Designing your page yourself can be done easily and could save you a fortune by not having to use a company. Never allow yourself to be preyed upon, but instead learn the subject of web page design in order to control your own destiny. Begin with these simple tips.
Pay attention to the way the different colors you use on your website interact. The text on your web pages, in particular, needs to be clear and easy to read on the colors you choose for your backgrounds. It is generally agreed upon that dark text on a light background is the easiest to read. Don’t be afraid to ask a friend or colleague for their opinion of the color scheme.
Design your page so that previously entered information is saved and automatically used to fill in informational boxes. When a user needs to enter their information multiple times to sign up for various options you give them, make it so that they don’t have to enter duplicate info from beginning to end on their own repeatedly. Creating transferable form information will make the overall process simpler and quicker for your visitors, and they will be happy with the time you have saved them.
Be careful with the color combinations you use when designing your website. Your text must be easily readable and not disappear into your background. Choose a dark color for your text, and use a lighter color for your backgrounds. If you aren’t sure if your color scheme works well, show it off to a friend for some feedback.
Try researching keywords. While your primary focus is to offer customers information that is up to date and relevant, the first order of business is to form a customer base. Knowing the right keywords to make people find you through the search engines is key.
Search Engines
Don’t use frames if you want to optimize your website. Some users enjoy pages with frames, but search engines don’t find the info they contain. If pertinent info is not readable by search engines, your rankings will be negatively affected. When you don’t have a high ranking, then your visitor count will be lower.
Don’t overuse JavaScript. Despite the advantages of increased responsiveness and transparency, it may be problematic for many users. Everyone uses a different web browser, and all of them have new versions released fairly regularly. Some visitors will have older versions of their browser, which doesn’t support the latest JavaScript. Also, some people browse with scripting turned off. Your website may not have any functionality to offer these types of users as a result.
White is generally a safe background color to use when designing a professional website. White pages are professional looking and don’t distract your visitors. However, intricate designs on your background can distract users and give your site more of an amateurish look. It is usually preferable to have a simple background.
Good meta tags are a quick way to ensure your website makes it to a good rank on search engines. Quality meta tags will help the search engines to recognize what your site is all about. Your website will under-perform on search engines and draw fewer visitors than it should if you use inappropriate or ill-conceived meta tags.
Your site’s files sizes are all affected by things like your graphics, and all of those can affect your site’s loading speed. Generally, JPEGs and GIFs are the best graphics. PNG and BMP files are probably better for web graphics, but they also use much more disk space. Make your files manageable to keep loading times down for visitors.
Make sure you research the keywords that do well. Of course, you want to put up good, solid information. However, you also must draw visitors in to your site. Knowing what keywords will help to increase traffic is part of web design success.
Make sure your site loads quickly through optimization techniques. Visitors will leave your site quickly if they have to wait on something to load. 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.
Reserve a domain as soon as you can. Be creative and pick out something that you want, but make sure you reserve it now so that you can still have it later on down the road. Other people may be thinking about the same thing you are thinking. Great minds often think alike.
Invest in some books on the topic of website design. Choose books adapted to your current level of skills and very comprehensive. Read reviews before buying anything.
Offer your site visitors a way to provide you with feedback. This lets you see if anything is confusing, or if you’re missing something on the page, so that you may fix it as you can. If a visitor feel involved, he or she will want to see your website again.
Ask your friends who know website development if your knowledge about graphic design and server-side coding are relatively complete. There is a lot to know about these programs, so make sure that you have absorbed the important elements and can easily utilize them when the need arises.
How effective is your site’s design? Try a task-based usability test. In general, the purpose of the tasks is to locate some information or functionality that is buried in your website. If the website is designed well, users should be able to easily find what they want. If the user has trouble, it can provide you with valuable insight into areas where you can improve.
Avoid using Captchas, except in the case of new user registration. While captchas may be useful in some cases, forcing them to do so for mundane tasks, will make them leave your site quickly. Unless your visitor is already devoted to your site, he or she will likely leave your page and go somewhere else.
When you make a page that has links, be sure that each link is accompanied by text content. This makes it perfectly clear to visitors where they are going to go if the click on the links. When links do not have text content, the link could be accessed accidentally by keyboard shortcut.
As you design your website, be sure that someone other than yourself is helping you check its functionality as you go. Whenever you add a brand-new feature, have someone test and judge it while being impartial. While you may not think your videos are loading slowly, a objective opinion may not agree. Always look to others for outside and unbiased opinions.
White space is actually essential in order to perfect website design. You don’t want to clutter everything together and make it seem unorganized. Having some free space within your site improves its readability. This will cause your visitors to more easily read and retain the knowledge provided to them.
Try your best to focus some serious time each day to work on your website. Putting in a few minutes here and there is likely to be less effective than devoting larger amounts of time. If you stay motivated and work really hard on your website, your skills as a web designer will increase. You will also find that you are more able to remember html code, so you will no longer have to keep referring to reference pages.
Optimize your website to ensure fast load times. Those who visit your site have little in the way of patience so ensure your site is designed to load quickly. Reduce graphics, scripts and Flash consoles on your web page, optimize HTML and utilize SSI files.
With some basic website development concepts, you can figure out what works best for you. With these tips, you can see how simple web design can be. Apply them wisely, and you will do just fine.
