If you do not know much about it, website design can seem like a mysterious and intimidating art. The truth is, you’ll find it easier once you have mastered the fundamentals. When you take advantage of the advice that has been made available to you here, an easy to navigate, nice to look at website, can be yours.
Frames have not been used in website creation since the 90’s. Frames used to be beneficial in some ways, but they always had their issues. Frame designs are harder to bookmark, and they make scrolling a chore. You can employ easier techniques for better site usability.
People don’t like to wait when they browse the Internet, so your pages need to load fast even on slow connections. If a site visitor ends up waiting for a long time for your web page to load, they will definitely leave your site in search of a similar site that loads faster and will never recommend anyone to your site.
Add a prominent tagline to your website. This tagline includes a company motto or statement that tells the reader a little bit about the business. The tagline serves to entice people to linger at your website rather than just pass through. Research shows that visitors spend roughly 8 seconds deciding if a website is worth exploring further. So make your tagline count.
You must create a website that is easily navigable to attract and keep traffic. Links should be displayed where users will find them easily. Having a menu bar on your site can also make navigation easier. Make sure that you have links posted to every page of the website. This will allow visitors to easily navigate the site.
Page size must be kept small. If your pages take a long time to load, visitors with slow connection speeds will lose interest. If the wait is too long, your visitors may give up and leave.
Have the data that users enter into fields preserved so that it can be transferred over to other portions of the site where the same information has to be filled out. For instance, people may already register with your site, and you should have it set up to preserve their information if they choose so they don’t have to register again. It’s annoying for visitors to have to re-register for different site functions, so work to make the site experience positive for your users.
Good meta tagging practices will help your website draw in larger numbers of visitors. High-quality meta tags will help search engines determine the topic of your website. If you use irrelevant meta tags, instead of tags that describe your website’s content appropriately, search engines will classify your site incorrectly and you won’t get a lot of traffic.
Keep your topics separate. Break up pages by discussion. This helps your visitors navigate your site more seamlessly, and it helps search engines understand what you have to offer better. This translates to higher rankings.
If you want your website to be more attractive, consider adding your own pictures. It makes you seem more friendly that way. People will take more time browsing your site and looking at pictures.
Free Software
The type of files you use for graphics on your site are related directly to the size of the file. This affects the load time of your site. In general, JPEGs and GIFs are best for graphics. These files will help you to conserve the most amount of space possible. To be sure visitors have a positive experience, graphics should be converted to file types that are better-sized.
Free software exists that can help you set up your site. There is a pervasive myth that expensive programs do the job of website design better than the alternatives, but there is plenty of free software that does a great job. You just need to do a little Internet searching in order to find some free tools that will work best for you.
No matter how aesthetically designed your site is, make sure all files have smaller file sizes. Your file sizes have a lot to do with the speed of your site loading. You should strive to make sure that your website loads as fast as it possibly can. You should remember also that some visitors may not use an Internet connection that is high speed. Perform a test of your website to be sure that it will load quickly on every speed of internet connection.
Your website should be optimized for the older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, such as IE7 and also IE8. The Internet community loves to hate on IE, but in truth, a large portion of Internet traffic still happens through IE. Workarounds are often necessary when standard elements can’t be rendered. Do a little research on the box model bug.
Make sure that your load times are up to par at all times. Visitors that get stuck waiting for slow pages to load will almost always leave the website. Try reducing how many graphics you use, as well as how much Flash and JavaScript is on your site, optimize your HTML code, make use of server caches and minimize your use of JS and CSS code.
It should be clear that website creation isn’t as hard as it seems, once you know a bit about it. Increasing your knowledge will ease the design process. Start with applying the advice you read and you should be able to design a good first website.