Use your creative ability to design your own website. If a web design is effective, it will distinguish the great designs from the simply decent ones. Having the right information is 90 percent of effective web design. Take a look at the following tips, and see if you can pick up some helpful new web design info from them.

Use free software to set up your own site. A lot of users think they have to buy pricey applications, but many free programs are out there to give you a hand. All that is required from you is a little bit of effort in finding and choosing the free tools that will give you just what you’re looking for.

Your visitors are far more interested in what you have to say than the layout and design of your website. Keeping pages simple and just including what you need to tell your story can help your visitors more easily understand your business. A simple page will load quickly.

If you are just starting with your website, save money by using grid or shared hosting instead of a dedicated service. Unless your site is massive you won’t need a dedicated server, and the money you save can be put back into your website.

When hiring a website design company to do your web design for you, it is important to take a look at their portfolio. You need to ensure that they are competent and have previous experience in creating the style that you aspire to. A web designer’s portfolio will let you know if their style is right for your site and if they produce quality web pages.

If video-hosting is something you’d like to include on your site, you’ll first need to ensure that your web host accepts the idea. There are some hosts that forbid hosting videos. Do not waste time by building videos to be be hosted on a site that does not allow the space you need for FLV or similar files.

If you want to maximize the potential of your website design, ensure that your pages appear correctly on all web browsers, so any visitor can view them. What works in Chrome may not present properly in Safari, Internet Explorer or Firefox. Visually test your website in every browser you can prior to launch.

Free web hosting is not always the best bet for commercial sites; over time, it may lead to problems. Although it may be tempting because it’s free, some of these free hosts will place all kinds of third-party ads that you can’t control. This can draw customers away rather than draw them in.

If you need to design more than one website, then you should check into multiple platforms. Learning Java, PHP, MySQL, and other platform skills will only help you in the future. Be a designer of many talents, whether you are designing a brand new site, or just helping your friend start one.

You should create a useful ‘About Us’ page Dry or simplistic content won’t get your reader interested. Make this area of your website more exciting. Aim to give visitors a small glimpse of your personal background. Demonstrate how you began web design, the people who inspired you to do this, and what your business goals are.

With the amount of time that your visitors likely spend on social networking sites, it makes sense to add links to your site to let them share your content on their favorite social sites. This will help them recommend your site’s content or products to friends, which will increase your visitor count.

To create a well-designed website, you should pick colors that complement each other, and stick to them throughout the site. Making changes in colors and fonts from one page to another may confuse visitors, and they may think that they have left your site. This problem can be avoided by remaining consistent throughout your site’s graphics. For start-to-finish cohesiveness, use identical schemes throughout your site and on all company literature.

You should know everything included in hosting service’s package. The things that are important to know are bandwidth, CPU usage, disk space and any other areas that they highlight in their package. Know what you’ll end up with, if you decide to go forward with it.

If you are designing a very large site, you should always include search capabilities. The best place to put your search box is on the top of your homepage. Shoot for the upper right corner. Users often expect to see a search box in this area and may want to search your site for the information they are looking for. You can get a search bar from Google or FreeFind.

Consult with friends to see if there is anything you missed when you learned about things like HTML or Photoshop or Dreamweaver. Obviously, you want to ensure that all the new information you have just learned has been remembered. It would be quite a nuisance to be halfway through developing a new site and find you can’t recall the details you need.

Do repetitive testing on your website to make sure it works once each development milestone is reached. Have someone test each new feature that you add. A slow-loading video may not bother you, but someone else may think otherwise. Use the wisdom of others who are outside your immediate circle to get an opinion.

While making your website, remember that you don’t need to use all the available space. When you use all available pixels, the result can be an overwhelmingly cluttered website. Those visiting your site will actually be relieved by having extra space and not feeling overwhelming. Sometimes, empty space can contribute to the look of a page as nicely as content does.

Beautiful web design is an awesome sight to see, but that’s only if it’s done the right way. It is easy to see what separates the best sites from the worst ones, and now you can find out how to take your design to the next level. Reread the tips in this article to help you grasp the fundamentals of making superior web designs.