If you want to design a website as a hobby, for your business or even as your own career, a solid foundation of knowledge will help you get your foot in the door. From learning HTML to knowing search engine optimization techniques, there are many facets to web design.
Read on to find some advice which will cover all of the basics.
Don't neglect cascading style sheets. Using a style sheet makes it easy to give all pages of your site the same look and feel. It also reduces the file size of your pages, as the CSS file can be accessed once on the server and then from the user's local cache thereafter.
Check for broken links before publishing your web page. An error page after clicking a link is very frustrating for visitors to your page. Links can be checked manually, and you can also find software that will check your site to see if there are any broken links.
Speed is vital online, so be sure your pages load quickly. If a visitor needs to wait while the page loads, they may click off your site and not return.
Use a tracking service, rather than displaying your visitor counter for all to read. Many websites still display their counters, yet they do not serve any real purpose. There are many high quality tracking services available, and some are even free. Use these instead of showing off how many people visit you.
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.
As part of your website planning, survey your target audience regarding what features they would prefer to see on the new site. This will help with designing your site and features too. Knowing the preference of your intended audience is important when it comes to site design.
Always use fonts which are legible and professional. Fonts say a lot about the professionalism of a site and the business it represents. Fonts that are overly artistic may seem like a good idea, but often aren't accessible on all computers. A font can be subset to the default font on your user's computer if they don't have it. Your site can look bad when this happens.
Don't include pop-up windows when designing your website. Most people will be turned off by a site that pop's windows up in their face. here If customers see these popups and get frustrated, they may not come back to your site.
It is very important that customers can navigate any website easily. Where you locate your website's navigation links can make a huge difference in the amount of time a visitor will spend on your site. You must provide the user with easy navigation to create the right experience.
Avoid frames at all costs. Just don't use them. While they can make it simple for your menu or header to appear all throughout your site, the address bar won't change on each page. This can make it impossible for your visitors to link to any specific page on your site.
Try to code using only CSS. We're moving away from table-based sites to only CSS sites because they are reusable, accessible, and they can greatly reduce your file sizes. This allows you greater control of the appearance of your site. There are various CSS resources you can use, therefore, knowing CSS is invaluable to web design.
When you learn a new site design tactic, you should double-check how accurate it is before you implement it on your site. A faulty tactic may mess up your code and your entire site, so it's important that you ensure it's a working tactic before you apply it to your website.
Do tests on your site to make sure that it's up and running properly on different operating systems and different type of browsers as well. When you do this you then cover all of your tracks and make sure that as many users as possible are able to browse through your site.
Focusing on your target audience is important even for website design. For instance, if you're designing a site in order to sell winter coats, you're not exactly going to have a beach themed background with Joe Strummer tunes playing upon entry. Keep your site closely related to its targeted audience.
As stated in the beginning of this article, it is common for a person to have a webpage, be it for business or pleasure. In order for their design to look great, they have to know what they are doing. Now that you have read the above article, you will have no problem with designing the website of your dreams!