In today’s business world everyone seems to have a website, but if you are not familiar with how to build one then it could be a problem. However, it is not that difficult since there are many software programs on the market that make it easy for any new business to create a nice website. Continue on for some great web design tips.
Don’t force users to install strange BHOs. Many tech-savvy users won’t do it. Common offenders include unusual video players, image viewers, and platforms for interactive games. For most standard use cases, there is a trusted plugin, such as Windows Media Player or even Flash) that will do what you want without driving away users.
You don’t ever want to use too much graphics. Some images are necessary. However, too many are overwhelming. Your graphics should not only be decorative; they must also be true improvements. Having the right amount of graphics will improve your site’s usability and reduce the clutter.
If you want your site visitors to spend as much time as possible on your site, make text easy to read. One of the most common design mistakes is using graphic backgrounds with patterns or dark colors; combine this with equally dark text and you have a recipe for disaster. Unless the text is clear and easy to read, your site will not be a success.
Personalize your site. Your clients want to feel comfortable with you, so use testimonials from trusted customers, as well as photographs of people. Building trust with your customers is very important, so be sure to let them know you personally care about the product or service you are providing them.
Solicit feedback from visitors to your website. This will help you recognize mistakes in your design and give you the opportunity to fix them. Letting your visitors get involved helps to ensure they will come to your site again.
It’s very important that you do all that you can to get load times for your website down to a minimum. When a visitor must wait lengthy periods of time to see information, he or she will probably give up. Some effective ideas include using SSI files, making the most of your HTML, making expire headings, getting rid of excess script, Flash, and graphics and keeping CSS and JS coding to a minimum.
To help make sure your website works as you are designing it, test it one of the browsers like Internet Explorer. When you test the website as you go along building it, you can quickly correct any problems that might show up once you live. When your website goes live you want your visitors to be able to see everything working correctly.
Don’t underestimate the importance of your “About Us” page. These pages are often dull and uninteresting. Make this area of your website more exciting. Give visitors insight into you, the designer. Help them understand how you began designing websites, which other designers you consider to be mentors, and where you are going from here.
If you already have a particular web hosting solution that you know you are going to use, keep its limitations in mind as you design your website. For example, do not create a website that relies on specific programming languages if your web host does not support these languages. It is fairly simple to find out which technologies are supported by your web host. Make certain that your design is something that is within the limitations of your host.
Pay attention to your background colors and your text colors when designing a site. Something like red text on a blue background doesn’t work well. And if you think that white text will pop with a black background, it could be a little too bright for your readers. Go with something subtle.
Never bite off more than you can chew by attempting to design multiple sites at once. You should keep things simple by only working on one site at a time. Even if you do have some web design skills, you may get crossed up with your projects, or one of your sites may suffer neglect. Just take things one at a time.
Most people have now heard of Photoshop, and are aware that they need this knowledge if they are going to be any good at designing websites. Dreamweaver is less popular but is easier to master and is filled with useful tools designed for webmasters.
When designing a website, you want to keep the privacy of your customer’s information in mind. Set up proper encryption for submitting data, and never store customer passwords and such in a text document. Make sure you set up your website properly so that your customers know that visiting and interacting with your site is safe.
Site maps are an excellent piece of technology that allow users and search engines to get a better view of your site’s functions and layouts without extra work. Include a link to your sitemap from the homepage and leave it as simple as possible. The sitemap doesn’t need fancy graphics or fonts, just layout your website and update it when needed.
There are a lot of places you can check out on the web that can help you learn html. You can learn plenty of information from various forums and sites, and some of them even offer you updates with the latest information that there is to know on the web which can be very beneficial to you.
Make sure everyone can access your site. You may even want to have someone from another country check out the site for you. Some of your content may not display the same way in different countries, so you might want to check this out.
As stated in the above article, pretty much every business today has a website and if you know how to follow some simple software programs, then designing a site is easy. Apply the tips that you have learned in this article so you can get your business an online presence it deserves!