If you are doubtful about the value of good web design, all you need to do is compare a site such as Facebook with the sort of personal pages hosted through portals such as Google or Yahoo. You’ll notice this difference immediately, and you’ll understand web design bears much more significance than you could ever think of. Keep reading to learn more about website design and the best techniques.
When doing web design, use the appropriate graphics. Bitmap images usually are big and don’t work as well as PNGs. A PNG image should be used when it has less than 256 colors, so try to stay with that when designing text buttons, screenshots and images that are photographic quality. JPEG is a good choice for photographic images.
Make sure your website passes a test by NoScript. Download the NoScript extension in Firefox and test it on your site to see if it is still readable. When your site is just a blank page, you have a problem.
Minimize your page sizes. If your pages take a long time to load, visitors with slow connection speeds will lose interest. Users will be quick to leave a website that has pages that take too long to load.
Do not publish any site pages without verifying all the links are working. Error pages can be very frustrating to visitors. You can do this manually or run a software program if you like.
Give some thought to the background of your website. Remove obstacles to easy text reading by avoiding things like GIF backgrounds that move. Select backgrounds that work in harmony with the site, not in competition with it, and visitors will find your material much more accessible and useful.
Try researching keywords. You need to focus on giving your audience good information, but keywords will help you gain a customer base. Knowing the right keywords to make people find you through the search engines is key.
It does not matter how you have designed your website; you have to make sure that every file has a small file size. The sizes of the files affect the loading time of your site. You want your site to load instantly. This is because not all of the visitors you’re going to attract are going to have a powerful operating machine or high speed Internet. You should try loading your site on different kinds of connections to see how quickly it loads.
It is a good idea to have an “About Us” page on your site. Web designers often forget to be creative when they create the company bio area of the site. You can share personal information, education history and career choices that have lead you to this point in your life. Let people see who you are by sharing your educational background, career moves and future goals.
Check your site for broken links. The best time to do this is just before you FTP the page over to the server. Links that lead to the wrong place or nowhere at all are frustrating and visitors will soon lose interest in your site and stop visiting it. So you don’t run into problems, make sure you check to see if everything works.
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. You want to integrate your own personality into this site, and this means tweaking and adding some things on your own without the drag-and-drop site-builder the host offers.
While development platforms generate code for you automatically, they cannot duplicate the reliability of classic text editors. The concept behind development platforms is that once you choose your site’s features, you paste the code created by the platform into your website. However, if you prefer to lessen any errors while getting hands-on experience, using classic text editors should be your choice.
You can make your site more entertaining by using graphics. Using image text wrapping is one great technique. If your content looks like time was spent on it, people may be more inclined to visit and return to your site.
Avoid wasting time by programming your domain and user name into your file server. This makes it simple whenever you log back into the server, because all you do is click on the menu and select personal settings. Doing so will save a great deal of time.
Check with your host to make sure video hosting is allowed if you have the intent of hosting videos on your site. A lot of services cannot spare the bandwidth or storage space for videos. The FLV files take up too much space on public servers, so you need to check beforehand or else you might waste your efforts.
A visual sitemap can help you with advanced planning. Using a visual sitemap lets you keep tabs on how your website looks as you build it. Now you’ll be able to fix areas that need improvement, or add something you’ve forgotten. There is no substitute for a clear visual of the project.
You need a site map to help people navigate your site. Site maps accomplish a couple of things. They allow anyone who visits a website to get a quick overview. It is a one-stop shop for them to find all you have to share with them in one convenient place. Secondly, it is a good tool for SEO, or search engine optimization. Search engines are sure to have an easier time finding your website.
It is important that any logo contained within your site, links back to the home page. It is common these days for sites to have a logo or image that visitors can click on to return to the home page. It is frustrating for them if the logo is just static, because this means they have to find your home link. Having a logo that is clickable makes your website much more easy to navigate.
You probably won’t create the next Facebook or Twitter. There is quite a bit of amazing competition out there already! The best web design skills may help you make attractive and functional web designs like the pros. Use what you’ve learned here and get started today!