Should you invest in expensive templates and software to start designing your site? The answer to that depends on how deep you want to dive into the field. Unless you are willing to invest a solid amount of time and energy in learning, then you may be better off going with a professional design company. On the other hand, hard work and perseverance will go a long way toward building an effective and appealing website.
Users can navigate your site easier when you have fixed-position navigation. This involves locking your site’s navigation panel as visitors scroll down. You can use this both to allow your visitor to navigate more easily, and to keep your call to action in view.
Aim for page loading times of under 10 seconds. A good site will come up within a few seconds. Most online users want satisfaction, immediately.
Don’t make your page sizes any larger than necessary. Not everyone online has a fast connection, and if your website takes too long to load, people will lose interest. If the wait is too long, your visitors may give up and leave.
Do not use many different font types when creating your website. Also consider how the fonts look on a regular screen. Small serif fonts are harder to read. Verdana is a font commonly used because it’s easy to read in an array of colors and sizes.
Don’t include pop-up windows when designing your website. Pop-ups are an irritating distraction, at best, for most web surfers, and the possible benefits you could reap with them are extremely modest. When you have pop-ups, the chances increase your visitors may get frustrated by them and choose to leave your website with no interest in returning.
Meta Tags
Learn any shortcuts that you can and try to use them. Many aspect of webdesign are not as hard as they seem and have shortcuts on how to do them. There are even HTML codes that allow you to make fast changes to each of your pages without having to re-upload them.
Good meta tags are a quick way to ensure your website makes it to a good rank on search engines. Properly used meta tags make it easier for search engines to classify your site correctly. Not putting enough effort into their content can severely hurt your page rank and reduce your traffic.
Visitors enjoy knowing more about the webmasters of their favorite sites. There are a lot of websites that do not utilize compelling or original content for their “About Us” webpages. Try to give it a bit of personality. Let people see who you are by sharing your educational background, career moves and future goals.
Sign up for forums, newsletters and podcasts that discuss website development to help you keep up with the trends. Newsletters are great to have for both novices and pros alike.
Regardless of your client or website purpose, you need to strive for loading times of less than ten seconds. A good site will appear before a visitor’s eyes within moments. Many users crave instant gratification, so you should give it to them.
To familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of designing a website, work with a basic layout first. You can advance beyond the basics when you are more comfortable with the website design process.
Becoming a professional web designer will not put you through the same rigors of medical school. You will not be required to obtain an advanced degree, nor will you be saving lives everyday. As long as you can follow the tips you have learned above, you can design a great website today.
