Don’t add any pop-ups to your site. Although they may serve some function for your site, the average reader views them as a major irritant. If customers see these popups and get frustrated, they may not come back to your site.
You can learn from other web designers, but you should always remain creative and look for new ideas as you take your turn at design. Come up with interesting new design elements and website features. Don’t be afraid to also improve on features that are considered best practices, however. If you do this, you will be maximizing all of your efforts in your website design.
Create and install a website icon on your page. Make you site recognizable in your customer’s favorites list with this small graphic. You will stand out amongst all of their bookmarks! Try to design a favicon that is consistent with your logo and theme.
User-friendly web design programs, known as development platforms, can make building websites easier, but they are just not as trustworthy as hand-written code. The idea behind platform is that you are responsible for designing site features, then just paste in the generated code. Use a text editor to reduce mistakes, and additionally help to learn the process for yourself.
Realize that every step of web design will take a lot longer than you anticipated. Trying to meet an unrealistic deadline will only cause the work quality to suffer and in turn facilitate a need for more work to be put in at a later time. So you want to give yourself enough time to ensure the site is set up correctly.
Make sure that all the files on your website are small in size. You need these small file sizes regardless of the overall design of your site. Keeping your files small will directly affect how fast your website loads. You want your loading time to be as quick as possible. You need to remember that not every person who visits the website will have a fast Internet connection. Test to be sure that even computers with slow dial-up modems can connect quickly to your website.
If you want to host videos, read the rules of your host to make sure you can. Many hosts forbid hosting video using their servers. Do not waste time by building videos to be be hosted on a site that does not allow the space you need for FLV or similar files.
Get someone to run a test of your site to see if it functions as you progress. Each addition or change you make, needs to be double and tripled checked by multiple people. While you may not think your videos are loading slowly, a objective opinion may not agree. Always seek out different, outside opinions.
Make your design different than that of other sites in your niche. Look at competitors’ websites to ensure that you haven’t accidentally made a similar design for your site. It should be obvious that websites that look the same will not make you stand out. It will only serve to make you a diluted version of what someone else has already done.
So you just launched your website and you think the designing process is done, right? Think again. Be prepared to engage with your website on an ongoing basis. This does not mean that you have to constantly change it, though you will have to preform some regular updates. This is especially important if you will be hosting videos or dealing with current events. Updating your website isn’t as quick and simple as updating your blog. You still have to put in some effort, though!
Publish a newsletter, to increase your likelihood of having repeat visitors. If you have your clients subscribe to updates, they will have a reason to come back again and again. Place the signup form in a sidebar on your site, and keep track of the people that 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.
While creating your website, you should not feel forced to have your website occupy the entire available space. Cluttering every pixel with design elements, will make your site confusing and hard to navigate. Leave some space between the items you want your visitors to notice. This will give your website a more comfortable atmosphere. Is a few cases, empty space could be as important as content.
If you’re using FileZilla as a server, program the menu settings with the correct port and your username and domain. Doing so will make it possible for you to simply choose your personalized settings upon logging back into the server. You will be surprised at how much time this can save you.
Learning to work with more than one platform is in your best interest if you plan on designing more than one site. You will create the best websites if you can enhance your knowledge of PHP and MySQL, and utilize platforms like Java. Try to become well faceted in many arenas of web design, even if it is just for your website.
If your site contains a corporate logo, ensure that clicking it takes visitors back to the home page. Most websites with a logo have that logo linked to the home page, and your visitors will expect this. Visitors will become frustrated if there is no easy way to return to the home page. Having a logo that is clickable makes your website much more easy to navigate.
Now that you have gained some valuable knowledge about web design, you can feel more confident when it comes to taking that step in designing your own website. Always look for new things to learn, so you can expand your skillset and be a better web designer.