You may not get much success scouring the web for design tips. There may be tons of information available, but you cannot properly use it. You will find that the following tips will be of great use to you and worth the effort to read through.
Look at the site you are designing in many different browsers. What you see on your screen may be different from what others see. This means that you need to understand which browsers are most widely in use today, and check the site in each one. You will also want to send your site to someone that’s using a different operating system so you can see that their browser is compatible with yours.
Visitors want to have access to a website quickly, which is why your pages should load easily. Realize that visitors to your site have many options and will just go somewhere else if your site does not load right away.
Use graphics that are right for your website. Keep in mind that bitmaps don’t usually work well, while PNGs do. For images that are not photographs, use PNG format for over 256 colors. If under 256 colors, use GIF format. For photos, you can use JPEG images.
Your visitors should be able to see your content regardless of the browser they are using. Test your pages with different browsers to make sure it is displayed properly. The most popular browsers are Internet Explorer, Firfox, Safari and Google Chrome and what works with one might not work with the others. Test every page in each browser before you let your site go live.
Pay attention to the background of your website. Some sites use moving GIFs in the background, but that can make text hard to read. Choose a background that goes with your site, instead of one that goes against it, so the viewers will be able to understand what you wish to convey.
Keep your homepage simple. People will quickly decide whether or not they want to do business with you by how your homepage looks. Spend time describing your business and what it offers, but keep the rest to a minimum so that people do not get distracted.
Design web pages to not take up too much space. Not all website visitors have blazing connection speeds and will get frustrated and lose interest if your site takes a while to load. If your viewers are sitting waiting for the site to load, they may just go elsewhere to find what they need.
Include photos into your website. Your own pictures will make your website more friendly and inviting. People will spend more time on your site looking around when they see pictures they want to click on.
It doesn’t matter nearly as much as what your website looks like as much as it matters that the files listed are on the smaller side. File sizes are directly responsible for how quickly a website loads. You want your site to load as quickly as it can. This is because not all of the visitors you’re going to attract are going to have a powerful operating machine or high speed Internet. Continue to test your site to make sure it will load quickly, even with a dial-up connection.
Internet Explorer
Keep your homepage simple. People looking around will decide right away if they wish to use your site just by how your homepage looks. Make sure that you provide a very clear description about your business or other purpose for your site. Other information on your site should be minimal, but still clear, so that you don’t overwhelm your visitors.
Optimize your website to handle computers that may be running older versions of programs like Internet Explorer 7 and 8. 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. Workarounds are needed because the browser is not 100% compliant with standards. Familiarize yourself with the concept of the notorious “box model bug” which caused trouble for Internet Explorer for years.
File sizes affect the speed with which your website loads. You can control file size by paying attention to file types. Choose GIFs and JPEGs; instead of other types of graphic files. Other files such as PNGs and BMPs use more disk space. By converting your graphics, you can help speed up load times.
Do your best to optimize the loading times on every page of your website. Visitors will leave your site quickly if they have to wait on something to load. When you reduce your graphics and other fancy elements, you will speed up access to your pages and retain your visitors.
Use free software to set up your own site. Many people believe that expensive software is the only way to get things done, but there are multitudes of free tools available to help you get started, and keep your site running. Hit your favorite search engine and do research to find a piece of software that suits your needs.
As you begin to develop your website creation skills, you should start small. Build a series of simple sites, then use them to identify areas for improvement. You need to begin with perhaps a few basic pages with just enough information so that you can determine how you feel.
To help you learn how to create your first webpage, you should read about tips and tricks online. This is the fastest route to getting the job done. If you do not take advantage of expert advice, you will be reinventing the wheel as you build your site.
In summation, you may have read all the resources online about web design. Luckily, you found this site that provided the expert advice that you require in order to make the most out of your web page design. You will achieve great success when you use this advice.
You must remember in order to index your images, ALT tags must be employed. Those who are visually impaired will benefit greatly from ALT tags. If the images are links, the tags let you describe the link as well. Finally, ALT tags are used by search engine crawlers; therefore, using them can help boost your search rank.