The decision to hire a web design firm to develop your site may set you back thousands of dollars. Even with such an exorbitant price tag, you still may not be pleased with the finished product. What if the company doesn’t accurately portray what you had in mind? Perhaps you have a clear idea of what your website should look like, but a professional might see it differently. Keep these tips in mind to create a good design for your site.
Build a microsite at first, as this will help you get an overall impression of your current strengths and weaknesses as a web designer. Launch with a few basic pages and then gauge what works, and how you could expand from there.
Implement site searching abilities into your home and sub pages. This increases the site’s usability five-fold, and makes it easier to get to anyplace on the site from any other place on the site. Site searches are easy to implement; the result will be worth the effort.
Sign up for forums, newsletters and podcasts that discuss web design to help you keep up with the trends. There are many newsletters that will provide good information and tips for both beginners and seasoned web designers!
Make your life as a web designer simpler by finding a “cheat sheet” of common problems that you could run into, and their solutions. In addition, it’s an excellent method of getting some advice on improving your site.
Each page on your site should include a tagline in both the domain and the sub-domains. These should be in large, bold text and the first thing that the viewer will see when they follow any links. A good tagline should inform your visitors about the goals of your website and encourage them to read the content.
Your background is the keystone of your design. Animated GIF backgrounds and complicated patterns on your website can be very distracting to viewers trying to absorb your content. Choose a background that is not too distracting for your readers, and that goes well with the rest of your design.
Don’t add any pop-ups to your site. The average user finds pop-up windows to be an annoying distraction, rather than something useful. It’s likely that many of your visitors can’t even see them due to browser settings, so keep them happy and stick to one window at a time.
Domain auction websites can be excellent sources for domain names. These auction sites, such as SEDO, are excellent locations to purchase created domain names. This can greatly benefit your website. The auctions aren’t always cheap, but if you need a particular domain name it might be your best option.
Use a basic, simple layout for your website so it’s easy to change and expand. You want to begin small and then expand at a later time when you are familiar with the entire web design process.
Always implement powerful site-searching capabilities when designing a large website. The best place to put your search text box is in the top right hand corner as that is where the bulk of websites put theirs. FreeFind and Google both have these capabilities for a website.
If you’re wanting to design multiple sites, you need to learn how to work with multiple platforms. Learning Java, MySQL, PHP and other platforms is going to help you for years to come. Whether you intend to become a professional web designer, or you just want to do the best work you can for yourself and your friends, you should try to develop a diverse skill-set.
Remember, designing your site needs not to cost a lot of money. For each tool that costs a great deal of money, there is a second tool that is beneficial and will not cost as much. For example, open source software that is free can assist you in accomplishing tasks that are exactly the same as paid software. Therefore, using open-source software can save you a large amount of money.
Concept sketches are a great way to organize and plan out a website during the earliest, most flexible stages of the web design process. These sketches can help you plan the look of your site and determine what your planned site may lack. It is always a great step to begin with.
When making multiple pages in any subcategory of your site, use the copy/paste feature! You don’t have to generate fresh HTML code for each and every page. You can copy the main portion of the code, make some tweaks to it, and save it to a new file. Having this master copy to work from will speed up the process of designing each new page!
Learning about design on the web is much easier as you practice. So once you have the basics, start a simple web page using HTML and C+. See if you’ve got what it takes. Remember that practice makes perfect and that you have to start somewhere.
Make sure your site’s design is different from competing websites. Check out your competitors’ websites. You want to be separate from those in the pack, so you don’t want your website too similar to someone else’s. You’ll be perceived the same way as any other knockoff: an inferior brand that sells inferior products.
Retain user information so that people don’t have to waste valuable time re-typing information into forms. When a visitor fills out a registration form on your website, for instance, your site should hang onto that information, and use it to fill out data fields for the visitor on subsequent interactive pages ahead of time. This information retention and re-use makes site transactions much easier, and many people will appreciate that.
Don’t hire friends or family to build your site. 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.
One of the best aspects of web design is how you can make your page however you want. The tips above are various methods you can use to create a great site. Make sure you use these tips and look for more useful resources.