A designer of web sites can really create a thing of beauty, function and form when they have a good grasp of the process. Really great web design is in a class by itself, and will separate the business or interests it represents, from the rest of the pack. Education is crucial to creating a great design. Keep reading to learn more about good designs.
Be careful with the color combinations you use when designing your website. You want to make sure that your text is easily visible against your background colors. Reading dark text on lighter backgrounds is simpler than the opposite. If you are not sure whether or not your chosen color scheme is user friendly, ask for some feedback from some of your friends.
If you want your site to bring in more visitors, you should ensure it’s simple to navigate. Ensure that links are visible and displayed in prominent locations. Menus will make it a lot easier to navigate around your site. Make sure that you have links posted to every page of the website. This will allow visitors to easily navigate the site.
Don’t let content that is out of date linger on your website. When you are offering specials that are past their expiration, you will watch your visitor counts dwindle. Users wants to browse sites that they know are updated frequented with relevant fresh content, but if the site has outdated information then they know it is not well-maintained. Set up a review schedule so you are able to update the content, and remove the items that have nothing to offer anymore.
Always give your readers the ability to stop whatever it is they’re doing. This could mean ordering products, opting in to an email newsletter, or returning to the homepage from deep within your site. If you do not give your users the option to cancel something, then you are making them do something, which can cause users to be leery of making future purchases or coming back to your website at all.
Try learning about and using shortcuts as much as you can. Just about everything in website development has some sort of shortcut and learning what it is can save you a lot of time. For example, there are HTML codes that can let you make quick changes to your site without needing to re-upload the page.
Free Software
Ensure that you save personal information that the user might need to enter again into your site. For instance, if a person registers on your site and a portion of the same exact information is required for filling another form out, ensure that the information they’ve already put in is saved so that he or she doesn’t have to put in this information again. This “sticky” information can make the process easier and smoother for visitors and they’ll appreciate it.
When designing a site, use free software. 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. Do some searching and you’ll find some excellent free tools to use.
White is a great choice for a background color. It’s simplistic, yet has a lot of potential at adding flare and color elsewhere. Few visitors take issue with a white background, which looks professional or, at worst, neutral. Text content is also more clear on a white background. However, intricate background images are often difficult to pull off; more often than not they appear sloppy and distracting. It is best to stick with a simple background when you are designing your website.
Your website should be optimized to include older versions of web browsers such as Internet Explorer. While it is often viewed as a sub par browser, a large number of users are still using old versions of this browser. These do not render the web elements to the web standard, so there must be workarounds. Looking up “box model bug” can be very helpful.
Consider buying a web design program to help design a better website. These programs are often easy to use and can quickly design an attractive website for you. You won’t have a lot of visitors to your website if it is not attractive.
File Size
Whatever file types you use for the graphics on your site go hand-in-hand with file size. This plays a major role in how fast your site loads. Ideally, graphics should be made from GIFs and JPEGs. PNG and BMP files take up a lot of disk space. Alter your graphics to smaller file size file types to keep load times minimal for your users.
A well-designed webpage is a real thing of beauty, if you know what you’re doing. It’s simple to tell the good designs from the bad, and you can always make a good design even better. Keep the above tips in mind to design a successful website.
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. A good site will come up within a few seconds. If it takes too long, a visitor is simply going to become frustrated and go elsewhere.