It can be both exciting and frightening to design your website, especially if are not very experienced on the subject. The tips you’ll read here will make your journey a little easier, leading to an amazing end product.

Pay attention to color combinations in your design. You have to be certain that your text will be readable on top of the background colors you use. There is data that shows that people have an easier time reading dark text on a light background. The opposite is still readable, but not optimal. If you need help determining weak points of your website, show your current version to a friend for feedback.

Speed is king on the Internet, so you need to make sure your web pages load quickly. If a visitor needs to wait while the page loads, they may click off your site and not return.

Help your visitors navigate your page via fixed position navigation. This means locking the navigation panel when a person scrolls down a single page. Not only is this convenient for your visitor, but it can also help internet marketers by facilitating any action for visitors (e.g purchase a product, subscribe to a newsletter).

Easy navigation is critical to keeping visitors on your site. Links need to be prominent and simple to find. You can also make navigating your site easier with a menu. Make sure each page has a ‘home’ link.

Alt Tags

As you go about setting up your website, make sure that you add ALT tags to all images on the site. Those who are visually impaired will benefit greatly from ALT tags. If your images are used as links, ALT tags also provide a way for you to describe the behavior of the link. Finally, ALT tags are used by search engine crawlers; therefore, using them can help boost your search rank.

Research your keywords. First and foremost, pay attention to content that keeps your customers up-to-date. But, you also need to think about how to gain customers. If you want your site to be successful, you must understand how to use keywords properly.

It is very important that customers can navigate any website easily. The placement of your navigation links on a website plays an important part in determining how long a visitor will remain on your site. Navigating your site must be easy, consistent, and neat for visitors to have a good experience.

When putting links on your pages, the links need content. Visitors can easily see links that provide content. If you do not include this, users may find themselves clicking on things they do not want to visit.

All load times on the website you design should be as fast as possible. When a visitor must wait lengthy periods of time to see information, he or she will probably give up. Try reducing Flasha and the number of graphics, implementing SSI files, optimizing pages, making expire headings, reducing CSS and JS codes and using server and client caching.

Be certain to have a way to receive feedback from site users. That way, if they are having a problem or there are missing items on your pages, you will be made aware and can fix the problem. If your visitors feel like they are a part of your site, they will want to return.

Try writing a good “About Us” page. Often, a website will contain a boring, half thought-out page to cover this. Make yours exciting and interesting! Try giving people a tiny peek into your personal background. Try showing how you got into website design, who inspired you, and what you hope to accomplish with your business.

Create CSS pages and conditional loading when designing a website. Testing and maintenance in the future are much easier when these techniques are employed. Do not forget that you simply cannot go live as the site does require regular maintenance and what you just learned makes you job much easier.

Be very critical of the fonts you choose. A site’s look can hinge on whether or not it’s fonts are professional. Some fonts, such as comic sans, are ones that you want to stay away from. A font can be subset to the default font on your user’s computer if they don’t have it. This may make your entire design look bad.

Content is the most important aspect of your site. A great looking site is no good if it has bland, unoriginal content. If you have insightful, useful content that people want to read about, you are much more likely to have repeat visitors.

When you are facing a block in your design process, you have the Internet at your fingertips for help. There are tons and tons of sites you can glean inspiration from. Find a website that you like, identify what makes that website appealing, and determine if it is an idea that you can borrow and improve upon. Just grabbing the ideas of others is not always enough to guarantee success for your own website. Make those elements better so your site truly shines.

Developing your website design skills is a great way to improve your website’s visibility and get in touch with your target customers. When done properly, it can make a huge impact on the effectiveness of your promotional strategy. Begin now, and utilize the excellent tips given in the above article so that you can maximize your chance of success.