Web Design Made Easy: Ideas To Get The Creative Juices Flowing

TIP! When you design a web page, always choose the graphics that are appropriate for your purposes. PNGs work much better than bitmap images, which are huge.

Regardless of whether this is the first website you are designing or your twentieth one, a website’s design is an extremely important component of all sites. Being certain that your website is easy for users, looks good, and has quality content will mean that you will attract more site visitors who are likely to return to your site over and over again. The advice that follows will help you to put together a site that is effective, and interesting to look at.

TIP! Incorporate fixed-position navigation so the users can easily use your site. This will make sure the navigation panel is locked in place as your readers move throughout the site.

When you design a web page, always choose the graphics that are appropriate for your purposes. PNGs are currently the best standard for graphics online. Try using PNGs for images that are not photos or text buttons or if an image has over 256 colors. Use GIFs for something with less than 256 colors. You can use Jpegs for photos.

TIP! If your site users will be registering to use your site, you should use their personal information to auto-fill forms. Save users’ information like registration data, so it doesn’t have to be entered more than once on different forms.

Use a fixed-position navigation format for easy navigation for your users. This allows you to lock the panel for navigation in place while users scroll. You can use this both to allow your visitor to navigate more easily, and to keep your call to action in view.

TIP! Learn about shortcuts, and use them often. There are plenty of site design shortcuts so that you can save time.

Stay away from using pop-up ads. Few things are worse than being overloaded with pop-ups. Many visitors to a site will just click away from a site with pop-ups, even if the site is a popular one. In addition, many people now have pop-up blockers anyway. Keep your customers happy, by steering clear of these annoying ads. If your webhost places their own popup ads on your website, it is time for you to change your webhost.

TIP! Create an opt-in newsletter to entice your visitors to return often. Giving your customers the opportunity to receive promotions, updates, or other news in their inboxes can encourage them to return.

Research your keywords. The focus of your website should always be to give your users a quality experience, but you cannot do that if you are never seen. Knowing which keywords are the ones that will draw search engine visitors to your site is essential if you want to become successful.

TIP! Learn more about keywords through research. While giving viewers quality and up-to-date information should be your main focus, you must try building a customer base.

A search engine is an absolute must if your website is larger than a few pages. Perhaps in the upper corner, a search box will ensure that your visitors can search for anything within your site. FreeFind and Google both distribute a search function which you can use on your site.

TIP! To help make your website more attractive, incorporate some pictures that you took. Pictures can give your site a friendly feel.

Don’t add any pop-ups to your site. While you might see these as valuable in some form or another, most people find them rather annoying. Frequent pop-ups can cause your visitors to become disturbed enough to leave your site, hurting your reputation.

TIP! Always provide site visitors with an option to offer feedback. When you have this area, your visitors can let you know if something needs fixed or if they aren’t sure how use some of the site’s functions.

Continue to improve your site’s load time whenever possible. Visitors would rather leave than wait. Minimize the amount of Flash, scripts and graphics on your site. Optimize the site with HTML, SSI files, caching options and minimize CSS and JS coding.

TIP! Make sure the content on your website is compelling and interesting. Your design is also important, but the content is the part that keeps visitors coming back.

Hosting a website yourself is seldom a good idea. Design your website as much as you can by yourself, but have someone else host it, so that you do not have to worry about its security and safety.

TIP! ALT tags are a critical part of incorporating images into your site. It helps those who are surfing the web with disable graphics.

Make sure that your designs aren’t that similar to other designs in your immediate niche. You may find this out by look at the competitor’s sites. It will be nearly impossible to stand out from the pack if your site is too similar to everyone else’s. Your website will just seem like a poor imitation of the original, so be sure you don’t accidentally create a plagiarized website!

TIP! Good meta tagging practices will help your website draw in larger numbers of visitors. You need to spend some time on creating high quality meta tags so that search engines can classify your site properly.

If you want to have videos on your website, you should first confirm with your web host that they will allow this. There are many hosts that do not allow their servers to host videos. Do not waste time by building videos to be be hosted on a site that does not allow the space you need for FLV or similar files.

TIP! Monitor your site periodically for broken links. The best time to do this is just before you FTP the page over to the server.

It’s important to work on more than a single platform if you will be making more than one website. You need to learn MySQL skills, PHP, Java, and more platforms so that you have more assistance in the future. Whether it’s working on your own site or helping someone you know get a site off the ground, keep developing yourself into a multifaceted web designer.

TIP! Most hosts provide design tools that make building a simple site easy, but these tools will not cover you when you want more advanced features. It is ideal that you add an element of uniqueness and personality to your website.

Earn your customer’s good will with a well designed, easy to navigate website. Designing your site this way will make it more successful, which may well lead to improved financial success, too.