Website design attracts many people, but too many webmasters get easily discouraged. If you are someone who is interested in web page design but doesn’t know where to begin, check out this article for some common sense strategies that will help you build your first website.

If you want to have a successful website, you need to design it in a way that works for all browsers. It is crucial you test out your site that and see that all pages show up properly in each browser. What works in Chrome may not present properly in Safari, Internet Explorer or Firefox. Therefore, you should check how all the pages of your website display in all the major browsers on the market, before turning your site live.

Make it possible for users to cancel action if they want to do so. An action can be classified as completing a form or registering to receive content, like a newsletter. If you don’t give visitors the opportunity to cancel their actions, you are depriving them of control, and that can prove fatal to your website.

Don’t lump all your topics together on one page. Keep different topics on different pages. This ensures that no one ends up confused and leaves as a result. Search engines will also have an easier task of ranking specific pages.

Alt Tags

Placing ALT tags when using images on the site is important. These tags are very important for the handicapped segment of your target audience. If your images are used as links, ALT tags also provide a way for you to describe the behavior of the link. Lastly, search spiders use ALT tags, so this can help you in the SERPs.

Optimize your website for older IE versions. People usually say they hate Internet Explorer, but many people still use it. Many elements are not in compliance with web standards, so finding a workaround will be required. An example would be the vexing “box model bug” which troubled IE for quite some time.

File Types

File sizes affect the speed with which your website loads. You can control file size by paying attention to file types. When it comes to graphics, it is normally wise to employ GIFs and JPEGS. PNG and BMP files take up a lot of disk space. Convert your images to file types that are smaller and easier to manage if you want a guaranteed great user experience.

Be sure load times for your site are good. Those who visit your site have little in the way of patience so ensure your site is designed to load quickly. Use less graphics, avoid Flash, and optimize your HTML.

Focus on conditional loading as you build your webpages as well as CSS that is specifically for pages opening in varying browsers. These techniques can help you test and easily maintain them later. All websites need to be maintained at some point, and you want it to be as simple as possible so you can easily make changes.

Using pop-up ads are a sure way to turn customers off. Incorporating PPC ads can bring you some income, but pop-up ads distract your visitors and annoy them. They may then choose not to come back to your site. Keep the ads simple since you don’t need any wild pop-ups.

It does not matter how much money you have invested into the website, being a site host is not a great idea. Design as much as you can yourself, but letting someone else host it will free up some of your time, allowing you to work on other things.

Text Editor

You can use a What You See Is What You Get code editor (WYSIWYG), but using a text editor such as Notepad, gives you full flexibility when editing your code. The idea with these platforms is to design your site’s features, and then paste in their generated code. However, if you would like to keep the errors to a minimum, and increase your experience, then obtaining classic text editor would be the way forward.

Research is very important when it comes to website design. Become educated about your particular niche so you can appeal to your target audience. You need to design your website so it maximizes your efforts in bringing in your target audience. This makes your site more efficient.

If you want to know the effectiveness of your site’s design, consider utilizing task-based usability tests. The general use for these tasks is to be able to locate a function or some information within your site. If you have a great site, it will not take a long time. If it isn’t, the task helps you understand how to improve your website.

What you’ve read here should have given you an idea of what you need to know to build a proper website, so feel confident that you’re ready to go! Keep in mind that you can always learn more about website creation, so always look for new knowledge. Applying the information you have learned with the tips presented here will set you on a path as an accomplished web designer.