Do you hope to one day have a successful career as web designer? If you answered yes, then you need to start doing as much research on the subject as you can, and the following suggestions will help.
Look at different forums for new information. With a quick search on Google, you can uncover plenty of information that won’t cost you a dime to learn.
Never underestimate the value of a site that is simple for visitors to navigate. Links should be highly visible and easy to locate. Menus will make it a lot easier to navigate around your site. To help visitors find their way back, be sure to have a visible link to the main page on all your pages.
Let visitors search throughout your website. If visitors want something specific, they will immediately scan for a search function. If you don’t have one, they may go to another site which does. Normally, the best place to include the search box is in the upper right hand corner, as that is where most visitors look for it.
Avoid using a lot of graphics. Graphics are essential to make sure your site is pleasing to the eye, but overusing them just clutters the page. You should never use graphics simply to decorate your site; they are used to improve your site. Having the right amount of graphics that does not impede on the overall website design is key to how well the site looks.
Search Engines
Don’t use frames if you want a site search engines can crawl! While they improve your site’s looks, any information contained in a frame is not indexed by search engines. Your website won’t rank high if the information isn’t visible. When this happens, you won;t get a lot of visitors.
When designing your site, use ALT tags when adding images. These tags are important because they describe the images people see when they don’t have their graphics turned on or they’re for people that can’t see and need help with getting a website read to them. When links are used for images, having an ALT tag lets you describe the link’s behavior. It may also benefit your search engine rankings.
Always make sure that the navigation on your website is clear, user-friendly and easy to maintain. Your navigation links should be easy to see and use to keep visitors on your site. The structure for navigation should be consistent, neat, and easy to use if you want your visitors to enjoy their experience.
Use fonts that are both easy to read, and professional. You can tell if a site is professional just by viewing their fonts. Don’t use fancy or non-standard fonts. Some people may not have these fonts installed on their computers. If you use a font that not everyone has, a default font will appear on their computer. This may make your entire design look bad.
Running a site and web designing, must have a personal office. Remove distractions, to make your office a space in which to work, without interruptions. Keep all of your tools and materials within easy reach and keep the space optimized for your workflow needs.
Talk with your friends to discover if you’ve missed anything when you learned certain things, such as Photoshop, HTML, or Dreamweaver. You want to ensure that you remember everything you learned. It can slow you down quite a bit if you have to review what you’ve learned while building a website.
Give each individual page in a domain and its sub-domains a clear, unambiguous tagline. The text needs to be obvious and placed conspicuously on every page. It has to explain what the page is about so your visitor can quickly decide to stick around or not.
Take literacy levels into account when you write site content. If you want everyone to be able to understand your website, use language they can understand. To reach the widest possible audience, your content must be suitable for people at a wide variety of levels.
Let your friends see and use your website, to troubleshoot potential errors or bugs. Whenever you add a brand-new feature, have someone test and judge it while being impartial. As the site designer, you may not be concerned by a video or graphic that loads slowly. However, your users may feel differently. Ensure you get the opinions of many people to better your site.
You will design a better site if you keep learning every step of the way. As soon as you figure one aspect of site design out, you should attempt to tackle another. Although this can slow the process of building your site, you’ll receive the information that is needed to spit out dozens of sites as you learn.
If you have crucial information for your website, put it at the top and towards the left of the page. Since left to right is the normal reading pattern for most people, having important things on your site to the top left will make sure that your visitors are noticing it regularly.
As the devices used to access the web change, you need to ensure that anyone can view your site. You may even want to have someone from another country check out the site for you. Sometimes content is displayed differently in other countries.
You should now feel less overwhelmed and daunted by the task of web design. Now that it makes more sense to you, use this information to your advantage and set up a great site.