Monday, April 14, 2014

Web Design: Do It Like A Pro

To run a successful website, a solid knowledge of beneficial web design techniques is vital. Good web design will make your website comfortable to use, visually appealing, and give it a trustworthy feel. Not only will this entice new visitors, but it will make them repeat viewers as well. This article contains a selection of tips and ideas that will help you to become an excellent web designer.

Poland Trips by Rubber Dragon, on Flickr

Avoid trying to add every new gadget to your website. It can be tempting to make your site look cutting edge by including every new web design option out there but it can end up turning people off. Simple will generally get the job done even better than a flashy layout.

Don't use splash pages for your site unless required by law, and especially don't use a Flash intro. Most people just want to get to your content as quickly as possible, and don't care to look at useless splash pages. If you have some amusing content that you absolutely want visitors to see, integrate it into the homepage instead.

Keep the loading time to lower than ten seconds. A good site will appear before a visitor's eyes within moments. Most visitors want instant gratification, so give it to them.

To help you design a more professional looking site, do not include an image in the page background. A background image screams low quality site, plus these site usually take forever to load. When you are going for a more professional look, the last thing you want is your visitors waiting forever because images are still loading on your pages.

Personalize your site. Your clients want to feel comfortable with you, so use testimonials from trusted customers, as well as photographs of people. Building trust with your customers is very important, so be sure to let them know you personally care about the product or service you are providing them.

Be sure your website works both with and without the "www" prefix. Some people will type this in before they head to your site as a force of habit, and some may not. You should make sure that customers will be directed to your site either way, or you may have some confused people on your hands.

Your user's needs should be your top priority. The focus of the end user should always be at the forefront of the designer's mind. These needs include user interaction, accessibility, and user experience. These are the most important considerations to be made. View the site's design from the potential visitors' perspective.

Creating a site map is a very important part of the web design process. A site map is an effective way to inform visitors of the various kinds of content that your website has to offer, and is a great tool for navigating your website. Search engine crawlers will also utilize your site map for similar reasons, and therefore, including a site map will help boost your search rankings. Make sure your website has a site map, and that it is through.

Embracing excellent web design practices will be of great benefit to you. When you do this you have a lot more at your disposal to add to your site, which can make your site look that much better, gaining trust from visitors. Good web design is crucial to the success of a website. The article above provided you with many tips you can use. Start implementing them to maximize your website's potential.

The Art Of Web Design: A Basic Guide For You

As more and more of our lives take place online, any business that wants to succeed needs to make sure it has an effective Internet presence. However, if your website does not work properly, your business will suffer. Learn how to design a great website with the following tips and techniques.

Rawkes: A web design studio on a mission by robhawkes, on Flickr

A tagline can be very beneficial for your site. These are statements or mottos that express the purpose of your business. Using a clear tagline is important because when someone visits your page, you have roughly eight seconds to capture their attention and entice them to explore the rest of your site.

Avoid useless scripts. Scripts like counters and date/time scripts don't really serve any purpose, and since they are all JavaScript, can add a few kilobytes to the page's file size. Getting rid of these elements also frees up space on the homepage. Replace those useless scripts with useful content that keeps users coming back.

Make sure your webpages aren't too long. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and if your most important content is "below the fold," it may not even be read. If you have a lot of related content that needs to stay together, consider breaking it up into sections and adding links to each section.

Avoid trying to add every new gadget to your website. It can be tempting to make your site look cutting edge by including every new web design option out there but it can end up turning people off. Simple will generally get the job done even better than a flashy layout.

Don't use frames. While they worked well back then, they had many flaws. Readers have difficulty bookmarking and scrolling websites with frames. You have much better options with which to help visitors go through the site.

Although it is common to see the www. at the front of a website URL, you should try to make sure that you can access your site whether you choose to include it or not. This will make it much easier for anyone to access regardless of how they type it.

Keep your page sizes to a minimum. Not all internet users have fast connection speeds, and the longer your site takes to load, the less interest they will have. You do not want your page viewers to be stuck waiting for every page to download, or they may end up abandoning your site.

To help you attract a more professional crowd to your site, make sure you design your site with no spelling errors. When designing the site, utilize a spell checker and if need to, a grammar checker. If you have a site with poor spelling and grammar, people will not want to do business with you because they will think it is unprofessional.

As you have seen, web design does not have to be a difficult task. Once you know more about the basic principles involved, you should be able to construct a website that will appeal to your visitors and help them find what they need.

Use the tips you have read in this article for the best results.

Web Design Tips You Can Use Right Now

With a poor economy and not many good job prospects in the near future, many people today are looking to create a home business on the Internet. For your website to start earning money, though, you need to first make sure it is designed well. Read on and find some helpful tips on web design that you can take and use to help your business succeed.

Helldesign by Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta, on Flickr

HTML5 video is set to become the next standard for displaying videos on the web and naturally, you should offer both a way in which users can stream your content through an HTML5 format as well as another format such as flash for those who have an older browser version.

For multimedia presentations, take advantage of the new HTML5 standard. Although HTML5 isn't quite as robust for animation and games as Flash, it has the advantage of working stably on mobile phone browsers, including those contained in Apple hardware. HTML5 is also quite a bit leaner than Flash, so load times will improve, as well.

Don't try to fit too much onto one page when you're designing a website. If your page is too busy it will take a lot longer to load and can overwhelm visitors. When you're going to be putting up a lot of content, create pages for everything you can to reduce the clutter on your page.

Don't use splash pages for your site unless required by law, and especially don't use a Flash intro. Most people just want to get to your content as quickly as possible, and don't care to look at useless splash pages. If you have some amusing content that you absolutely want visitors to see, integrate it into the homepage instead.

Web design is a subject that you always want to stay informed on. With this in mind, if you have any friends that are also into web design then you will want to keep in contact with them. You can exchange any new information you learn so that you're both on top of your game when it comes to web design.

Avoid creating user interface (UI) controls that mislead your visitors. These controls include elements, widgets and more that create an interactive experience, such as a link, drop-down list or button. You do not want to make visitors think that clicking on an underlined word or phrase for example, will lead to a new page if it is not actually linked to something else. When your visitors have expectations of something working a certain way and it does not, they are more likely to assume there is something wrong with your site and leave.

To help you design a website that is free of clutter, do not include any scrolling text on your site. Websites that have things constantly moving back and forth on the screen is really distracting to the visitor. Not only is this distracting and annoying, it screams unprofessional and will cause your visitors to leave quickly.

Website design doesn't always have to be such a complex project. The secret is to get started early, try things out and learn what works for you. Regardless of your reasons for getting into website design, the tips here can help you create a beautiful website.

Great Tips On How To Become A Better Web Designer

Web design is one of the newer ways a lot of people can make a good amount of profit from in today's digital age. If you want to learn how to make some web sites so that you can pursue some of your personal endeavors then this article is the place for you.

Layout 0.1 do novo site do jornal Repór by dpadua, on Flickr

By testing the way your website will work in different browsers, you can ensure that the maximum number of visitors see your site they way you want them to. A site that works on Internet Explorer might not display right in Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari. Prior to formally launching your site, verify that it displays correctly in each of these popular browsers.

To help your web pages load quickly, you should compress all the images on the website page. If you have images that are compressed then pages will load much faster. Nothing is more frustrating to viewers than waiting for a 250k graphic to load when it should really only be 20k.

Aim for page loading times of under 10 seconds. A website that is designed well should load up very fast no matter what browser the visitor uses. Many online users want instant gratification, so you should provide that.

Do some keyword research. While your main focus should always be on providing your customer with relevant and current information, you first need to work on gaining a customer base. Understanding what keywords will bring people to your site from a search engine is a needed step to becoming a successful site.

Avoid using a variety of fonts on your site. You should also think about how different fonts will look and how readable they are. Most sites use Verdana, which is easily read in different colors and sizes.

The best web sites communicate a lot of information in a small amount of words. If you are long-winded, people will easily get bored and find another site that is more concise. Make sure any content is relevant and easy to understand - newspapers use an eighth grade reading level, which is the most common literacy level.

If you intend to use advertisements on your site as a way to increase your earnings, make sure to maintain an appropriate ratio. Keeping your advertisements at no more than 25 percent of your content ensure your site is not cluttered with too many of them. Just like people would not watch television if it was nothing but commercials, site visitors are less likely to stay on your site if you have too many advertisements.

If you are not feeling confident in any area at all when you're designing a website then go ahead and ask for help from someone. You can either find help from a friend or from strangers on places like forums on the web. Just be sure you don't tackle anything without knowing what you're doing first.

Learning all of the material from this article can be a bit much to take in, if you need to go ahead and read through this article again to make sure you digest all of the information presented. Once you feel confident use the tips from this article to assist you with web design.

Use These Tips To Assist You With Designing Your Website

Many individuals build websites on their own, but use bad fonts. Make sure that your fonts work out well for all readers. The following article offers you a number of great tips that will show you how to create the perfect font size.

Larry King Cardiac Foundation Internal by Matt Blasi Design & Photography, on Flickr

If you want your website to attract many visitors, it must be simple to navigate. Important links should be highly visible on every page. Having a menu bar on your site can also make navigation easier. Post links that lead back to the homepage on each page of your website to make navigation easier for your users.

Web design is a subject that you always want to stay informed on. With this in mind, if you have any friends that are also into web design then you will want to keep in contact with them. You can exchange any new information you learn so that you're both on top of your game when it comes to web design.

Do not use a lot of graphics. Graphics are important, but too many can yuck things up. You should never use graphics simply to decorate your site; they are used to improve your site. Having the right mix of graphics will improve your site's usability, too.

To help your visitors be able to easily read your site, you should design it using contrasting colors. If you use colors that contrast, it makes the text stand out. If you have black text with a black background you will not be able to see the information, but if you have black text with a white background it becomes simple to read.

Do some keyword research. While your main focus should always be on providing your customer with relevant and current information, you first need to work on gaining a customer base. Understanding what keywords will bring people to your site from a search engine is a needed step to becoming a successful site.

When you are designing a page with links, make sure that the link has text content. Links that show content are clearly visible to the visitor so they know what they are clinking on. If there are links on your page without text content, they could accidentally click the link through a keyboard shortcut.

Create a comprehensive "About Us" page. Many websites contain very uncreative and dry pages for these areas. Make yours exciting! Try giving people a tiny peek into your personal background. Try showing how you got into web design, who inspired you, and what you hope to accomplish with your business.

Stay with a layout that is basic and not all that confusing so that you don't confuse yourself. Do this so that you get the basics down first then try your best to upgrade to an intermediate site and from there progress to a site that is more advanced in the end.

Many people approach site design without learning the right knowledge to be successful. These tips will help you make a user-friendly website that's easy to read.

Find The Best Web Design Advice Here

When many people hear the term "web design", they often think of hours of time and energy spend writing long lines of code and creating graphical images for a website. Web design is easier than most people believe, and the web design tips in the following article will prove just that.

Weddzilla Bride Profile Page by Matt Blasi Design & Photography, on Flickr

Avoid trying to add every new gadget to your website. It can be tempting to make your site look cutting edge by including every new web design option out there but it can end up turning people off. Simple will generally get the job done even better than a flashy layout.

Frames have not been used in web design since the 90's. The popularity of frames declined as the more obvious problems became apparent. Visitors may find it difficult to scroll or bookmark your design when a frame design is present. You can use much simpler methods to allow your users a way to navigate your content.

It may look pretty, but stay away from having too many animations on your site. Having your sales splash page rotate, spin and blink may look cool to you, but it will likely drive potential viewers away. When you add too many flashy splashes like that, it makes your site look amateurish which is not the message you want to convey.

Go easy on the graphics in your web design. Although graphics are necessary make your site project a professional, well-designed and cohesive look, having too many can make it look cluttered. You should never use graphics simply to decorate your site; they are used to improve your site. Having enough graphics that don't clutter the site will make your site easier to use, as well.

To help your website visitors easily navigate through your site, design it so that it becomes easy to find "stuff." When you have a simple site that makes it easy to locate information, you keep your visitors there much longer. If you make it difficult for them, then they will get frustrated and leave.

To help you design a site that is easy for people to read all the information, make sure the pages are not too wide. If the pages are not too wide then they will fit on most people's computer screens. If the page is too wide, then part of your valuable information could be left off the page.

Use free software to set up your own site. Many people believe that expensive software is the only way to get things done, but there are multitudes of free tools available to help you get started, and keep your site running. You just need to do a little Internet searching in order to find some free tools that will work best for you.

As stated before, people think of hours of coding and creating images when they think about web design. They don't realize that web design isn't as complicated as they believe. Using the tips from this article, anyone will see how easy web design is and use it to create their own website.

Design Your Own Sites: Web Design Advice

Web design is a field that people want to excel at. Yet no one really takes the time to learn what it takes to become successful with it, and the few who do are the ones reaping all the benefits. Use this article so you too can gain from learning how to design websites.

Reinvigorate by Bull3t, on Flickr

Keep the size of your web pages small. A lot of modern web pages are full of unnecessary elements, including huge images, Flash advertising, and lots of AJAX. Many people, especially those in rural areas and other countries with less-developed internet infrastructure, don't have high-speed Internet and will have to wait forever for a large page to load.

When you are designing a website, it is important to have proper spelling and grammar. In addition to running spell-check on your content, ask a friend or co-worker to proofread everything. Having good spelling and grammar on your website will help give it a professional feel and your visitor will be more likely to return.

If you're working on web design use the right graphics for the job. Remember, bitmap images are huge and usually don't work well, PNGs work fine. For screenshots, text buttons, and other non-photographic images, use PNG if the image has more than 256 colors, and GIF if not. For photos, you can use JPEG images.

Make sure your site passes the NoScript test. Download and activate the NoScript extension for Firefox and see if your site is still readable. Some content, such as ordering systems for products, can't work without scripts, but if your site is simply blank with scripts turned off, that's bad news.

To help you attract a more professional crowd to your site, make sure you design your site with no spelling errors. When designing the site, utilize a spell checker and if need to, a grammar checker. If you have a site with poor spelling and grammar, people will not want to do business with you because they will think it is unprofessional.

The best web sites communicate a lot of information in a small amount of words. If you are long-winded, people will easily get bored and find another site that is more concise. Make sure any content is relevant and easy to understand - newspapers use an eighth grade reading level, which is the most common literacy level.

One thing you should always take into account when you're thinking about web design is the latest technology that is out today. As technology advances to does the web, so be sure you are always up to date with what is changing so that you're that much more understanding of how the web works.

Be sure you take care of the people that use your site's needs. As a web designer, it is important that you make this the focus of your design. You have to think about how well the site is built and how good of an experience you can offer to people. These are important considerations to make. Try looking at the websites from your audience's perspective when designing.

You now know what it takes to design a good website, as well as how to make a profit doing it. Web design is useful to know how to do because it can help you either save money on designing your personal website or make money designing other people's websites.

Valuable Web Design Tips You Need To Know Right Now

Trying to find the exact answers to your web design questions can be frustrating. There's lots of available content but nothing too useful. Read the advice from experts here and you will find the answers you need.

Nature China homepage mock V002e by Lightsurgery, on Flickr

Avoid trying to add every new gadget to your website. It can be tempting to make your site look cutting edge by including every new web design option out there but it can end up turning people off. Simple will generally get the job done even better than a flashy layout.

Don't force users to install strange BHOs. Many tech-savvy users won't do it. Common offenders include unusual video players, image viewers, and platforms for interactive games. For most standard use cases, there is a trusted plugin, such as Windows Media Player or even Flash) that will do what you want without driving away users.

Be aware of the background you choose. You don't want your text to be hard to read! A distracting background is...well, distracting. Choose a background which coordinates well with the message that you are trying to impart, it must blend in well with the balance of your website design.

Set up your website to store personal information that users might need to reenter multiple times. For instance, if someone filled in their name and address when creating an account, pre-populate this information when the customer fills out an order form. Creating transferable form information will make the overall process simpler and quicker for your visitors, and they will be happy with the time you have saved them.

Make your links obvious. Customers do not like spending time wading through your site searching for something they are interested in. Having a site map, as well as providing big, prominent links will help your viewer find what they are looking for without wasting time in a hunt. Lead them to your information.

You can build yourself a fine website using only free software. Costly software is also available, but you can get good results with free tools since you are the main factor in the success of your site. Finding good free software does require a bit more legwork, however.

Never underestimate the value of great meta tags throughout your website. Quality meta tags will help search engines point interested people in your site's direction. Non descriptive or inaccurate meta tags will result in low visibility for your website.

When tinkering with your HTML, you always need to save a copy. You can save a copy of your code in a Notepad doc; just save it as .html and it will save as an actual webpage. This way, you can tinker around with things and know that there's a backup should something go wrong. Failure to save pages may result in having to start from scratch.

In a nutshell, you have probably looked all over for good tips on web design. Fortunately, this site can help to separate the wheat from the chaff in advice on website design. Begin using what you learned here as soon as possible, and pretty soon you will be happy you did so.

Ways On How To Create Good Quality Web Design

Learning how to become successful in web design can seem overwhelming at times. Yet if you read through you can learn some insightful information on how to become a success in web design so you can concentrate on reaching your future endeavors.

Environmental Brant - Free Design Templa by karindalziel, on Flickr

It is always good to add a favicon to your website. The favicon is a 16x16 image file in the .Ico format. This image is the one you see next to the URL bar, next to the title of the page on an opened tab and is also visible on your bookmarks tab if you choose to bookmark a page. The favicon will help users quickly recognize your page in their browser without reading any text or directly viewing the page.

Don't use OnExit popups on your website. This tactic is mainly used by internet marketers who are trying a last-ditch attempt to get a sale. Word about these kinds of popups get around, and they will kill your reputation as a marketer. Mozilla has even taken steps to suppress the text on these popups, citing security risks.

White space is an important part of web design, so don't be afraid to use it. Cluttering up your web pages with too many images or too much text, or using a distracting background, will only irritate your visitors. White space can make the important elements of your page more visible.

Use a descriptive title. Many site owners forget to name their pages, or name them something generic, such as "Welcome Page." Search engines do use title descriptions in their rankings, so make sure you are as descriptive as possible, without going overboard. Make sure it is usable for your viewers and the search engines.

Make your links obvious. Customers do not like spending time wading through your site searching for something they are interested in. Having a site map, as well as providing big, prominent links will help your viewer find what they are looking for without wasting time in a hunt. Lead them to your information.

To help your visitors be able to easily read your site, you should design it using contrasting colors. If you use colors that contrast, it makes the text stand out. If you have black text with a black background you will not be able to see the information, but if you have black text with a white background it becomes simple to read.

To help you create a website, you should learn HTML. Knowing HTML helps you understand how a website functions. When you understand how a website works, you can incorporate your own HTML code into your site. This helps you to easily correct changes without having to rely on outside programs to build your site. In other words, you have more control over your site's content.

So now that you know what it takes to become a great web designer you should feel a lot more confident with handling any website. Whether it is a site that you want to work on for yourself or for business related matter you know what it takes to design websites to become successful and reach your goals.

Answers To Common Questions About Auto Repair

Many people believe that flashy websites look real nice on the eye and they attract lots of visitors, but that is only true when your visitors have very fast web connections. Like most successful sites, they keep it simple so people can easily get to the information they seek. Continue on for a number of great tips so you can keep your site clean and simple.

Open Golf Accommodation by Rubber Dragon, on Flickr

If you're designing a website, make sure the code you write has a valid HTML+CSS. Although most browsers can make sense of code that isn't valid, it could be rendered correctly or incorrectly. Valid code will render the same way most of the time in modern browsers. You can check the validity of your HTML code with an HTML validator.

Make sure the combination of colors your site uses is attractive and makes the site easy to read. Be sure that your written content is clearly visible and easy to read against the background you choose. In general, a light background with darker text is much clearer than the reverse situation. Ask your friends to give you feedback on the colors you choose.

Your website needs to function properly for visitors who use any kind of browser, so be sure to test out your site for browser compatibility. What works in Chrome might not appear the way you want it in Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari. Prior to going live with your website, see how your pages look on every popular browser.

Do not use JavaScript too much. For some people visiting your site, Java will cause problems instead of providing improved functionality. The major web browsers differ somewhat in functionality, and they are updated frequently. You can't expect that your website visitors are going to have the most updated versions of their browsers. Additionally, you need to realize many people disable the JavaScript function in their browser. Both of these factors can determine whether a user is able to access your site.

Wherever your logo appears on your site, you should accompany it with a complementary slogan or tagline. Ideally, this tagline should be catchy and informative, and should offer some basic summary of the purpose of your site or product offering. The combination of your logo and tagline should appear on every page to create a sense of cohesion.

Do not use blinking, scrolling text or other animations. Also, steer clear of sounds or music that plays automatically. All of these things are distracting to users and provide nothing of value. In addition, connection speeds vary from one site visitor to the next, and everyone does not have the same speed. Those users with slower connections will resent the slow-loading elements of your site.

As stated from the article above, flash website do look nice to the eye, but the problem with them is that for most people they take forever to load. If you understand how to design your site in such a way that is nice, but not overly flashy, then you will have a successful site. Apply the tips from this article to build yourself a nice looking site that does not distract the visitor.