Building your own website from sketches to published product can be a scary and daunting endeavor. It is tough to know just how to begin and where to get the best advice — and what you’ll be spending. The advice here will help you start on the road to success.
Help your visitors navigate your page via fixed position navigation. This allows you to lock the panel for navigation in place while users scroll. This is ideal for both visitors and marketers alike, as desired actions are executed much more quickly.
Avoid using clashing, loud colors when designing your website. If the text fades into the background due to poor contrast, the text will be hard to read. Dark text on a light background is the easiest for your visitor to read. Soliciting feedback from a friend can help you determine how effective your color scheme is if you develop doubts about it.
Avoid using frames on your site. Back then, they were the height of technology, but technology has moved on. Visitors may find it difficult to scroll or bookmark your design when a frame design is present. There are easier ways to give seamless flow to your site.
Don’t pile on the graphics. You want the site to look professional and well-designed instead of cluttered. Don’t use graphics just to decorate; use them to improve the site. Having the right graphics improves your site all around.
It’s hard to go wrong with a simple color like white for the background of your website. 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. Colors, patterns or other designs are distracting and don’t have a place on a website. Backgrounds should be simple and subtle.
Optimize your website’s load times. When visitors are faced with long load times, the usually leave soon. Use less graphics, avoid Flash, and optimize your HTML.
Make your website easy to scan. Studies have shown that people usually quickly scan a website rather than thoroughly read it over, as they try to find the stuff that might be interesting to them. Broken into sections, text becomes more readable and visitors willingly return. Put important facts near the top of the page. This helps the visitors see the important stuff first before checking out the rest of the site.
When people hit the creative wall as you will do at some point, look towards electronic information available all over the web to bust through. There are thousands of websites you can use to garner inspiration. Look through some examples and figure out what it is you like about them. Incorporate those elements into your own site. You will have to do more than borrow ideas to be successful, though. You also need to take things up a notch.
Development Platforms
While development platforms generate code for you automatically, they cannot duplicate the reliability of classic text editors. The concept behind development platforms is that once you choose your site’s features, you paste the code created by the platform into your website. In order to minimize platform-created errors and really learn the nuts and bolts of web design, you may want to consider editing your code directly using a simple text editor.
Publish a newsletter, to increase your likelihood of having repeat visitors. Let your customers sign up for important events and updates so that they return to your site. Track the number of visitors who sign up, and position the sign-up form in your site’s sidebar. Just send your newsletter to those that ask for it, or you may get in trouble.
You may be feeling ready to try your own hand at website design at this point. You are ready to set a budget, look for more good advice, and start making notes on what you want out of your site. If you use these tips, you can design a great website without having to spend a lot.