Internet users notice a design right away and it can influence their opinion of a website. Because of these first impressions that are developed, it’s imperative to design a good website the first time so people will continue returning to your website. The tips you are about to read will help you design your site the right way so that this doesn’t happen.
Make sure the combination of colors your site uses is attractive and makes the site easy to read. You should be striving to achieve easily readable and visible text set against your chosen background shade. A dark color for foreground text against a light background is often more readable for most audiences. When in doubt about the effectiveness of your color choices, solicit the opinions of friends.
Always keep the size of your pages to a minimum. Every Internet user does not have lighting fast speeds. If your site takes too long to load, you may lose visitors. If the wait is too long, your visitors may give up and leave.
Keep the loading time to lower than ten seconds. Efficient sites should be visible in seconds so the viewer does not get side tracked. Many people browsing the web want instant gratification, so if you want to catch their attention, you need to provide that.
Never use an overabundance of conflicting fonts on your website. Also think about how fonts look for different people. Small serif fonts like Times New Roman can be difficult to read on small screens. Fancy fonts may look attractive at a glance, but a closer look reveals they can be extremely annoying to read.
File Sizes
Regardless how your website is designed aesthetically, it is important to make certain that all of the files have small file sizes. File sizes are directly responsible for how quickly a website loads. It is always a good idea for your website to load as quickly as possible. Bear in mind that some site visitors are still using dial-up. Perform tests on your website to confirm that it can be quickly loaded, even on the slowest internet connection.
Do not put pop-up windows on your site. While you might see these as valuable in some form or another, most people find them rather annoying. In fact, you may drive them to leave your site out of irritation and frustration with your pop-ups. You could lose a visitor for life.
Selecting a professional looking font is an important website design consideration. Look at the font of a site and you can distinguish whether or not it’s professional. Skip the fancy fonts such as Comic Sans, since people may not be able to read them on many computers. If a site visitor has not installed a certain font on his or her computer, it may display as a default font. This will inevitably come off looking bad.
When you are creating your website, remember that all available space is not required to be used. You will make your visitors feel overwhelmed if you use all the space available. If you allow enough space between different elements on each page, the overall effect will be more relaxed and professional-looking. In some cases, empty space can be just as valuable as content.
Some hosting services offer a tool to build your own website. Use this tool to create a very basic layout but do most of the coding yourself. Eventually you want to incorporate your own ideas into the site, which means lots of tinkering and experimenting with different things without having to rely on the simple functions of the site-builder you get from the host provider.
Development platforms make the code for you, however, there are some that aren’t as trustworthy as the classic text editors. What a platform does is help you paste the code onto features that you have made. But if you are looking for a more hands-on experience where you can control everything, including fixing the errors, then a basic text editor should be what you choose.
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Internet surfers notice website design immediately, and usually make a stay or surf elsewhere decision within second. Therefore, first impressions are as important online as in face-to-face communication. The tips in this article will help to guide you down the path to an amazing, effective website.