Often people find the idea of website development intriguing, yet shy away from pursuing it once they have given thought to a plan. If you are someone who is interested in web page design but doesn’t know where to begin, check out this article for some common sense strategies that will help you build your first website.
Always check your website from a variety of browsers in different areas of the country or world. If you just check it from you personal computer, what you see may be vastly different from what others see. This means that you need to understand which browsers are most widely in use today, and check the site in each one. In addition, ask friends and family to check out the site, too. You never know if another operating system makes a difference.
Always be aware of the size of your webpages and keep them as small as possible. Users with slower Internet connections may decide that the wait is not worth it if your site is slow to load. There’s no reason to make viewers wait.
Visitors will enjoy your website, if they can navigate it easily. It should always be easy to get from one page of the site to another. Menus can also help with site navigation. Link to the main page from every other page of the site so that visitors can easily find important information.
Pay close attention to the background of your pages. Some sites use moving GIF images in the background which may at times be good, but mostly it just makes the text hard to read. Make sure your background doesn’t detract from your content, or make it hard for your viewers to read your font.
Internet Explorer
Your website should be optimized for the older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, such as IE7 and also IE8. People may say they dislike Internet Explorer, but a majority of them still use it. This creates problems for web designers, but there are things that can be done. Looking up “box model bug” can be very helpful.
Include a search element that allows visitors to search within your website content. Visitors may look for something specific, and that box will be the one of the first things they look for. If you don’t get one of these, they may move to a site that has something like that. Put the search box in the upper right hand corner of the page because this is usually the first place people look for one.
Monitor your site periodically for broken links. Make sure you do this regularly, before you even think about uploading it to the server. Visitors who encounter broken links and errors will not stay on your site long enough to view your product. You can prevent this by frequently checking that all links still work.
It takes a great deal of practice to learn how to apply great web page design techniques. This is necessary as we often fall into a rut by doing what has become standard to us. Your goal is to take what you know and develop something completely different than your competition and practice is the only way to do so.
Always limit your content early on in your web page design. Visitors may become confused if there is too much information on a page.
Make sure to preserve personal information that may need to be entered again by the same user of your website. 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. This “sticky” information can make the process easier and smoother for visitors and they’ll appreciate it.
Do not feel that you have to hand-craft every portion of your website on your own. Website design includes web programming, interface design, creating content, as well as search engine optimization. You shouldn’t be embarrassed if you aren’t an expert in all of them. Hire professionals who specialize in the areas that you are least familiar with if you need to.
You should have people beta testing your website as you build it. Each time a new feature is created, have someone check it out and let you know their thoughts. Your readers will not appreciate it if they find something is slow, broken or crashes their browser. Ensure you get the opinions of many people to better your site.
Be careful when you upload video content for your site; remember that a lot of Internet users are still operating with very limited bandwidth. While it’s tempting to upload your multimedia at 5,000 kb/s, this speed may be too much for some people’s internet connections to handle. This can mean a very slow loading time for the video, which will cause it to buffer frequently.
There are numerous programs available for purchase to aid you in creating an attractive website. These websites will help you to create elements for your site that you may not otherwise do without them, and they will help you to do it much more quickly. You need to have an appealing website if you want visitors.
If you have crucial information for your website, put it at the top and towards the left of the page. This area is most important because a person reads left to right.
Make sure that when you add advertisements to your site that they aren’t overwhelmingly huge. Large ads will make people feel uncomfortable. Adding too many advertisements, or ones that are too large, can make your page come across as spammy.
Flash is not something you want to use on your site. While Flash can look very high-tech and exciting, on some devices it will cause everything to slow down. There are many tablets and phones that are not Flash enabled, and if people are using them to view your site, it can ruin their experience, and make them not come back again.
Be sure your introductory page is clean and simple. This will cause people to want to jump ship early. Be descriptive about what your business does, and your unique offerings, but keep everything else to a minimum to avoid distraction.
Hopefully, this article has bolstered your confidence, and made you feel capable of tackling the field of web design. Keep researching website creation, because new knowledge comes out all the time. If you do this and apply all that you learn then you should have no problem succeeding in your website development efforts.
