The design of a website can be gorgeous, if the site designer knows what they should be doing to create a great site. Effective web designs separates the stellar sites from the poorly constructed. Knowledge is vital to good web page design. Expand your knowledge on the subject with the helpful tips below.
Don’t pile on the graphics. Graphics are essential to make sure your site is pleasing to the eye, but overusing them just clutters the page. Graphics should be used to improve the site, not overdecorate it. Your site will also be more usable if you don’t overdo it.
If you’re designing a website, you need to look at your website in multiple browsers. If you just check it from you personal computer, what you see may be vastly different from what others see. Research every popular browser that people use, and adjust your design accordingly. It’s also a good idea to test out your website on different operating systems.
Check your pages for broken links. Visitors will be annoyed if they click on broken links. Either use a program to check for broken links or check each link manually.
Be sure to do good keyword research. You need to focus on giving your audience good information, but keywords will help you gain a customer base. Understanding what keywords will bring people to your site from a search engine is a needed step to becoming a successful site.
Search Engines
You want to have a site that is easy to navigate, if you want to attract visitors. Important links should be highly visible on every page. Menus will make it a lot easier to navigate around your site. Link back to the homepage from every other page on your site; this makes it far easier for users to get around.
Don’t use frames if you want a site search engines can crawl! The information in the frames won’t show in search engines. You will lose viewers if they can’t find your site because a search engine fails to find what they searched for on your page. You won’t get many visitors that way.
If you are agonizing over what color your website’s background should be, don’t be afraid to go with plain, effective white. White backgrounds make copy much more easily readable and give your site a more mature look. Colors, patterns or other designs are distracting and don’t have a place on a website. A simple background is usually better than a crazy one.
User experience is the most important aspect of any website. The web designer must know what the readers are looking for at all times. This includes the ease of interaction, level of usability, accessibility, and experience of the user. It is essential that you don’t drop the ball on this. Visit your site to see how easy it is to navigate.
If the site you are designing is large, make sure to include a search option. Put in a search box in the right-hand corner up on top of the homepage, as this allows the site visitors to type in a single keyword that shows up anywhere on your site. FreeFind and Google both have these capabilities for a website.
A well-written “About Us” page is worth the effort. These pages are often dull and uninteresting. Get your visitors engaged! Give people an introduction to your own background, how you became interested in web design, your inspirations, and what your business goals are.
While creating your website, you should not feel forced to have your website occupy the entire available space. By overusing the space available on your webpage, you can cause your site to appear cluttered and confusing for your visitors. The layout of your site will appear clearer and easier to deal with, if the elements that make it up are separated by plenty of space. Is a few cases, empty space could be as important as content.
Website design is very interesting when the designer is talented. Even if you are not an artist, you can still create a good design by following a set of rules. Keep the above tips in mind to design a successful website.
For images, use ALT tags. These tags are important for your website and people that disable graphics. If images are links, your ALT tags can help you describe the link’s behavior, too. The last thing is that ALT tags attract search engine crawlers, so you can get a better ranking by using them.