Designing your own website is key in promoting yourself or your business online. A well-made, functional site tells visitors that they are dealing with a trustworthy professional that has some expertise. Understanding how to design well is the first step to take, so use this advice liberally.
Don’t use lots of graphics. Graphics are indeed important to make your website look well-designed and professional, but if you use too many, it just looks cluttered. Use graphics for improvement, not decoration. Your site will also be more usable if you don’t overdo it.
Alt Tags
You want to ensure that your site has passed the NoScript test. You can add this extension to Firefox, and then use it against your website. Some ordering systems or other types of content cannot run script-free, but if the site is blank without the script on, that’s not good.
Placing ALT tags when using images on the site is important. If someone cannot pull up the image, these tags let them know what should be in the space. If your images are used as links, ALT tags also provide a way for you to describe the behavior of the link. Finally, search engine crawlers like ALT tags as they are useful. So, your search rank might improve as a result.
Whatever file types you use for the graphics on your site go hand-in-hand with file size. This plays a major role in how fast your site loads. In general, JPEGs and GIFs are best for graphics. Although there are a number of advantages to using PNG and BMP files for web graphics, these types of files take up much more disk space. Convert your images to file types that are smaller and easier to manage if you want a guaranteed great user experience.
If you’re stuck in your designing, keep in mind that you can usually find help online. When you need inspiration, you can browse through the almost limitless websites online. Come up with a site that you find appealing, figure out what you like about it, and decide if you can use that idea in your own design. However, don’t just take what you see and put it on your pages. You should always improve anything ideas you borrow.
If users want to, let them cancel an action. For example, allow users to cancel registration for newsletters or easily back out of a search. If you don’t let visitors back out of an incomplete action, it can be perceived as forcing them to do something, which will probably make them go elsewhere.
Once you figure out the basics behind building a website, you can then turn your attention to design. Take the information learned here to help you construct a website and come up with material that is geared towards your audience. Keep learning how you can increase your traffic to reach your goals shortly.