Website creation is a beautiful work of art when the designer of a site has an idea of what he or she is doing. Effective web designs can help you distinguish successful designs from mediocre ones. Educate yourself if you want to become a great web designer. Read the article below to expand your knowledge and build great sites.
Speed is king on the Internet, so you need to make sure your web pages load quickly. If visitors have to wait and sit for a long time as your website load, there is a big chance that they will click away from you website and go elsewhere. They will probably not come back as well.
Design web pages to not take up too much space. If your pages take a long time to load, visitors with slow connection speeds will lose interest. Reduce your load times so visitors have no reason to leave.
Successful websites work well with any browser, so you’ll need to do some testing of your paging using various browsers. What works in Internet Explorer may not necessarily show up correctly in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Before you website is launched, test the display of each page in all major browsers.
Always, always remove old or outdated information off your website. If your home page features an event that already took place, people will not be interested in reading more of your content. Users are going to want to spend time on websites that have been cared for, and when old information is kept up it shows that the site is not being paid attention to. Set a review schedule to update content and remove items that are no longer useful.
Allow your users the ability to cancel something if they are not happy with what they typed in. An action can involve filling out forms, registering for email notifications or newsletters, or browsing the site for various topics or archives. If you don’t give visitors the opportunity to cancel their actions, you are depriving them of control, and that can prove fatal to your website.
Internet Explorer
Have some search element which lets visitors search your site’s content. If people visit your site for something specific, they will be on the lookout for a search box. If your site does not have one, expect them to find a site that does. Always put the search box on the page’s upper right corner, since this is where visitors usually look first.
Make sure you site is optimized for previous versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, especially IE 7 and 8. Everyone loves to hate Internet Explorer, but the sad fact is that a large minority of internet users still use these old versions of IE. Unfortunately, many aspects of your site may not be compatible or displayed properly due to outdated rendering standards, so you may have to create some fixes for the elements that do not work properly. In particular, learn about the famous “box model bug”, an old thorn in IE.
Put your user’s needs in first priority. User needs must be your main focus. For example, many users are concerned about accessibility, usability, user interaction and user experience. If they can’t find what they need then they will leave. Try to see things from your visitor’s perspective when you design.
Test your site early and often. Running usability and user interaction tests early in the game can really save you frustration in the long run. As your website grows test it.
Be certain to ‘remember’ personal information that might have to be re-entered by the same site visitor. Make it easy on your visitors by keeping information that they may need for other forms or orders. Your clients will thank you for saving them the time it takes to fill in information that they have previously done on your site.
Check links carefully before you include them on your site. Make sure the links all lead to valid web addresses. Make sure you do this regularly, before you even think about uploading it to the server. A visitor who comes across a broken link will question how dated all of the content on your site might be. Give all of your links a double check before uploading in order to prevent this problem.
Website design has the potential to be beautiful — but it must be done right. It’s easy to distinguish good from bad in website creation, but getting from good to better — or best — takes more subtle touches. Reread the tips in this article to help you grasp the fundamentals of making superior web designs.
