Web design can be confusing, frustrating and a little scary, too. Whether you are designing an online identity for yourself or another, it can be intimidating. By reading on, you can gain some helpful knowledge as you approach website design and seek to succeed.
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.
Make sure that your website has a tagline incorporated into the design. The tagline is some statement or motto that indicates the nature of your business. A clear tagline lets the reader quickly to see what the site is about, since most people make a decision to stay or go usually within 8 seconds.
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.
Make sure the color combinations that you use on your site don’t hinder their ability to be read. Your content should be read easily without assistance or adjustment. It is typically easier to see darker lettering that is set upon light backgrounds than the reverse. If you have doubts about your color scheme, run it by a few people and see what they think of it.
Try not too overuse graphics. While they help to keep a visitor’s interest, they can also make a site look cluttered and push visitors away. Graphics are not meant to be used as mere decorations; they’re meant to better your site content. Using an adequate amount of graphics keeps clutter away and helps you focus on site usability.
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.
Pop-up windows are one feature you should avoid. While these might seem valuable in some instances, most people think they are rather annoying. Frequent pop-ups can cause your visitors to become disturbed enough to leave your site, hurting your reputation.
Do not use images for your background. When you think about some of the biggest websites on the Internet, they do not have images as backgrounds. When you use image backgrounds, you represent yourself as someone who is not well-versed in web designing. Images as backgrounds also cause your site to load slower, which can lead to user frustration.
Make text easy to ready by using colors that contrast or backgrounds that are easy to read text on. When your text is harder to read because the background or text color creates eye strain or portions of text that are unreadable, site visitors are less likely to stick around.
Consider visitors when constructing your site. A web designer must focus on the needs of the end user all the time. Think about how a user will find information and navigate your site. You need to take this into consideration. Try to make sure you look at your site from the perspective of your visitors as you design it.
Now that you’ve reached the end of this article, you are probably itching to go out there and design a killer website. Armed with the knowledge that you’ve gotten from this article, you should be able to do just that. Use this information and your best instincts to design the site of your dreams.