Web page design companies out there are making millions by doing things that you could easily do yourself with the right information. Don’t fall victim to these semi-scams. Learn web page design so that you can be the one in charge of your website. Begin with these simple tips.
If you’re creating a website, make sure you look at it in different browsers. What you may see might not be what other people see. Research every popular browser that people use, and adjust your design accordingly. Checking your website with different operating systems and browsers will help ensure that it works for everyone.
Look at different forums for new information. You can also do a quick search online to find any information you seek on the web, and it is free.
Search Box
Have a search element included so visitors can search your website content. People who are seeking something in particular are bound to be interested in finding a search box upon reaching your site. If your site is not equipped with one, visitors may go to an alternate site. Always put the search box near the top-right corner of your pages.
Keep page sizes down. Not all people using the Internet have a fast connection, and loading times can make visitors lose interest. You don’t want to leave your visitors waiting on each page, as they will likely just leave, never to return.
Successful websites work well with any browser, so you’ll need to do some testing of your paging using various browsers. Even though your website may display perfectly on Internet Explorer, this doesn’t mean that it will look the same on Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Monitor how the pages look in major browsers before taking your website live.
Ensure people can easily scan your information. Many usability tests show that most online visitors do not read everything. They usually only scan for things that interest them. Break text into small, easy to scan sections to help readers quickly find the information they are looking for. Put your most vital information near the top. This helps the visitors see the important stuff first before checking out the rest of the site.
Topics ought to be separated. If your website covers a variety of different topics, put these topics on separate pages. This will reduce visitor confusion and facilitate readability by the search engines.
Search engine capabilities are an essential part of a large site. Place a search box in the top right corner on the home page where users can search for a term that may appear on your site. You can find viable search features through companies like FreeFind or Google.
Always keep the size of your pages to a minimum. Not all website visitors have blazing connection speeds and will get frustrated and lose interest if your site takes a while to load. Users will be quick to leave a website that has pages that take too long to load.
Use some pictures on your site to make your site attractive. Pictures help to break up a boring text-only website and give it a more user friendly vibe. Folks will be more apt to stay on your site when they look forward to viewing all of your photos.
Consider using free software to design you website. A lot of users think they have to buy pricey applications, but many free programs are out there to give you a hand. With a little search effort on your part, the kinds of tools you need can be found, and for free.
Search Engines
Check your webpages for broken links before publishing them. Few things are as frustrating as clicking a link only to land on an error page. You can manually check links or use a program that will find broken links for you.
Leave out the frames if you want the website you create to be optimized for the major search engines. This information will not be visible on the search engines. If search engines can’t reach some information on your website, your rankings will be lower. If that happens, you will not get as many visitors.
During the process of designing your site, use ALT tags for your images. These tags help you describe the images for people with visual impairment or people that disable images. In addition, if the image is a also a link, you can tell visitors where the link takes them and what it does. ALT tags are also used by crawlers and this can boost your ranking.
Make sure you have checked for links that could possibly be broken. Do this before uploading the links to your server. This is important, as visitors who click on your links expecting useful information, only to find a 404 page, will leave your site in disgust. If you wish to prevent this from happening, you should regularly check your links.
Always take outdated information and content off of your website. For example, if your web page is promoting some event that occurred a year ago, you’ve probably lost a lot of your readers. Internet users want to have access to the latest information and read websites with regular updates. Set yourself a schedule for reviewing your site and removing anything that is outdated.
Web Design
You can begin trying out web design when you understand it better. As you can see, web design is really simpler than you might think. Just review the tips provided here and you will be off and running as you add in your own innate creativity.