As the Internet becomes more intertwined with people’s lives, any business wanting to stay successful has to be online. However, when a website doesn’t work right, the business suffers. By educating yourself on how to build an effective site, you ensure nothing but success.
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.
Test your website before it goes live. There’s nothing worse then launching your new website and having to take it down right away due to bugs or other issues. Get a group of people together who are using different web browsers and computer platforms, and ask them to use a beta version of your website, writing down any issues they come across.
Test your website in the most popular browsers and platforms to make sure that it displays correctly. Sometimes scripts that work in one browser may not produce the same results in another browser. So you may need take extra measures, like adding a function for browser detection, in order to ensure that your website will display properly under most conditions.
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.
When designing your website, you should avoid using too many different types of fonts. Consider how the ones you choose appear on standard screens since serifs like Times New Roman can be tough to read. Most sites use Verdana, which is easily read in different colors and sizes.
If you have several pages on your web site, use a navigation bar at the top to help visitors find the information they need right away. Include contact information, so they can speak with you if they’d like. Headings should be clear and visible, and paragraphs should be concise as well as easy to read.
In your website design, keep in mind that web browsers are more friendly to websites that have independent CSS pages and provide conditional loading. These two things make maintenance and testing simpler. Simplicity is key to success.
Never bite off more than you can chew by attempting to design multiple sites at once. You should keep things simple by only working on one site at a time. Even if you do have some web design skills, you may get crossed up with your projects, or one of your sites may suffer neglect. Just take things one at a time.
Even if you invest large amounts of money in your website, it’s not a good idea to host a site yourself. Even if you create the basic design yourself, do not fall into the trap of spending the inordinate amounts of time necessary to host it yourself.
Learn as much as you can about the various forms of html, as the html is crucial to web design. When you learn about html go ahead and make a couple of pages that are sort of filled with the information that you want to add to any of the sites you plan on working on.
This article has shown that web design can be easy. When you know the basics, you can use them to make a site that appeals to visitors and helps them obtain what they need. Use the advice from the article for some great results.
