Just because you can navigate a website, it doesn’t mean you can build one. Changing the colors, sizes and placing things where necessary on any website takes a little practice. If you want your site to look great, learn about web design. Make sure to read these design tips below if you need a hand.
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.
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.
Purchase a web design program to help you along the way. Many of these programs are user friendly and will aid you in creating a professional website quickly. Let’s face it, a boring, drab site simply drives traffic away and that is not what we want to do.
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.
Be sure your site can handle Internet Explorer, both new and old versions. Many people still use old IE versions. The older versions do not render all site elements to comply with web standards, which means using workarounds. Specifically, you’ll want to know about IE’s “box model bug.”
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.
If you already have a particular web hosting solution that you know you are going to use, keep its limitations in mind as you design your website. For example, do not create a website that relies on specific programming languages if your web host does not support these languages. It is fairly simple to find out which technologies are supported by your web host. Make certain that your design is something that is within the limitations of your host.
After reading these tips on web design, you should see that creating a website doesn’t have to be difficult. It is a specialized skill, however, and you will need a good bit of accurate information to assist you. By retaining the content you have just reviewed, you will certainly design a site that is as effective as it is visually appealing.