Tag Archives: concept sketches

Do you want to become a good web designer? Is your lack of knowledge about website design preventing you from attaining personal goals? If so, read the article below for some helpful advice on web design, and how you can use it to build a great website.

When creating multiple pages in a subcategory of your website, the copy/paste feature of your PC is your best friend! Copy the bulk of the code and then tweak it to change the content, heading and navigation menu. Doing this will save you a ton of time!

Functional websites work out for all visitors, regardless of their browser, so it’s essential that your website is tested across all the major platforms. What works in Internet Explorer may not necessarily show up correctly in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Prior to going live with your website, see how your pages look on every popular browser.

Draw concept sketches of the way you want the look of your site to be. Show your drawings to family, friends or potential customers to get their opinions. Use their feedback to make changes to your sketches or eliminate some ideas.

Be certain you have a method for visitors to leave comments or questions. If you have forgotten something or have made an element of your site confusing to use, they will be able to tell you. Getting visitors to your site to feel they are involved is a smart way to be certain they are going to go to your site again.

Focus on creating content that is suitable for a global audience. Your dates, times, measurements and currencies must be simply understood by as many as you can. You want your content to be as accessible to as many people as possible, as not everyone who is viewing your website is going to be from your country.

Content often trumps design when it comes to building hits. Try to keep things on the simpler side, and limit photos and information to those which will truly help your visitors to understand your products. The simpler your content, the more quickly it should load.

Pay attention to your background. Many sites make use of background images in the animated GIF format. Sometimes this provides an excellent effect; at other times it can make the text of your page illegible. Choose a background that complements your site instead, and visitors will easily understand they message you want to convey.

Consider using free software to design you website. Though expensive software is certainly available, free products can work just as well when it comes to setting up and running your site. All you have to do is a little searching to find the best free tools for you.

Name your site something descriptive that reflects its content. Just for fun, look-up the search term “untitled document” on the web. You will learn how frequently this mistake is made. Do not fail to name your site. Search engines make use of it as a crucial part of the algorithms to do with results listings.

Make your site attractive and user friendly. If you do not do this, your visitors might quickly become inclined to leave your website. Focus on good content and keep everything else straightforward and simple, so that visitors can always find exactly what they need.

Utilize newsletters if you want repeat visitors. This can be an excellent way of building your client base. Offer the signup form as a link off to the side on your site. Make sure you have a way to keep track of who signed up. Make sure you only send off the newsletter to people that want it, or you’re sure to find yourself in some trouble.

Ensure your web designs don’t look similar to something already in your niche. Just check your competitor’s websites before you start designing your own. You will want to stand out in the midst of the crowd with a different style and design. Your site will be considered as a copycat of your competitors’ and not seem trustworthy.

If you decide to use a logo, it should link to your homepage. A website logo that doubles as a home page link, has become something of an Internet standard, and many visitors will expect it. Imagine your reader’s frustration as they click away with nothing happening! They might think it’s broken, and that your site isn’t as good as they thought. Making your logo clickable is just good design.

To help you plan ahead, you want to make a visual sitemap. This can give you an idea of where you want to go in the future. It gives you an overview of exactly what your site’s structure is. Going from here, you are going to be able to identify if any areas are going to need improvement, or if you neglected an area. Nothing compares to having a clear visual overview of your project.

Hire someone you don’t know personally when having a website designed. Hiring anyone who you have a personal relationship with is a bad idea. If you’re unhappy with the work being produced, it will be tough to fire them.

Concept sketches are regularly used by web designer during the initial stages of website development. This technique will allow you to plan out the necessary functions and aesthetics of your website. This makes a great beginning point.

Consider your site visitor’s Internet bandwidths when you add videos to your site. For example, converting your videos at 5,000 kb/s may be too fast for a user’s connection to handle. Which translates into a slow video, buffering every few seconds.

Like so many skills, web design can be improved through patient, consistent practice. Try some easy web pages with C+ and HTML to learn the basics. Proceed with what you know about it soon, because you may need more practice than you initially think you will need.

Hopefully now you feel a lot more confident about tackling web design. If you do not, than you may want to reread this article. You will get a deep understanding of web design and start to feel more confident about the subject.

Web Design

Improve Your Skills With These Web Design Tips

09/11/2012 Richard Vanderhurst

Everyone knows that the way to succeed on the web is: your website has to have a good designer. However, due to the fact that there is a seemingly endless amount of information on web design, and the fact that web design concepts are always changing, it can be difficult to learn or improve your knowledge about how to design good websites. This article will help you out! This article provides insight on several components of web design.

Speed is important in the Internet, and this is why you need to see to it that your website loads fast. If a visitor has to sit and wait for several minutes while your pages load, they are almost certainly going to click away from your site and go somewhere else, and they probably will not come back to your site.

A well-written “About Us” page is worth the effort. Many websites that you see will have boring pages for this area. Spice things up. Give people a glimpse into who you are and why you love web design. Let them know what has inspired you and what your goals are.

Ensure that your site’s search box is close to the top of your webpage and that it contains a minimum of 27 characters. Label the button next to the search box “search.” Don’t use other labels, such as “go,” as these will cause visitors to miss seeing the box when they are looking for it. By doing this, you will make the search box easier to see and use. This is important to your visitors.

If you are agonizing over what color your website’s background should be, don’t be afraid to go with plain, effective white. White backgrounds make copy much more easily readable and give your site a more mature look. Complicated background designs, however, can be distracting, or make your site appear amateur. Backgrounds should be simple and subtle.

Concept sketches are a great way to lay out your website before you begin to build it. These sketches will serve as a tool to increase your chances of a successful launch, and help you decide on the finished look of the site. Using concept sketches is a great way to start the design process.

Create an opt-in newsletter to entice your visitors to return often. When you allow people to receive notifications about special events, discounts or updates, they are more likely to visit your site multiple times. Place the form for signup in a sidebar or at the top of the pages in your site, and track those who sign up. You should then only send your newsletter to people who have requested it, or individuals could sue you for unsolicited emails.

Your site must be simple to navigate if you want to attract visitors. Links should be easy to find and prominently displayed. Menus also lend to easy navigation. To enable easy browsing, be sure that each page includes a link back to the home page.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t overuse JavaScript. JavaScript is helpful in the development opportunities it provides, but some users may experience problems with it. Web browsers are all different, and each comes out with new versions pretty regularly. Not everyone will upgrade to the latest version of his browser. On top of this, some visitors will have JavaScript disabled in their browsers. This means that a portion of your visitors won’t be able to use your website.

Discuss things with your friends to gather if you missed anything while learning about Photoshop, HTML, or Dreamweaver. They can be a great resource for those times when you get stuck on your design and need a little help remembering how to do something for your site.

Hosting your site yourself isn’t recommended, even if you might have invested lots of money into it. Even if you create the basic design yourself, do not fall into the trap of spending the inordinate amounts of time necessary to host it yourself.

Make sure your content is relevant to many different contexts and cultures. You want all material ranging from dates, times to currencies to be understood by everyone. Remember that it is the world wide web, and that you may have viewers from many countries; make your site is user-friendly to accommodate visitors from all around the world.

Using a development platform can make it easy to code your web page, but they are not necessarily reliable. The goal of a platform is to design the features you want in a site, then you simply paste the code that was generated into your own site. If you hope to gain a real understanding of coding, though, then a text editor is a good learning tool.

Making sure to proofread may be obvious, but it’s vital to the success of your website. Look over everything you have written prior to uploading the page onto the server to ensure that there are no problems with the text. You’ll find it extremely difficult to cultivate a professional reputation if your content is riddled with simple errors. If your site looks unprofessional, you will lose visitors.

Some hosting services offer a tool to build your own website. Use this tool to create a very basic layout but do most of the coding yourself. Work your own individuality into your website by adding your own touches beyond the basics that the host provides.

Distribute keywords that are relevant to your intended audience throughout your website. Keep in mind that excellent web design doesn’t simply represent art. It also represents persuasion. It is important to keep in mind who the website you are developing is for. Use words that the target audience are looking for. Find some and sprinkle them throughout your content.

Having the right web design is crucial. Sadly, because of so much web design information that is available and the constantly changing atmosphere, it can be rather hard to learn everything and be up to date. Thankfully, the article you’ve just read has given you the knowledge that you need. Use what you’ve learned to improve an existing website or make one that is even better!

Web Design

Ideas To Figure Out How To Be A Good Web Designer

08/27/2012 Richard Vanderhurst

It is easy to be intimidated by website design. Many people think you need years of experience to create an attractive website. If you are a novice, do not be scared. There should be enough information here to get a good foothold on the knowledge you will need.

Create a favicon for your website. This is a very small graphic, but it will make it easier for your guests to bookmark your website. When a visitor browses his bookmarks, a distinctive favicon will stand out. Make your favicon relevant to your brand and theme.

Development platforms can make your own code, but certain ones aren’t as dependable as a text editor. With a platform, you design the features and the platform provides the code, which can then be pasted wherever you want. If you hope to gain a real understanding of coding, though, then a text editor is a good learning tool.

Consider the fact that some users have very little bandwidth before you add videos to your webpage. If you choose conversion at 5,000 kilobytes per second, that may overwhelm some users’ connections. Large videos may have buffering issues on slower connections, making the video hard to watch.

You may find yourself wanting to hire the first site design company you speak with to save time, but you need to see examples of their work before employing them. You want a consultant who produces outstanding designs, and has a history of satisfying clients’ needs. By viewing the firm’s portfolio, you will gain a clear understanding of their capabilities and accomplishments.

Producing concept sketches to flesh out the general intention you have for your website’s appearance, is a great place to start. Talk to your friends and family members to see what their opinion of these sketches are; it will give you insight into what your visitors will think of your page one day. It will also give you new ideas for your site.

Don’t let content that is out of date linger on your website. If there is content on your page highlighting an event that is already part of past history, your readers are going to abandon you quickly. Users will spend time on websites that are well-maintained, and the presence of your outdated information will tell them that your site it not being properly cared for. Set up a regular schedule in order to update your content, and eliminate items which aren’t useful anymore.

A website’s design is never done. You will have to keep working actively on your site. Regular updates are important as they show that you are bringing something new to your site. If your website focuses on current events, frequent updates are an absolute must. Current is the key word here! Maintaining a website is different from updating your blog. It does require you to work at it.

There are many resources available for people who want to start learning about web design. There is no shortage of books, magazines, and websites that will teach you about every aspect of web design, from the basics to advanced concepts. Reading this information will help you become more skilled at web design over time.

A great web design tool for someone in the beginning stages of developing a site is to take advantage of concept sketches. These sketches can help you plan the look of your site and determine what your planned site may lack. This is a very good starting point.

If you want to host any type of video on your website, make sure to first check with the web host to be positive that this is something that is allowed. Some servers do not have the ability to host videos. The FLV files are big and take up a lot of space on servers, so check to make sure it is allowed before wasting your efforts.

Because a lot of good domain names are in use already, you may want to look at some auction sites that have used domain names. A great one to check out is Sedo. There, you are able to discover a plethora of great domain names that are up for sale, possibly abandoned or just otherwise now available.

You should create a useful ‘About Us’ page Often, a website will contain a boring, half thought-out page to cover this. Try to make yours interesting! Your “About Us” page should contain information about your goals, background and inspiration.

Photoshop is a good program for creating great content for your new web site. It is also novice friendly. By using this type of program, a novice designer will be able to make high quality looking websites at a fast pace. You will expend a lot of extra time and lessen your chances of creating a professional site if you neglect investing in programs such as Photoshop.

Make your site attractive and user friendly. If your site is ugly or confusing, visitors will just turn around and leave. Provide all the necessary information, but simplify things as much as possible, so that people do not become frustrated when using your site.

If you are looking to create your own site, then consider trying a grid or shared hosting, rather than using a dedicated host or VPS. Considering you cannot be certain about the level of traffic that your website will generate, you should utilize a hosting solution where you are only responsible for covering the cost of the amount of bandwidth that is used.

It is important to include descriptive titles as part of your website. To experiment, search for “untitled document.” Many websites fail to use a descriptive title. Do not fail to name your site. When determining site relevancy for search results pages, search engines use this information.

Make sure your fonts and color schemes stay consistent throughout your site. If you change the fonts and color on every page, anyone looking at your site can get confused, and they may start to wonder if they are still on your site at all. You don’t want to confuse your visitors. Tie it all together by remaining consistent in the color palettes and fonts on your site and printed literature.

Using web design to get your product or service known can be exciting. When you do it well, you will have a strengthened ability to promote your enterprise. Don’t wait – these tips will point you toward success.