Use good judgement when you add sound to your website. No visitor is going to want to be faced with uncontrollable, automatic sounds that begin playing when they load up your website. It is acceptable to have video and audio links, but be sure that the site visitor is the person who makes decisions about whether they hear something on your website.
Aim high and be a stickler for perfection. Of course, no website can be perfect, but setting high standards for yourself will spur you to always try to improve on your work. Regardless of the kind of website you are designing, that is a wonderful attitude to live by.
With a newsletter, you’ll get repeat users. Having customers subscribe to your newsletter allows you to send them important updates about special events, which in turn can get them to keep visiting your site. Stick the sign-up form in a spot that’s out of the way, such as in a sidebar, and keep good records of those who sign up. You can avoid some reputation-damaging trouble by making sure that your newsletter only goes out to visitors who have explicitly requested it.
No matter how flashy your website is, it is vital that you keep the sizes of your website’s files small. Keeping your files small will directly affect how fast your website loads. You should strive to make sure that your website loads as fast as it possibly can. This is because not all of the visitors you’re going to attract are going to have a powerful operating machine or high speed Internet. You want to perform a test to make sure your site performs well, even with dial-up modem connections.
Use copy and paste to help you create multiple webpages for your website. Instead of generating new HTML code for every single page, copy the main section of code, tweak it where needed, and then save it as a new file each time. You will be able to use this master copy over and over again.
It may be worth your while to check out some domain auctions if the website you designed needs a domain name. Sites such as SEDO have many domain names which have been set up already and are available to be purchased. Although it could be costly, it is worth having a great domain name.
You should not hire a family member to help you set up your website. Even if a friend or family member has good designing skills, you will find it hard to treat them like an employee and be honest about what you like and what you don’t.
Drop ideas for using Flash from your design plan. Although it provides some unique effects and very snazzy aesthetics, there are many people out there using older computers that will start to lag, or even crash, when they visit a Flash-heavy website. Many tablets and cell phone don’t have Flash installed on them, meaning your visitor will just see a blank spot where it should be.
Don’t use free hosting for a website, as you could lose clients. While free sounds good, these hosts have many ads that you cannot control, which they load on your site. This is not good business and you will be giving your hard earned traffic and business name to the web host and potentially chasing customers away.
Use every resource you can! You will find an endless amount of resources for great web design in the form of books, articles and online blogs. Seeking out resources will make you a better web designer and is a smart way to really learn the craft.
Meta tags used on each page of your site, can increase visitors to your site. This is an important design consideration. You need to spend some time on creating high quality meta tags so that search engines can classify your site properly. If you use poorly constructed meta tags that don’t reflect your content accurately, you won’t get much traffic.
Start out with building small websites so that you can determine what areas you worked on that were good, and what areas you worked on that were not so good. Create pages that encompass plain text to begin, and build from there as you gain confidence.
Do remember that website design does not need to be costly. For each tool that costs a great deal of money, there is a second tool that is beneficial and will not cost as much. There are plenty of free software options that function in the same way as commercial software. Using these free tools can save you a stack of cash!
If you’re wanting to design multiple sites, you need to learn how to work with multiple platforms. PHP, MySQL and Java are all highly useful disciplines that can benefit any site designer. Whether you are building a brand-new site or revamping an old one, diversifying your skill set.
Carve out some time to build your website each day. While working on bits and pieces in brief spates can be productive, to accomplish real goals you’ll have to invest some real hours. If you stay motivated and work really hard on your website, your skills as a web designer will increase. You will also find that you are more able to remember html code, so you will no longer have to keep referring to reference pages.
We hope this article has taken the mystery out of website design. As you develop your skills, you will find designing becomes easier. You should quickly learn what you need to know to succeed as a web designer using the techniques you just read about.