Website design is a popular topic these days. If you want to make money with it, it is important to understand that you have a lot of competition in the field. See what you can find out about staying a step ahead of the competition.
Frames are a holdover from 90’s design elements. Frames are flawed and they went out of style for a reason. Frames make it hard for visitors to bookmark and scroll through the page. You can employ easier techniques for better site usability.
Check for broken links before publishing your web page. Nothing frustrates visitors more than clicking for a page they want and getting an error page instead. You can do manual checks or seek out a program that will do a scan and give notice of broken links.
Choose the right graphic formats for your site. Keep in mind that bitmap images are quit large. For this reason, they don’t work well; however, PNG images work very well indeed. For text buttons, screenshots, and other images that are not photographs, use PNG for images with over 256 colors and GIF for images with less. Try using JPEGs for photos.
If your site users will be registering to use your site, you should use their personal information to auto-fill forms. When a visitor fills out a registration form on your website, for instance, your site should hang onto that information, and use it to fill out data fields for the visitor on subsequent interactive pages ahead of time. Developing “sticky” data like this streamlines the user experience, and your visitors will likely appreciate the convenience.
Topics ought to be separated. If you’ve got a few discussions going, put each on its own page. This will help to alleviate confusion and help keep your site organized. It will also make it easier for web crawlers to better navigate and rank your site.
Make use of free software in your site setup. Though expensive software is certainly available, free products can work just as well when it comes to setting up and running your site. All you have to do is a little searching to find the best free tools for you.
Always be open to new ideas that may appear on forums that can provide you with additional information with regard to web design. Google to find the best resources and start your research.
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. By not having a program like this, you will be at a disadvantage because making a beautiful website design from scratch takes a lot of time and knowledge.
Your site should be optimized to handle older editions of Internet Explorer, such as IE7 and IE8. While it is often viewed as a sub par browser, a large number of users are still using old versions of this browser. You will have to use workarounds when dealing with this issue, so keep that in mind. Specifically, read about the “box model bug” that plagued IE for years.
Meta Tags
Watch your use of color combinations when building your site. It is important to have text that is easy to read on your chosen background color. Dark text on light backgrounds are typically easier on the eyes than the other way around. If you are uncertain about the effectiveness of your color scheme choice, try it out on a friend and solicit feedback from them.
Meta tags used on each page of your site, can increase visitors to your site. This is an important design consideration. Quality meta tags describe your site for search engines. Non descriptive or inaccurate meta tags will result in low visibility for your website.
Optimize load times on your website. Visitors would rather leave than wait. Minimize the amount of Flash, scripts and graphics on your site. Optimize the site with HTML, SSI files, caching options and minimize CSS and JS coding.
One of the first things you should do is select and reserve your domain name. Use your creativity and imagination when doing this. Surprisingly, many people may have the same idea as each other. It’s like everyone is connected or something similar.
Make sure your visitors can search for content on your website. A search box is essential. If there isn’t one, visitors will probably leave your site rather quickly. Always put the box somewhere near the right page’s top because people will look for it there.
Target Audience
Learn all you can about website design to be successful. Become educated about your particular niche so you can appeal to your target audience. You must think of ways in which you can design your website, in order to maximize your efforts in reaching your target audience. It will improve your site design.
Discuss things with your friends to gather if you missed anything while learning about Photoshop, HTML, or Dreamweaver. It is difficult to keep all of the details of web page design in mind, and it is common to become confused while designing and miss a thing or two. That’s why it’s good to have knowledgeable friends “proof” your site for you.
Pay close attention to the background of your pages. You don’t want your text to be hard to read! A distracting background is…well, distracting. Choose a background which complements your website, and your visitors will find it much easier to read your message.
Learning as much as possible about website development gives designers the upper-hand when it comes to succeeding in a highly-competitive market. By taking the suggestions here to heart, you will see growth both in your niche as well as financially.
Onaolapo Adeyemi is a travel and technology writer. If he’s not on tour, you’ll find him in New York with his wife, and pet parrot hanging out at Starbucks.
