Contracting out website development is a large expense for owners of new businesses. Designing it yourself can save you a ton of money. Do not take shortcuts though. Use the tips contained here to start creating a website that can rival those designed by the pros.
Try using fixed-position navigation to let your users navigate with ease. By locking the menu to a fixed point on the screen, you can make sure it is constantly visible to the user regardless of where they scroll to on the screen. You can use this both to allow your visitor to navigate more easily, and to keep your call to action in view.
Use the proper graphic tools for web design. Keep in mind that PNGs are much better than large and poorly working bitmap images. Use PNGs for images over 256 colors for text buttons and the like or use GIF files for images smaller than 256 colors. Photos require JPEG to ensure high quality.
Be sure your site has a tagline everyone can see. Using a tagline simply means that you will need to come up with a quick statement that lets visitors know what your site is all about. This will give the visitor a quick first impression of what you’re about.
A great place to build your website development knowledge is through forums. This will help you learn more about starting and maintaining your web design. A Google search should reveal a wealth of good sites that can help.
Broken Links
Make your visitor’s life a little easier by preserving the content they enter into forms. For instance, if someone fills out a form using personal information, he or she should have to enter that same information in again when he or she goes to fill out an additional form. Creating information that is “sticky” simplifies the entire process, and visitors are certain to appreciate all the time that they have saved.
Before publishing websites, check them for broken links. Visitors can get frustrated when they click a link and come across an error page. Use a program or check links manually to be sure you have no broken links on your site.
Set up your site so that visitors can cancel actions they initiate if they change their minds. These actions involve signing up for newsletters or email notifications, filling out forms, or searching the site for different topics or archives. When you do not allow visitors to cancel something they do not wish to complete, you are forcing them into something, which can prove detrimental to fostering return visits and/or purchases.
Know what you’re talking about. It is very important that you conduct plenty of research about your subject if you are thinking about using the site as a blog. By providing your viewers with information that is murky or false, you lose traffic. Knowing your topic is the way to build a great blog.
When you design your website, avoid using a variety of different fonts. You need to consider how large the font is since some may be too small for concentrated website reading or smaller screens. Most sites use Verdana, which is easily read in different colors and sizes.
Your user’s needs should be your top priority. The site designer should always be working on the needs of the user. This includes user experience, usability, user interaction, and accessibility. You should consider these issues as you go about your work. You need to look through the eyes of the visitors when you make a website.
Make sure your load times are low. When visitors are faced with long load times, the usually leave soon. Speed your website up by having less scripts running, few graphics, minimal amount of flash, use SSI files, tweak the HTML, use server side caching, and lessen the amount of CSS and JS coding.
Explore your website with different browsers and computer systems. Different browsers will read and display a site in different ways, which can have some unintended results for site visitors. It is easy to discover the most popular browsers. Make sure to view your site in the most-used web browsers and as many mobile browsers as possible.
Keep load times to a minimum of your site. Visitors would rather leave than wait. Therefore, cut back on things like Flash, how many graphics you have, and expire headings.
Use basic fonts which every user will be able to see. The font is one of the first items people notice when coming to a site. Avoid using fonts like Comic Sans and various fancy fonts that might not be on many computers. If they don’t have that font on their computer, it might be subset to their default font. This can look worse.
For creating your own website, consider using Adobe Dreamweaver. This program is easy for even the least skilled amateur. You can make many layouts and templates, include many awesome features and even see how your site is going to look when loaded onto a server.
Subscribe to a newsletter with information on website design to keep you up to date on the latest trends. Both pros and novices can benefit from reading good newsletters.
If you are thinking about different topics for websites, it is important that you secure a domain name for the site, immediately. Get creative and choose something you want, but reserve the name early to ensure you have it. There are a lot of people in the world, and someone is bound to come up with a similar idea. We are all stimulated by the same media and social events.
Proofread everything so it looks nice. People should be able to fly through your content. Errors in written content not only cause a site to look unprofessional, but it also slows down readers and causes them to lose interest.
Being in charge of your website and website design, will call for you to have your own secluded office space. Eliminate distractions, and be certain that your space is efficient and suitable for your work. Have office tools and other things located within easy access, and ensure that you have an excellent space for your own website development needs.
It’s a long road from novice to expert in the field of website creation. There will definitely be some mistakes along the way. But, you should use what you’ve learned here and you will build an effective site.
It’s all right to rely on a host for tools to set up your basic design, but to add more advanced touches, you’ll want to do some of your own work. You need to incorporate your personality into the website, and that can be done by adjusting some stuff and adding others that the host design tools don’t offer.