You can tell if a site is unsuccessful or successful by its design. Effective, appealing web design attracts and retains visitors. On the contrary, when web design lacks quality, visitors will leave without even reading the content. If you want to give your website the benefit of strong design practices, check out the following tips.
When you are creating graphics or photos for your website, be sure to keep the file size small. If your graphics are too large, your page will load slowly and your visitors will leave. You can find many free or inexpensive graphics programs online that will optimize your images before you load them to your website.
A tagline can be very beneficial for your site. This will let people know what your business represents. 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 cramming page elements together. Each section of your page should be naturally separated from each other, as this makes the purpose of each section more clear. The easiest way to separate sections is by using DIVs, but there are other ways, including absolute positioning (not recommended), the CSS margin command, and floats.
Learn the basics of HTML and CSS. Although there are many templates that allow you to just fill in the blanks, in order to create a web page, these templates provide only limited design possibilities. Understanding how the mark-up language and stylesheet work together will enable you to customize your website to your heart’s content.
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.
If you have never designed a web page, try using pre-made layouts. These can easily be found online for several blogging web sites like Blogspot or Tumblr. Having an interesting layout will draw attention to content and give the site a professional look. Just make sure your layout is appealing to your target audience!
Avoid using animated GIFs on your site. These were popular in the late 1990s, but newer technologies have replaced the uses for animated GIFs that were actually useful. Animated GIFs are low in quality and large in file size. Use static icons for page elements and actual video files for complex animations.
Pay attention to your background colors and your text colors when designing a site. Something like red text on a blue background doesn’t work well. And if you think that white text will pop with a black background, it could be a little too bright for your readers. Go with something subtle.
Resist the urge to use pop-ups ads on your site. Having well placed ads can add income to your site, but popups will only annoy your visitors. People won’t want to visit your website again. Keeping your site free of excessive ads will only create a better experience for the visitor.
How in depth you are when you design a website decides whether or not you are going to gain success from the website. Your traffic will be far higher if your website looks trustworthy and like an expert in the field. If your website isn’t designed well, however, you won’t get many visitors, and those that do look at it may quickly close it and not return. Use the web design strategies you just learned to significantly boost the chance that your website will succeed.