A great way to earn money is by learning website development. Once you can create websites, you’ll be able to make sites for yourself or create them for others. You can dedicate whatever time you want to website creation, giving you freedom of schedule but still able to make a few dollars.
Before going live, test your website against NoScript. You can add this extension to Firefox, and then use it against your website. You will need to do this to ensure the functionality of your site.
Have the data that users enter into fields preserved so that it can be transferred over to other portions of the site where the same information has to be filled out. 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. You streamline the process when you create “sticky” information, and your visitors will appreciate you not wasting their time.
Frames are a holdover from 90’s design elements. Frames are flawed and they went out of style for a reason. Frame designs are harder to bookmark, and they make scrolling a chore. You have much better options with which to help visitors go through the site.
A newsletter can help you to get more repeat visitors to you website. This can be an excellent way of building your client base. Add a signup bar on your site and use it to track the number of visitors who do so. Only send out a newsletter to people who have subscribed to it, otherwise you will have angry customers.
Always research keywords before writing content. Of course, fresh content should be your main focus, but you must also optimize your site. Knowing the right keywords to make people find you through the search engines is key.
Anything published on your site needs to be something that you know and understand well. For instance, if your site is meant for blogging, know about the topic before writing about it. When you post incorrect or unclear information, you will lose visitors. Having a thorough understanding of your subject matter is vital to having a successful website.
If you want your website to cater to the needs of visitors, it must be user-friendly and simple to navigate. It should be painless to locate important links and other information. Menus are another way to make site navigation easier on your site. To help visitors find their way back, be sure to have a visible link to the main page on all your pages.
New web designers who are aiming to create an appealing website, should utilize Photoshop. This software will ensure that you have all the effects and tools you need to create graphics which look like they were completed by a pro. If you don’t have PS, it can be difficult and time consuming building a nice site quickly.
Internet Explorer
Make sure that your site is optimized for previous editions of Internet Explorer. Everyone loves to hate Internet Explorer, but the sad fact is that a large minority of internet users still use these old versions of IE. They often don’t render elements to web standards, so you will have to work around them. An example would be the vexing “box model bug” which troubled IE for quite some time.
Regardless of your client or website purpose, you need to strive for loading times of less than ten seconds. A website that is designed well should load up very fast no matter what browser the visitor uses. Most Internet users are looking for instant returns, and it would behoove you to make that happen.
Include strong meta-tags on every page of your site, if you want to get more visitors to your site. Quality and relevant meta tags will provide search engines with information regarding your site. Poor or useless tags that are irrelevant to your site will deter future and returning visitors.
It is important to remember to test your website’s design on various web browsers. Because different browsers render websites differently, the visitor may not have the experience you intended. You can do a little online research to discover which web browsers are most popular at the moment. Test your website on all of these browsers, including the popular mobile web browsers.
Website counters are pretty unattractive, so stay away from them. You may think it’s improving your site, when in fact, it is not desirable. Find another way to track your traffic.
You should always make sure to implement a way that users can submit feedback to you about your website. Thus, if there is a gap in your site’s offerings or visitors are confused about using your site, it will be easy for you to remedy the situation. If your visitors feel like they are a part of your site, they will want to return.
Adobe Photoshop is widely-known, and a lot of people are sure that becoming familiar with the program is vital to, if not entirely synonymous with, successful website creation. Yet a lot of people aren’t familiar with Dreamweaver, and all that it has to offer for web designers, check into this program and see how it can help you.
Don’t spend a cent on how-to books. You never know if it’s a good investment. There are many books and magazines that are accurate and full of useful information. However, a lot of this information is free. Expensive books don’t hold more information than ones that are free.
Your computer’s copy/paste capabilities are some of your most powerful tools when you’re building a website with many very similar sub-pages. You don’t have to generate fresh HTML code for each and every page. You can copy the main portion of the code, make some tweaks to it, and save it to a new file. You can use the template file as much as you want.
You don’t want to be using frames when you are optimizing your website. Users may like pages with frames included, but the information inside of those frames is not included in search engines. 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.
Do not add overwhelmingly large advertisements to your website. You need to be sure people are very comfortable when they’re visiting the site you have up, so be kind to them. Therefore, be careful about what you add; it helps lend an air of professionalism to your site.
Flash is an overused technology which can easily be replaced with other options. While it can seem high-tech and exciting, it can cause computers to lag, and decrease a visitor’s experience on your website. Many tablets and cell phone don’t have Flash installed on them, meaning your visitor will just see a blank spot where it should be.
Put your logo near the very top of each webpage. It links your pages and makes it more cohesive. This can also help you build brand recognition for visitors. The logo should visually tell a story about your company.
Make sure you site is optimized for previous versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, especially IE 7 and 8. People seem to hate this browser, but many still use older versions. These require the use of some workarounds. Specifically, you should learn about a “box model bug” which troubled Internet Explorer for years.
Hopefully, you know understand much more abut how web design works. Just make sure you’re using all of this information to help you out so that you can create websites well.