A website’s design can be a deciding factor in whether a site achieves success or fails. By taking advantage of sound design principles, you can make certain that every visitor sees your site as appealing, respectable and functional. In the worst case, creating a site with horrible design will mean that your visitors just click “back” without even reading anything on the homepage. Here are some suggestions that will help you make smart decisions about the design of your site.
Use shortcuts as often as you can. In the topic of web design, there is a shortcut for everything. Knowing them will save you time and help you be more efficient. It is even possible to find HTML codes that permit you to implement quick changes on pages without the need to upload them again.
Try using a newsletter for getting repeat visitors. Let your customers sign up for important events and updates so that they return to your site. Put a form for registration on a sidebar or somewhere visible, yet not interfering with the page’s purpose. Send the newsletter only to people who opt-in or you could get in trouble for spam!
Add a prominent tagline to your website. A tagline is seen as a statement that tells people what a business’s site is about. When a visitor arrives at your site, they aren’t going to stay long if nothing catches their eye. Your tagline can help grab their attention.
Design your front page to be a minimal as possible. Those who are shopping the web will make snap decisions about a site based off its front page. Make sure that you provide a very clear description about your business or other purpose for your site. Other information on your site should be minimal, but still clear, so that you don’t overwhelm your visitors.
Always research keywords before writing content. Of course, you must provide valuable and relevant content; however, you can optimize it with judicious use of excellent keywords. Keywords are what search engines use to guide people to your website.
You never want to use too many fonts when it comes to site design. Think about how the various fonts look on a standard computer display. Tiny fonts can be difficult to read. Verdana is one of those popular fonts that is readable in all sizes and colors.
You must create a website that is easily navigable to attract and keep traffic. Ensure that links are visible and displayed in prominent locations. Menus can also help with site navigation. Ensure your site users can easily find the way to the pages are the main ones by providing links to them on each subordinate page.
Meta Tags
Never underestimate the value of great meta tags throughout your website. Quality meta tags will help search engines point interested people in your site’s direction. If you use meta tags that do not correspond to your content or to your target audience, do not expect to get a lot of visitors.
Keep your font selection professional and readable. Check out a site’s fonts to rate it’s professional quality. Fancy fonts, such as those that look like gothic lettering or calligraphy, can often be hard to read. Other fonts, like Comic Sans, send a message that you aren’t professional. Use a font that is part of the default font subsets on user computers. This can look worse.
Keep the front page of your site simple. People judge a site and whether they want to go further by what the initial webpage looks like. Make sure that you provide a very clear description about your business or other purpose for your site. Other information on your site should be minimal, but still clear, so that you don’t overwhelm your visitors.
Invest in some books on the topic of web design. Start out with selections that cover the basics, and add to your collection as you become more knowledgeable.
When you first begin designing a web page you should choose a design layout that’s as simple as possible. This allows you to build your skills slowly and avoid problems you might encounter with more complicated features. As you continue to learn about website design, you can update and change your site to reflect your new knowledge.
Open Source Software
If your site is larger than a few pages, it should be searchable. The upper right of the main page should have a search box for users to search your whole site. You can find viable search features through companies like FreeFind or Google.
Remember, designing a website does not need to be expensive. Though there are very good tools out there for making great websites, there are also ones that do the job for considerably less financial input on your part. For example, you can use free software to help you create websites and add design elements to all your pages. Open source software usually does the same things as paid software. Clearly, use of open source software is a real money saver!
Make your design different than that of other sites in your niche. It’s easy to check this as all you would have to do is visit your competitor’s website. Obviously, similar websites won’t separate you from the pack. Your site will be considered as a copycat of your competitors’ and not seem trustworthy.
When you include videos on your site, you need to be aware that not everyone has a high Internet bandwidth. You might want to convert your videos at 5,000 kb/s, but that may be a lot faster than someone’s connection. You will end up giving them a video that spools and buffers constantly, and the viewing experience will be quite slow.
To help design an attractive looking website, use interesting photos that you have taken. Pictures help to break up a boring text-only website and give it a more user friendly vibe. When people see a picture, they spend more time on the site and clicking to see more.
You need a visual sitemap to effectively plan ahead. It gives you an overview of exactly what your site’s structure is. From there, you’ll be able to identify any areas that need improvement, or have been neglected. There is no better way to get an overall view of your website than to have a visual sitemap.
When laying out your website try to remember how people view items. This area is most important because a person reads left to right.
Eliminate Flash from your site and look for an alternative. Flash can appear high-tech and exciting, but it can make for long load times on older systems. Many tablets and cell phone don’t have Flash installed on them, meaning your visitor will just see a blank spot where it should be.
Links should have content with text in them. When a link uses text content, it is easy for the visitor to see and understand where they are going. If you have links that don’t specify where it takes you, then someone could mistakenly click it by using a keyboard shortcut.
Give your website some time every day. Set longer time periods aside in order to use your time more productively. Putting in hard work on your websites not only improves them, it also refines and sharpens your design skills.
Two factors that directly determine the success of your website is how good it looks and how easy it is to use. A site that is well-designed encourages visitors to stay, come back and share, resulting in a big boost in traffic. On the other hand, a poorly designed website is unlikely to attract repeat visitors. Utilize the tips you have just read in order to boost your site traffic and make your website more successful.
