Better Your Web Design Skills With These Tips
Web design is most effective when the person doing the designing knows what they are doing. An effective web design can set apart the truly successful designs from the mediocre ones. Knowledge is key to great web design. Use the information from this article to develop a deeper understanding of web design principles.
It is always good to add a favicon to your website. The favicon is a 16×16 image file in the .Ico format. This image is the one you see next to the URL bar, next to the title of the page on an opened tab and is also visible on your bookmarks tab if you choose to bookmark a page. The favicon will help users quickly recognize your page in their browser without reading any text or directly viewing the page.
When you design a web page, always choose the graphics that are appropriate for your purposes. Keep in mind that bitmaps don’t usually work well, while PNGs do. For simple text buttons or graphics that aren’t photographs, use PNG for files that are 256 colors or larger. Use a GIF file for anything less than 256. JPEG images can be used for photos.
Although it is common to see the www. at the front of a website URL, you should try to make sure that you can access your site whether you choose to include it or not. This will make it much easier for anyone to access regardless of how they type it.
While you might be inclined to add a lot of bells and whistles to your website, flashing graphics, loud music and neon colors will just distract from the purpose of your website. Visitors who are bombarded by too many sights and sounds might be inclined to leave your website before they even start browsing. Keep the colors simple and the content relevant and your website design will be a winner.
If you want your site visitors to spend as much time as possible on your site, make text easy to read. One of the most common design mistakes is using graphic backgrounds with patterns or dark colors; combine this with equally dark text and you have a recipe for disaster. Unless the text is clear and easy to read, your site will not be a success.
Be certain to have a way to receive feedback from site users. That will allow you to fix any problems that you may not otherwise notice. If your site visitors feel actively involved in the process, they will be return viewers.
Provide a navigation menu on every page of your site. While this menu does not have to link every single page of your site, as this could be an exhaustive list if you have a very large site, it should provide links to the main pages. This ensures that your visitors do not have to return to the home page and start completely over when it is not necessary.
It is imperative that all of your webpages have titles. Forgetting to include titles while designing your website can have disastrous consequences. The biggest reason is that it makes your website look unprofessional when there is no title, both on the webpage itself, and also on a search results page. Search engines also place heavy emphasis on titles when determining the content of your website. Remember to utilize keywords, and make your titles descriptive.
To help you create a website, you should learn HTML. Knowing HTML helps you understand how a website functions. When you understand how a website works, you can incorporate your own HTML code into your site. This helps you to easily correct changes without having to rely on outside programs to build your site. In other words, you have more control over your site’s content.
Try designing for all screen resolutions. A simple website can always encourage visitors to remain and read the content. If your site doesn’t look good for a specific resolution, the visitor may leave since they cannot view it. Designing a stretchier layout that fits any screen resolution lets you know that all visitors can enjoy the content.
When you are designing a page with links, make sure that the link has text content. This helps visitors better understand what they are getting into. Make sure your visitors do not click links accidentally by adding useful text content.
Always check your website for broken hyperlinks. Do this each time you upload new content to your site. This can be critical, since visitors are going to know that the information they are looking for is not available, and if that happens a lot on your website, they will stop going to your website. Check to be sure everything is working in order to avoid this.
As stated earlier, great web designing is easy to spot and really distinguishes itself from ordinary looking sites, but you need to know how to do it right. Creating a great design isn’t difficult, but there are a few key elements that you must understand. Use the hints and tips you’ve been given in this article to start designing an appealing and effective website.
