Creating a website from scratch is both exciting and frightening! It is tough to know just how to begin and where to get the best advice -- and what you'll be spending. The following tips should give you enough information to draw up a basic plan and start building a quality website.
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.
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.
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.
When designing your website, you should utilize cascading style sheets, or CSS. These style sheets can be applied to every webpage on your website, and will ensure that the user experience is consistent throughout the website. They are also effective for making quick design changes to your website due to the fact that you only need to change the style sheet as opposed to making alterations on every webpage.
Your site should be optimized to handle older Internet Explorer versions. Many people still use old IE versions. This creates problems for web designers, but there are things that can be done. Specifically, you'll want to know about IE's "box model bug."
To be updated on the new web design tricks, you should join an online forum. When joining these message boards you meet people who usually have an understanding of all the new web design technology. Without this new web design technology you could end up with a site that is completely outdated.
To help make sure your website works as you are designing it, test it one of the browsers like Internet Explorer. When you test the website as you go along building it, you can quickly correct any problems that might show up once you live. When your website goes live you want your visitors to be able to see everything working correctly.
Try including real customer testimonials. Very few want to be the first to try a product or service, so let customers know that others have tried your wares and that they were pleased with them. Try asking some clients that have done projects with you to create a short paragraph about their experience with your company, to put on your site.
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.
Learning web design gets easier when you practice often. To test your knowledge of the basics, try designing some pages using HTML and C+. Practice is one of the most reliable ways to improve web design skills; start practicing early and often to get the maximum benefit.
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.
Website design, and running your own website, calls for your own personal office space. Avoid distractions, to make everything effectively work in your space. Set up your work space for optimum efficiency with everything you need right at your fingertips. This will make working on your website much easier.
While you may see other strategies and designs that you like, it is important to remain inventive when you are designing your website. You can improve upon ideas you've seen used on other websites, but you should also develop your own website designs. Your web design work will be more effective and more memorable if you remember to keep it creative.
Always utilize media and content that is both relative to your site's goal, but also interesting to the potential consumers who will be viewing your site. A site that has relative info, but that is not interesting, won't captivate its audience. A website that uses fun, but non-relative information, will captivate the wrong audience. Both methods equal profits that you are losing.
Try to make your website more entertaining by using graphics. You want to do things like wrap texts around images so that your site doesn't look so bland. If you content is surrounded by creative design, visitors will like your site more.
As an alternative to Photoshop, you could choose to use the GIMP photo editor. GIMP has practically every single feature that Adobe Photoshop does; and instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a program and using up a few hundred MBs of program space, GIMP is 100% free and runs about 35mb.
Having some unused space within your site is an excellent design feature. Do not fall under the illusion that your site should be completely filled with information. White space helps people to clearly see your site, which in turn allows them to read and absorb the information much better than a site that is packed with too much stuff.
Now that you've reached the end of this article, you are ready to dive in to the creation of your site. Establish a budget, ask for help from professionals if you need to, and start drawing sketches. You are now able to design a website that will fit all your criteria, and you won't have to spend a fortune doing it.
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.
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.
When designing your website, you should utilize cascading style sheets, or CSS. These style sheets can be applied to every webpage on your website, and will ensure that the user experience is consistent throughout the website. They are also effective for making quick design changes to your website due to the fact that you only need to change the style sheet as opposed to making alterations on every webpage.
Your site should be optimized to handle older Internet Explorer versions. Many people still use old IE versions. This creates problems for web designers, but there are things that can be done. Specifically, you'll want to know about IE's "box model bug."
To be updated on the new web design tricks, you should join an online forum. When joining these message boards you meet people who usually have an understanding of all the new web design technology. Without this new web design technology you could end up with a site that is completely outdated.
To help make sure your website works as you are designing it, test it one of the browsers like Internet Explorer. When you test the website as you go along building it, you can quickly correct any problems that might show up once you live. When your website goes live you want your visitors to be able to see everything working correctly.
Try including real customer testimonials. Very few want to be the first to try a product or service, so let customers know that others have tried your wares and that they were pleased with them. Try asking some clients that have done projects with you to create a short paragraph about their experience with your company, to put on your site.
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.
Learning web design gets easier when you practice often. To test your knowledge of the basics, try designing some pages using HTML and C+. Practice is one of the most reliable ways to improve web design skills; start practicing early and often to get the maximum benefit.
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.
While you may see other strategies and designs that you like, it is important to remain inventive when you are designing your website. You can improve upon ideas you've seen used on other websites, but you should also develop your own website designs. Your web design work will be more effective and more memorable if you remember to keep it creative.
Always utilize media and content that is both relative to your site's goal, but also interesting to the potential consumers who will be viewing your site. A site that has relative info, but that is not interesting, won't captivate its audience. A website that uses fun, but non-relative information, will captivate the wrong audience. Both methods equal profits that you are losing.
Try to make your website more entertaining by using graphics. You want to do things like wrap texts around images so that your site doesn't look so bland. If you content is surrounded by creative design, visitors will like your site more.
As an alternative to Photoshop, you could choose to use the GIMP photo editor. GIMP has practically every single feature that Adobe Photoshop does; and instead of spending hundreds of dollars on a program and using up a few hundred MBs of program space, GIMP is 100% free and runs about 35mb.
Having some unused space within your site is an excellent design feature. Do not fall under the illusion that your site should be completely filled with information. White space helps people to clearly see your site, which in turn allows them to read and absorb the information much better than a site that is packed with too much stuff.
Now that you've reached the end of this article, you are ready to dive in to the creation of your site. Establish a budget, ask for help from professionals if you need to, and start drawing sketches. You are now able to design a website that will fit all your criteria, and you won't have to spend a fortune doing it.
