Content is the most important element of any business website. Keep your pages minimal, easy to navigate, and focused, so your website communication will be easily understood and appreciated by your visitors. The simpler your content, the more quickly it should load.
The beginning web designer can use Photoshop to make their website look great. When amateurs use Photoshop, they often create very professional grade sites based off the capabilities of the software. When you are working without something similar to Photoshop, it will create a steeper learning curve for design, and increase the time it takes to reach your goals.
Make sure that your designs aren’t that similar to other designs in your immediate niche. Go look at your competitors’ websites. Remember that if your website is too similar to that of one of your competitors, you will not seem unique, and you might even accidentally send business to your competitor. It will only serve to make you a diluted version of what someone else has already done.
If you are just starting with your website, save money by using grid or shared hosting instead of a dedicated service. By using this kind of hosting, you will be aware of the amount of traffic to your site and how much you need to spend.
Your site logo should link back to the home page of your site. Over the years most people have come to associate a logo with a link, that when clicked, will take them to the homepage of a website. It’s frustrating to click on a logo and have nothing happen, and this saves you from adding a ‘home’ link. Having a logo that is clickable makes your website much more easy to navigate.
If you are using captchas on your site, limit the use to user registration. Being forced to use a Captcha frustrates users, as they simply want to use the website. Captchas are especially frustrating for website users with visual and hearing difficulties. Only the most dedicated and interested visitors will continue through an unnecessary captchas; many will simply abandon the page.
Ask yourself if your website looks good and if everything a visitor might need is easy to find. If this isn’t true, visitors will leave your site quickly. Focus on good content and keep everything else straightforward and simple, so that visitors can always find exactly what they need.
On every page, be sure that you include a tagline that is clearly visible. This slogan should be prominently displayed near the top of the page and be in bold text, so that visitors can’t miss it. If you use the tagline appropriate, it will let the reader’s know what your page’s true goal is. It can even help to determine if they will remain on the page or use their “back” button.
If the site you are designing is large, make sure to include a search option. Make sure you add a search box allowing your viewers to search for terms in your site. FreeFind and Google both offer these search functions to use on your site.
As a web designer, you want to strive for perfection. Of course, no website can be perfect, but setting high standards for yourself will spur you to always try to improve on your work. Regardless of the kind of website you are designing, that is a wonderful attitude to live by.
Start by making some sketches showing how you imagine your website. Those around you can give valuable input if they see the proposed design before you implement it online.
Domain auction websites can be excellent sources for domain names. Domain auction providers like SEDO can provide access to domain names that already exist but are now for sale in auction. It may cost more than buying a new domain, but all of the benefits make it worth every penny!
Add links or buttons to help your readers share your content on social networks. This will let them spread your message quickly and also boost your site’s traffic.
One of the easiest ways to create additional web pages in the same category is the copy/paste function. Do not write new HTML code every time you start a new page. Copy and paste the main structures of your code and make small changes if you need to. This method allows you to make countless copies of the master code.
Keep in mind that not everyone visiting your website will have a fast Internet speed. While videos and graphic-heavy layouts might looks nice, they will only serve to annoy people if it is too slow to pull up. These people will have to wait for a long time to watch the video, and the video may freeze frequently while waiting for more data to load.
Consider the Internet a global marketplace; try to make your sites easy to view and use regardless of what country a visitor lives in. For example, currencies, measurements and ways of writing dates vary from country to country. Try to make these as universal as possible, or at least, make them easy for foreign visitors to read and understand. Most sites won’t be viewed by just locals, so people in many countries need to be able to understand and relate to the content.
Your design process will be more successful if you are learning at each step of the way. After getting the hang of a design concept, find another one to learn. It may take a longer time to build a functioning site, but you will know enough to create dozens of websites when you finally learn what you need to know.
Give yourself access to the right tools to make web designing fun and productive for your business. If it is done correctly, it is a great way to promote your product or business. Begin now, and utilize the excellent tips given in the above article so that you can maximize your chance of success.
