It is crucial that all web designers, especially those who are new, are well-educated on the basics of design in order to ensure fully functional websites that look good as well. Many sources are out there to give the novice designera a place to start — and this is one of those sources. The following article contains the best advice for designing a webpage.
Leaving some spaces unused is part of a strategic design plan, so do not think that you need to fill every inch. White space in your website could improve its readability; your visitors tend to have an easier time absorbing and reading the information there if things are not cluttered.
One way to to ensure that your website will run smoothly is to validate each page. Lots of WYSIWYG technicians will tack on unneeded code to what you’ve done. If you rely on these sorts of programs, use a validator to find problems so that they can be fixed by hand. The World WIde Web Consortium (W3C) offers a free service to validate pages.
PhotoShop is a popular application and web designers must learn it. Strangely, Photoshop’s companion program, Dreamweaver, is far less known, even though it is a purpose-built tool for web design. The many potential benefits Dreamweaver can offer you make it well worth investigating.
Don’t hire family to design your website. No matter how much experience a family member has in web design you should not hire them to help you because it will limit your ability to be able to fire them if you are not happy with the site.
If you decide to hire a professional web designer, choose someone with whom you do not have a pre-existing relationship. If you are looking for a web designer, you should probably avoid enlisting the help of a family member or close friend. It can be difficult to fire a person you know well if you’re not happy with the results.
Keep all of the site files you use as small as possible, regardless of design. Your file sizes have a lot to do with the speed of your site loading. Of course, having your website load quickly is the best scenario for visitors. You should remember also that some visitors may not use an Internet connection that is high speed. Perform tests on your website to make sure that it loads fast, even when a dial-up connection is used.
Make sure that the font you are using looks professional, and is easy to read. You can see if a site looks professional by looking at the fonts. Don’t use silly fonts, especially Comic Sans, or rare fonts that most people won’t have installed. In case your user’s browser cannot display the font your website uses, a secondary font can be set. This may make your entire design look bad.
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. Poor or useless tags that are irrelevant to your site will deter future and returning visitors.
Throughout the content of your site, you should include relevant keywords and phrases. You need to persuade visitors to spend their money or join your cause. You don’t want them to just think your site looks nice without taking any action. It’s important to grasp who the website is targeting. What words will your target audience relate to? After identifying a few appropriate keywords, (three to five should be sufficient) insert them throughout your website consistently.
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. FLV files and other formats take a lot of space and will not load quickly. Hosting videos on YouTube is a better alternative. You need to be sure of the options available to you before moving forward.
Continually educate yourself on site design. After you conquer one skill in web design, move on to the next one. While this will take time, it will be worth it in the end when you know enough to create site after site.
If you plan to use advertisements on your website, you must keep them to a minimum. Too many ads can make your site look unprofessional and full of spam. Pick the most important advertisements and stick with those, leaving the rest behind.
Every website should have an effectively designed favicon. A favorite icon, or favicon, will make your website easily recognizable. A good favicon should make your site stand out in a list of bookmarks. Try to design a favicon that is consistent with your logo and theme.
Use any of the many resources available to you if you want to start designing web sites. There are many books and magazines that cover nearly everything in web design. They offer an easy way for you to increase your knowledge of web design, so that you can begin to create great looking websites.
It’s vital that you test your web designs on multiple browsers. Every browser will interpret the site slightly differently. Some of the slight differences can cause navigation to be difficult for the user. There are a number of resources that you can use to determine what popular web browsers should be tested. Do not neglect mobile browsers, as they are increasingly used by people of all ages; test to see that your new site works across a full spectrum of browsers.
As mentioned earlier, anyone who is new to web design must thoroughly understand the essentials of the technique if he or she wants to develop an attractive and operative website. Figuring out the best place to start can be tough, given all the different resource options. The article you just read offers good advice to help you move forward in the exciting field of web design.
