make it easy for those with disabled graphics and offer descriptions for those who are impaired visually and make use of translation tools for images. ALT tags can also help out if your images link elsewhere. Lastly, search spiders use ALT tags, so this can help you in the SERPs.
Put your user’s needs in first priority. As a web designer, it is your job to always keep your attention tuned to the needs of your user. How easy information can be accessed and the website use are critical. You should consider these issues as you go about your work. Keep in mind that it is not your view that is most important, but the visitor’s view.
Website development becomes easier to learn and manipulate the more you view the process behind it. Start by creating simple pages you don’t even publish to the web, just so you can see how the basics work. By avoiding procrastination, you can begin to learn the basic elements quickly.
Focus on conditional loading as you build your webpages as well as CSS that is specifically for pages opening in varying browsers. This technique will make testing and maintenance easier. Simplicity is key to success.
Learning from the experts can be done in person, online through chat or email, through their personal or professional blog or even through books they’ve written. Gathering as much knowledge as you can will ensure that you can become an expert yourself some day.
Captchas are great for user registration, but beyond this, they should be avoided at all costs. CAPTCHA are a complicated method of proving a person is human, not a spam bot. However, humans can dislike these immensely when browsing a site. Unless they have already registered, they will probably leave your site and browse somewhere else.
Consider general literacy level when writing online content. Remember to use vocabulary and vernacular that fits with your corresponding target audience. If you want to reach more people, they need to be able to understand your content.
Be sure there are no broken links on your website. Do this from time to time, before uploading it to the server. Checking links is important since visitors who click the link will become frustrated if they find unavailable content on a frequent basis. The prevent this from happening to your site, check links frequently.
Site Design
Continually educate yourself on site design. You should try to learn new aspects of website creation all the time. By doing this, you may create additional work, but the reward will be increased knowledge and skill that will make the next site design easier.
Now that you have read through these tips you have some new ideas on how to best design your site. Use what you’ve read here, and you’ll have a great website in no time.
The more time you spend working on your site, the easier web design will become. Try some easy web pages with C+ and HTML to learn the basics. It’s important to practice to make sure you know the ropes of web design.