Many people dive head first into website without knowing what all is involved. Would you like to design websites as a career or are you just interested in creating your own website? Either way, the tips below will help you out.
Feature a prominent tagline on your site. This tagline should give visitors an idea of what your site is about. This will give the visitor a quick first impression of what you’re about.
Be mindful of your background. Backgrounds with moving GIF views can be great, but can make text hard to read as well. Pick a background that meshes with your site, not against it, and your viewers will have a much easier time understanding what you want to say.
Avoid using clashing, loud colors when designing your website. Your content should be read easily without assistance or adjustment. The text opted for should be dark in color, with a lighter color used for your backgrounds. If you’re not sure what will work, show it to a someone for feedback.
Your website needs to have easy navigation, if you want to have multiple visitors. Display links prominently so that they can be easily found. Good menus make navigating your site much easier. Make sure you have links back to your main pages accessible on every single page of your website; that way, visitors are able to always get around.
It is imperative to replace old content with new. If your page is promoting a special event that happened 6 months ago, you have already lost readers. Users will spend time on websites that are well-maintained, and the presence of your outdated information will tell them that your site it not being properly cared for. Make sure you regularly schedule time to add new content, and to remove old.
Keep your content interesting and entertaining. Website design is critical, but without content, it won’t matter. When the content on your site is valuable and useful, visitors will continue visiting your site.
Make sure you have the right background. Many sites make use of background images in the animated GIF format. Sometimes this provides an excellent effect; at other times it can make the text of your page illegible. Select a wallpaper complementary to the rest of your design, so that your users will be able to negotiate the site more easily.
A great way to get repeat visitors to your site, is by having them subscribe to your newsletter. If you have your clients subscribe to updates, they will have a reason to come back again and again. Put your sign up form on your site’s sidebar to keep track of how many people sign up. Only send the newsletter to those who request it, or you could find yourself in hot water.
Allow your visitors to contact you through email, a contact form, comments or social media. 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. Allowing visitors to actively participate in your website will make them want to visit again.
Meta tags used on each page of your site, can increase visitors to your site. This is an important design consideration. High quality meta tags assist search engines in understanding the topic of your website. Your website will under-perform on search engines and draw fewer visitors than it should if you use inappropriate or ill-conceived meta tags.
Prioritize your user’s needs. A good web designer will always remained focused on the needs of the end user. Examples of this would be user interaction, accessibility, usability and the users overall experience. You need to make sure you are meeting the users needs on all levels. Look at the site through the eyes of a user as you design.
Do you now better understand the complexities of website design? Be sure you apply all that you learned today and always seek out new information so that you can be successful with your website development goals in the future.