Instead of farming out your site’s design to another company, you can learn the skills yourself and become the one others seek out for website development. While it may seem somewhat difficult, it’s not nearly as hard as it looks. Follow these tips to see just how simple it all is.
You want to ensure that your site is easily able to be scanned. There are a plethora of tests online that help gauge the usability of a particular website. Emphasized text broken into easily scannable sections can help your viewers want to return to your site. It is also important that the key information is at the top of each page. In this way, your visitors will have a good experience and get the information they need.
When doing web design, use the appropriate graphics. 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 images that are not photographs, use PNG format for over 256 colors. If under 256 colors, use GIF format. When using photos, make them JPEGs.
Make sure you research the keywords that do well. You do need to create great content, but it should be focused on bringing in new visitors. To make sure that people find your website more easily, you’ll need to learn what keywords are and how to use them effectively.
You want the navigation to be simple and easy. Where you locate your website’s navigation links can make a huge difference in the amount of time a visitor will spend on your site. The navigational part of your website should allow users a great experience.
Put together a nice page about you or your organization and title it “About” or “About Us.” Some websites “About Us” pages are very dull and boring. Crank it up a bit! Provide some insight about your own story. How did you get inspiration? What are your goals? What led you to website design?
Avoid using frames on your site. Frames used to be beneficial in some ways, but they always had their issues. Using frames makes it hard for viewers to bookmark your website and can make scrolling a chore. There are a lot of better ways to get people to go through the website you have.
Use basic fonts which every user will be able to see. The font type on a website is a quick indicator of how professional it is. Stay away form Comic Sans or other fancy looking fonts that are not on every computer. If one of your visitors does not have your chosen font on their own computer, another font is substituted. This can interfere with the design of your website.
Do not place adds that pop up on your site. These ads are always alluring with the promise of making extra profits; however, most visitors find them highly annoying. Pop ups are annoying and can keep people from returning. Keep ads simple; you won’t need pop-up profits if you do.
Build a microsite at first, as this will help you get an overall impression of your current strengths and weaknesses as a web designer. Start out by making a few pages that just have basic information and some easy text, then asses how it works for you.
Always, always remove old or outdated information off your website. You will come across as undependable or an amateur if you have information on events that have long passed. Users want to spend their time on sites that are cared for, and leaving up old information shows a lack of attention to the site. Set a schedule to review the site, to ensure that outdated information is removed, and fresh new content is added in its place.
Read some website creation knowledge online. When you learn all you can about webdesign from experts, you will be able to quickly build a site of your own. If you aren’t acquiring knowledge from skilled web designers, you most likely will end up with terrible looking web pages which nobody will look at.
You can gain insight from sites you enjoy, but try to use your own ideas when creating your site. Create designs on your own, and improve on the ones you’ve witnessed on other websites. By using this tip, your will make the best website design possible.
Use a basic, simple layout for your website so it’s easy to change and expand. Learn the basics first, then add to and improve your site design as you get more comfortable with the technology.
Keep your topics separated. Each different topic should have a separate page on your website. This ensures that no one ends up confused and leaves as a result. Search engines will also have an easier task of ranking specific pages.
To help test your site’s effectiveness, make use of task-based usability tests. The point of using tools like these would be to discover some issue that is hidden deep within the depths of your site. These tools would allow the user to perform a task that they will easily accomplish if the site is properly configured. Should the converse be true, you will gain insight from the task to help you find areas of improvement for your website.
Figure out who you think your audience will be as you design your website. This will aid you in your design as you incorporate multiple features on the site. It is also important to get advice from people in your target audience.
When people hear that coding is involved with designing a website, they automatically assume that it’s too hard for most people to learn. However, the advice above proves that it’s not as hard as it looks. Follow all information you find and you can learn about website design in no time.
To help new web designers make good sites, use Photoshop. Using programs like PS can make amateur sites look professional, fast. If you don’t have PS, it can be difficult and time consuming building a nice site quickly.