So, you are ready to design a website, but you don’t know where to begin. You want your website to display pictures and videos, but actually setting it up is beyond your skill level. Luckily, the following web design advice will be useful. Continue on for some helpful tips that will let you know what you are overlooking.
You want to have a site that is easy to navigate, if you want to attract visitors. You should have links that are easy to find, as well as displayed well. You can also improve your website’s navigation by using simple menus. Visitors will also be able to get around better if every sub-page has links back to your site’s primary pages.
Use fixed-position navigation so your users can navigate your site with ease. This means locking the navigation panel when a person scrolls down a single page. This is easy for the visitor and good for marketers.
Check for broken links before publishing a page. Error pages can be very frustrating to visitors. Most people choose one of the many programs or extensions available that verify working links but it can also be completed manually if you only have a few to do.
When designing a large website, include the ability to search throughout the site. Put a search box in the uppermost right-hand corner of your homepage so that users can seek specific topics on your site. Google and FreeFind both offer search functions for your website.
Anything published on your site needs to be something that you know and understand well. If you’re going to use your site to blog or something like that, you must know what you are talking about. You can lose readers if you give them false or unclear information. It is important to know what you are talking about.
You should update your content and get rid of expired content regularly. Failing to update your page with current information and upcoming events will cost you in terms of site visitors. 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 Set yourself a schedule for reviewing your site and removing anything that is outdated.
Alt Tags
Remember to use ALT tags on any images you use in your website. These tags provide several very important functions in that they describe images for people who browse the Internet with graphics disabled, and provide descriptions for people who are visually impaired and utilize tools that translate images to voice. If you use your images as links, the ALT text will also give you an easy way to describe how the link behaves. Lastly, search engine crawlers make use of ALT tags, so employing them can help improve your search rank.
As you can see, designing a professional website can be fairly straightforward. Familiarizing yourself with the fundamental elements of design, you can make sense of the end product more effectively then you imagined. Apply the tips from this article to help you figure out the basic fundamentals of website development, so you can start to incorporate some great elements into your website.
No matter what type of website you design or who the audience is you want to target, always keep the page load time under ten seconds. A great website should pop up without lagging delays. If it takes too long, a visitor is simply going to become frustrated and go elsewhere.