Building a successful website always revolves around an elegant design. You can ensure that your website attracts a wide audience by making it aesthetically pleasing, user friendly, and providing enticing content. For some tips on web design to help you create a beautiful and effective site, consider the tips below.
If you’re designing a website, make sure the code you write has a valid HTML+CSS. Although most browsers can make sense of code that isn’t valid, it could be rendered correctly or incorrectly. Valid code will render the same way most of the time in modern browsers. You can check the validity of your HTML code with an HTML validator.
It is always good to add a favicon to your website. The favicon is a 16×16 image file. Ico format. This image is the one you see next to the URL bar, next to the title of the page on an opened tab, and is also visible on your bookmarks tab if you choose to bookmark a page. The favicon will help users quickly recognize your page in their browser without reading any text or directly viewing the page.
Have a site map. These are useful to your clients and the search engines, as they give a detailed overview of your entire website. It can be a guide for viewers searching for a certain part of your site, and also allow you to keep track of its structure and layout.
You should always put in the effort to make a customized error page for your site; this page should include a basic sitemap that links users to the major sections of your website. This ensures that if visitors follow a bad link or spell your URL wrong, they will be able to find what they are looking for.
A search engine is an absolute must if your website is larger than a few pages. On your homepage in the corner to the upper right-hand, you can add a search box that lets users search for a term on your site. You can add search functions to your site with Google and FreeFind.
If you want to build a website fast without having to learn a computer language, use a code generator. Using a code generator allows you to quickly build a site and prevents you from making a mistake when you have no idea what computer programming is. Code generators are not only fast, but you will be able to learn a lot too.
For your image tags, always try to include a brief description in the ALT attribute. Not only is this good for search engine optimization, but it is also beneficial to the sight-impaired users who rely on screen readers to describe image tag contents. Make your description short and as descriptive as possible.
Try including real customer testimonials. Very few want to be the first to try a product or service, so let customers know that others have tried your wares and that they were pleased with them. Try asking some clients that have done projects with you to create a short paragraph about their experience with your company, to put on your site.
Avoid frames at all costs. Just don’t use them. While they can make it simple for your menu or header to appear throughout your site, the address bar won’t change on each page. This can make it impossible for your visitors to link to any specific page on your site.
When tinkering with your HTML, you always need to save a copy. You can save a copy of your code in a Notepad doc; just save it as .html and it will save as an actual webpage. This way, you can tinker around with things and know that there’s a backup should something go wrong. Failure to save pages may result in having to start from scratch.
Make sure that you periodically go back and try to remember all that you’ve learned thus far. One of the biggest problems people have when they first start with web design is that they learn one or two things and forget them a couple of days later, which can hurt their website progress.
Make sure that the computer you’re using is advanced enough to run programs like Photoshop and Dreamweaver. The last thing you want to do is invest money into buying programs like these then realizing that your computer can’t run them, this can save you a headache and time by checking up on this.
Master the art of locating navigation menus in the right spot if you want a great website. A good tip to implement here is to check around to see how other people are handling their navigation menus. This is the spot where your visitor will figure your site out. You can’t have a hidden or confusing navigation menu.
Don’t use too many different fonts or text colors on your web pages. Word processing or web authoring software may present a dizzying array of specialty fonts or wacky colors, but if you use too many, the text on your website may become unreadable. A good practice is to use just one or two fonts per page and avoid excessive use of bold or italic text.
Optimize every image you use for the web. If you look through the internet, you can find a lot of examples of images that are too large and they slow down the web page’s load time. Make sure you have optimized each image you use. Save the image as a JPEG or GIF and aim for the file size to be somewhere between 5k and 20k.
A great web design tip with regards to choosing your domain name is to choose a domain name that does not contain a dash (-). Sites with dashes are often not entered when people are trying to visit your site so try and avoid them at all cost so you don’t lose any traffic.
This article discussed some of the ways that you can maintain good relations with your visitors through stellar site design. Doing this will increase your chance of success and bolster your bottom line at the same time.
PS: The traditional way of doing business will never be the same, which means that those who truly want to live differently and take advantage of the digital economy will have an opportunity to do so in the quickly expanding and evolving world of eCommerce and online business…
