You are about to find out some tips for building a website. The following tips will start you out on the right path. Pay attention to the advice that follows, and you can successfully design a website.
Before going live, test your website against NoScript. Download and run the NoScript extension on Firefox and find out if the site is readable? Some content isn’t going to work without using scripts, but you don’t want to have a blank site with scripts turned on.
Be careful with your color schemes while designing your site. The text on your web pages, in particular, needs to be clear and easy to read on the colors you choose for your backgrounds. Dark text on a light background is the easiest for your visitor to read. If you are uncertain about the effectiveness of your color scheme choice, try it out on a friend and solicit feedback from them.
Incorporate a search function that lets visitors find what they need. Visitors may look for something specific, and that box will be the one of the first things they look for. If you don’t get one of these, they may move to a site that has something like that. The ideal placement is the upper right hand corner of your page.
Keep page size to a minimum. Users with slower Internet connections might decide that the wait isn’t worth it if your site loads slowly. Users will be quick to leave a website that has pages that take too long to load.
Always delete any outdated content that is on your website. If someone visits your site for up-to-date information and find that it’s discussing the latest event – which happened a year ago – they’re leaving. If your website looks neglected and disused, your potential customers will surely take their business elsewhere. Create a schedule that will help you manage information and specials, and remind you to take down useless items.
Ensure people can easily scan your information. Most visitors won’t actually read everything you write and will skim for what they want. Text that is easy to read will ensure you have visitors that come back. Place the most vital info on the top of the page. This will help your visitors quickly locate the information they are looking for.
Buy website design software to help you build a nice site. Many of these programs are user friendly and will aid you in creating a professional website quickly. If your website is unattractive, it won’t gain many visitors.
Choose a good background. Animated GIF backgrounds and complicated patterns on your website can be very distracting to viewers trying to absorb your content. Choose a background that complements your site instead, and visitors will easily understand they message you want to convey.
Make sure you research the keywords that do well. While giving viewers quality and up-to-date information should be your main focus, you must try building a customer base. To make sure that people find your website more easily, you’ll need to learn what keywords are and how to use them effectively.
Internet Explorer
Do not work with pop-ups. There is little worse than visiting a site and being attacked by pop-up ads or newsletter sign-up boxes. They’ll be much more likely to leave your site out of annoyance if they are confronted with pop-ups. Just avoid these irritating ads, so your users will be happy. If you have a host where pop-ups are mandatory, then perhaps you should be out looking for a new one.
Don’t forget about Internet Explorer 7 and 8. People may say they dislike Internet Explorer, but a majority of them still use it. They don’t offer a lot of elements that comply with basic web standard, so customizations may be in order. Read up on the so-called “box model bug” which has bothered IE users for a long time.
In your website design, keep in mind that web browsers are more friendly to websites that have independent CSS pages and provide conditional loading. Using these techniques makes it much easier for testing and ensuing maintenance later on. Do not forget that you simply cannot go live as the site does require regular maintenance and what you just learned makes you job much easier.
A search engine is an absolute must if your website is larger than a few pages. The best place to put your search text box is in the top right hand corner as that is where the bulk of websites put theirs. You can get search functions to improve your website at FreeFind and at Google.
Peruse these ideas to learn how to build a basic website. Learning as much as you can about creating a web page from the people who know the most about it will be the quickest way for you to get your site up and running. If you do not take advantage of expert advice, you will be reinventing the wheel as you build your site.
Speak with people you know just to see if you missed something when you learned things like Dreamweaver, Photoshop or HTML. They can be a great resource for those times when you get stuck on your design and need a little help remembering how to do something for your site.
Your site should be optimized to handle older Internet Explorer versions. People may say they dislike Internet Explorer, but a majority of them still use it. They don’t offer a lot of elements that comply with basic web standard, so customizations may be in order. Specifically, you’ll want to know about IE’s “box model bug.”
Make sure your site’s design is different from competing websites. To make sure this does not occur, have a look at the websites of your competitors. You won’t rise above the competition if you create the exact same, or even a similar, website to your competitors’ website. You will be just another generic version of any competitors that had their sites up before you.
If you are making multiple pages within a subcategory of a website, use the copy/paste feature on your PC, it will help a lot! Do not write new HTML code every time you start a new page. Copy and paste the main structures of your code and make small changes if you need to. Doing this will save you a ton of time!
Continue to improve your site’s load time whenever possible. If people visiting your site are waiting for pages to load, boredom will quickly set in and they will leave. Speed your website up by having less scripts running, few graphics, minimal amount of flash, use SSI files, tweak the HTML, use server side caching, and lessen the amount of CSS and JS coding.
Do not make your ads too large. You don’t want people to feel uncomfortable when they visit your site. Add content that doesn’t clutter up everything else on the site and your website will look more professional and encourage readers to come back again and again.
You can get inspiration for your website from just about anywhere. Look to other websites, magazines and television for some inspiration. You should stay vigilant and look around you throughout the day because you never know what might spark your next great idea.
Include some form of “site searching” from your home page, and all sub-pages if possible. A search form is critical for a site because it is user-friendly and functional, allowing a visitor to easily find information they want without leaving your site. Site searches are fairly easy to implement, and the reward will far outweigh any time or effort spent.
Now you know how to make web design your field of mastery. However, this is just a fraction of everything you can learn on the subject. Look for new technology and you can always be on top of designing a great site.