This article is for anyone with even the slightest interest in web design. Keep reading to find out where to start, and what you should take into consideration. Your experience does not matter because there is always something new to learn.
Your website should be easy to scan. There are a plethora of tests online that help gauge the usability of a particular website. Break text into small, easy to scan sections to help readers quickly find the information they are looking for. Put your most vital information near the top. All of this ensures a more satisfying experience for your visitors because they can quickly find what they need.
Newsletters can generate repeat visits. Giving your customers the opportunity to receive promotions, updates, or other news in their inboxes can encourage them to return. Put your sign up form on your site’s sidebar to keep track of how many people sign up. Only send out a newsletter to people who have subscribed to it, otherwise you will have angry customers.
Adding some relevant pictures is always a good way to make your site more interesting and attractive. Pictures on your website can provide a friendlier approach to visitors. People will stay on your site longer if it has photos to check out.
As you design your site, avoid overuse of multiple fonts. You should also think about how different fonts will look and how readable they are. Most sites use Verdana, which is easily read in different colors and sizes.
Build a feedback-gathering mechanism into a website to gather visitors’ opinions. This will help you recognize mistakes in your design and give you the opportunity to fix them. Negative and positive feedback are useful in improving your website.
Internet Explorer
Your site should be optimized to handle older Internet Explorer versions. While it is often viewed as a sub par browser, a large number of users are still using old versions of this browser. They don’t render many elements in compliance with web standards, so workarounds are required. Specifically, you should learn about a “box model bug” which troubled Internet Explorer for years.
To help you design your site to attract more visitors, you need to include good meta tags on each page. Quality meta tags will help search engines index and present your website to their users. If you use meta tags that do not correspond to your content or to your target audience, do not expect to get a lot of visitors.
The file types will affect the load time of your website. You are better off keeping the graphics to the normal GIFs and JPEGs so it loads smoothly. PNG and BMP files take up a lot of disk space. You can convert the larger graphics into a more manageable size to help your viewers have a better user experience.
Try using readable and professional-appearing fonts. You can tell if a site is professional just by viewing their fonts. Do not employ exotic fonts that will be absent from many visitors’ computers or over-used fonts such as Comic Sans. If a visitor doesn’t have a font on his computer, his browser may display a default font that doesn’t look right. Many times, the result is very unappealing.
Buy books that can help you become a great web designer. Start with books around your skill level, so that you don’t skip any necessary information.
You need to learn some great tricks from experts when you want to build a webpage. This will help you quickly create great sites. If you don’t spend time learning, you’ll never get better.
Consult with a professional and seek help. You can learn a lot from someone who is a master in website design already, because they know the ins and outs of the way website development works already. Gathering as much knowledge as you can will ensure that you can become an expert yourself some day.
Think like you’re an artist when designing websites. This means that you should be prepared to receive inspiration as it occurs. If you have a good idea for your site while you’re eating out, jot it down on a napkin. You can jot down notes on a notepad, carry a small recorder, send yourself a text message or email or call your answering machine or voicemail and leave yourself a message.
With the useful web page design tips you have acquired from this article, you should now have an understanding of how you can improve your skills, and also be more confident in your ability to eventually create fantastic websites. Always be open to new information about web page design. You’ll be a great designer quicker than you think!