People think website design is hard, but that’s not really so. There are a number of tools available that can actually make web page design quite simple. Read on to learn how to select the best design tips for your website.
Graphics are important for any designer but beginners should focus only on the standard graphics on their first several builds. PNGs work much better than bitmap images, which are huge. PNG should be used for buttons with text and screenshots that have 256 colors or more. For photos, JPEG images work well.
Look at your site in multiple browsers when designing it. This will help you to make sure your site works for everyone. You need to know how your site looks to all visitors that are arriving at your page. In addition, let someone who uses an operating system that differs from yours check the site for compatibility.
A good website should be compatible with multiple browsers, so you should test your website in various browsers to ensure that any visitor can view it correctly. Each browser is a little different, and a site that looks fine in Firefox may look wrong in Safari, Chrome, or Internet Explorer. Before you set your site to go live, look at how every page shows up in all the major browsers.
Keep personal information handy in the event that it must be re-entered by a repeat visitor of your website. Make it easy on your visitors by keeping information that they may need for other forms or orders. Developing “sticky” data like this streamlines the user experience, and your visitors will likely appreciate the convenience.
Educate yourself with regard to shortcuts, and make ample use of them. There are plenty of site design shortcuts so that you can save time. It doesn’t take that long to learn about the HTML code that you can insert into your website’s design to help you edit any page without having to upload the page again.
Encourage visitors to come back to a website repeatedly, by offering them a newsletter. Allowing your customers to sign up for updates or important events can have them coming back for more. Stick the sign-up form in a spot that’s out of the way, such as in a sidebar, and keep good records of those who sign up. Do not distribute the newsletter to people who have not specifically requested it; otherwise, recipients might become irritated.
Remember the background. Some sites use moving GIFs in the background, but that can make text hard to read. Choose backgrounds that coordinate with your site, rather than clashing with it, and your message will be much more clear to your visitors.
File Types
The types of files that you use for the graphics on your website will affect the size of the files, which will also affect how fast your website loads. Your graphics should be GIFs and JPEGs. While BMP and PNG files might be better for creating web graphics, these file types tend to use significantly more disk space. Alter your graphics to smaller file size file types to keep load times minimal for your users.
Check links carefully before you include them on your site. Make sure the links all lead to valid web addresses. Before uploading any page, you should do a thorough test to identify any misdirected links. You want to make sure everything you put up is working as people become deterred when they see content on a site that is faulty, this can make them choose to never come back. So you don’t run into problems, make sure you check to see if everything works.
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. Save users’ information like registration data, so it doesn’t have to be entered more than once on different forms. You streamline the process when you create “sticky” information, and your visitors will appreciate you not wasting their time.
Reserve a domain as soon as you can. Use your creativity in choosing a site name, but ensure you do now to keep the site for yourself. There are many people who have similar ideas. You cannot count on being unique all the time.
Your code is already created in development platforms, but classic text editors may be more reliable. The idea with these platforms is to design your site’s features, and then paste in their generated code. In order to minimize platform-created errors and really learn the nuts and bolts of web page design, you may want to consider editing your code directly using a simple text editor.
It has already been mentioned but building a website cannot get much easier with the countless programs available to you today. If you are able to follow instructions well, then you can do website creation yourself. Apply the tips from this article so you can understand what to look for in a website design program.
Educate yourself about shortcuts, then make a habit of employing them. Most web design techniques have shortcuts you can use. There are some codes in HTML that allow for faster changes to each page than re-uploading each one.