The design of a website plays a crucial role in how popular it is. If you use user friendly, aesthetically pleasing design elements, your visitors will be more likely to rate their experience on your website highly. A poor design will deter a lot of people from even looking at your content. Use all the tips from this article so that you too can become a great web designer.
Always include a search tool for searching through your site. If visitors want something specific, they will immediately scan for a search function. When one is not available, chances are they will move to a site that is searchable. The ideal placement is the upper right hand corner of your page.
Check your webpages for broken links before publishing them. Few things are as frustrating as clicking a link only to land on an error page. You can check your links manually, or there are programs that will scan your site for you and report any broken links.
Let people cancel any action they have started. These actions involve signing up for newsletters or email notifications, filling out forms, or searching the site for different topics or archives. If you do not give your users the option to cancel something, then you are making them do something, which can cause users to be leery of making future purchases or coming back to your website at all.
Use a sensible background for your site. Some sites have moving GIF backgrounds, which can be great at times, but can make your text difficult to read at other times. Choose a background which complements your website, and your visitors will find it much easier to read your message.
Pop-ups should be given a wide swerve. Nothing is worse that going to a website and being bombarded with pop-up ads. Many people will close a website that brings pop-ups as soon as they can, no matter what size the site is. Just avoid these irritating ads, so your users will be happy. If your host tries forcing pop-ups on you, look for another one.
Aim for page loading times of under 10 seconds. A well designed website will show up on a browser within moments. Most Internet users are looking for instant returns, and it would behoove you to make that happen.
Design your front page to be a minimal as possible. Your front page can be the determining factor whether a visitor decides to stay or simply exits without seeing more. Be clear about what your company is about, but be concise.
Familiarizing yourself with Photoshop and using it from the very beginning of your web designing efforts can improve the results you achieve right from day one. Even without professional training, a web designer with a good grasp of Photoshop can turn out attractive, useful websites very quickly. Building a site from scratch can be overwhelming for amateur designers, so take advantage of design tools and programs that can do some of the heavy lifting for you.
Ensure that you’re including a method of receiving feedback from your site’s visitors. By doing this, if you discover a missing item or if you don’t know how to properly utilize your page, it’s possible for you to fix it. If your site visitors feel actively involved in the process, they will be return viewers.
Resist any temptation to use pop-up windows when you design your website. While you might see these as valuable in some form or another, most people find them rather annoying. A user who is constantly closing pop-up ads is more likely to look for information on a different site without endless nuisances.
Alt Tags
Remember to use ALT tags on any images you use in your website. There are a few core reasons why ALT tags should be used, including helping the visually impaired, providing indexing possibilities for the search engines and also for description and translation purposes. If part of a link, you can include information about the link intention. Lastly, search engine crawlers make use of ALT tags, so employing them can help improve your search rank.
Optimize your site for older versions of Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8). While IE is the bane of everyday browsing these days, you would be surprised how many people use outdated browsers for web surfing. Workarounds are needed because the browser is not 100% compliant with standards. Looking up “box model bug” can be very helpful.
Hosting your site yourself is not really a great idea, no matter what amount of money you’ve decided to invest in it. Do as much of the design yourself as possible, but if you hire someone to host it for you, you won’t have to worry about basic security.
Many people find it very helpful to subscribe to a newsletter for website designers. This offers periodic updates and ideas that will be useful for developing a site. Newsletters can help both beginners and veterans learn more.
If you want to attract visitors to your website, you need to make the site user friendly and attractive. When you have a well designed site, traffic can be boosted drastically. If your design results in a site that’s unattractive and hard to use, visitors won’t stick around. Use this advice to make a good design for your site so that it will be successful.