Tag Archives: website design

Richard Vanderhurst

Building A Better Website: Design Tips That Work

If you are like many people, you would like to design a website, but do not know the best way to do it. You have all the ideas, placements, content and ambition you need, yet you may not have the know-how that you need. The tips below will help you with that. Read the helpful tips below to discover what you’re missing.

The more time you spend working on your site, the easier web design will become. So, start a few pages with C++ and HTML to check whether you understand the basics. Get to work now and practice your craft!

Start a collection of checklists and cheat sheets that you can use when you have issues with your site. It is also a great way to get advice on how to improve your site.

A good website will never require that a visitor provide the same information more than once. Ensure that personal data for each of your website’s visitors is preserved. Save users’ information like registration data, so it doesn’t have to be entered more than once on different forms. You streamline the process when you create “sticky” information, and your visitors will appreciate you not wasting their time.

If you plan to include video content on your website, you should first verify that your web host allows it. Many web hosts will not let people host videos on their servers. The files (FLV) take up a great deal of space on servers, so do not waste your time and efforts including them on your site; learn the rules beforehand.

Although you could discover other designs and strategies you love, you must ensure you’re always being imaginative when it comes to designing your own site. Create designs on your own, and improve on the ones you’ve witnessed on other websites. Using this technique will give you the ability to make amazing websites.

If you design websites, think of yourself as an artist. Always be prepared for inspiration to strike. If you are out having dinner, for example, and you have a flash of inspiration, then write it down. If you get an idea at work, call and leave yourself a message for yourself on your phone, to remember later.

Avoid overusing JavaScript. Despite the advantages of increased responsiveness and transparency, it may be problematic for many users. Keep in mind that your visitors use different web browsers. All visitors won’t have the most current version of the particular browser they’re utilizing. They may also not have enabled JavaScript in their browser. These two factors can prevent many users from accessing your site.

One way to to ensure that your website will run smoothly is to validate each page. A lot of WYSIWYG editors will put a bunch of junk code on the design of your site. If you use a WYSIWYG editor, go the extra mile and validate your site code through a service. W3C proves a service which is free that can be used to validate web pages.

Look at the previous work of any web design company you hire. Some things to look for are: a record of working with well-known designers and a high standard of quality in their work. Their portfolio will help you to get a quick insight into their experience and knowledge of web design.

On the Internet today, speed is where it’s at. So you must make sure everything on your site loads fast. No visitor is going to wait more than a few seconds for your page to load, so ensure they get what they want quickly so they don’t go to your competition’s website instead.

You want to ensure that your site is attractive, and simple in terms of usage. If your site is ugly or confusing, visitors will just turn around and leave. Give your visitors any necessary information, but make the site easy to navigate so that visitors buy your products or perform whatever other action you might want them to perform.

As a web designer, you have to set a series of realistic goals for yourself, especially regarding how long you should work on each task. Doing a “death march” to meet an unrealistic deadline will just reduce the quality of your work, which will mean you get sued or have to redo the work. Give yourself the time you need to do a great job, and you’ll be rewarded with great success!

Apart from the aesthetics of your website, remember that all files included must be small. Your file sizes have a lot to do with the speed of your site loading. Maximizing the loading speed of your website is always better. Remember that not all people who visit your site will have a high-speed connection to the Internet. Test your site to make sure that it loads up quickly, even when accessed on a dial up connection.

When you include videos on your site, you need to be aware that not everyone has a high Internet bandwidth. If your videos are faster than your clients Internet access, then it will work against you. People are likely to leave the page before it even loads.

Make it simple for your readers to share your content on social network sites by providing the appropriate links. This will assist them in spreading the word concerning your site, which will increase your site’s traffic as a result.

Remember that you don’t really have to spend a lot of money to design a nice website. You can find cheap or free website design tools that do the same things as expensive website design software. Free software, available online, is often just as useful as its expensive counterpart. Making the most of this software can assist you in saving a great deal of money.

Designing a quality website does not have to be difficult. Once you are knowledgeable about the basic principles, you will better understand this kind of designing. Use what you’ve learned here to improve your knowledge of web design and show the world just how great your website can be.

Richard Vanderhurst

The Best Tips For Effective Web Design

Many people are very interested in learning the fundamentals of web design, but the prospect of doing so can be intimidating. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed while trying to learn about web design, read on to learn some basics.

Your homepage and sub-pages should have a “site-searching” function of some kind. Site searching makes it easier for users to access information, and increases the overall usability of the site. You can include a search function easily, and it will greatly increase the utility of your site.

Tap into your creative side during your website design. By this, we mean that you should always be ready to let inspiration strike you. Take down notes on a new idea as soon as it comes to you. If you’re at a restaurant, use your napkin for notepaper. Or if you are not in a position to jot things down, give your cellphone a call and leave yourself a message so you can pick it up at a later time.

If you decide to use a logo, it should link to your homepage. It is common these days for sites to have a logo or image that visitors can click on to return to the home page. It’s frustrating to click on a logo and have nothing happen, and this saves you from adding a ‘home’ link. Logos that you can click on will make the site more navigable.

To begin, sketch out the overall design of your website; this can be rough, but should give you an idea of where to start. Ask friends and family for honest critiques of your drafts so that you get an idea on what direction to take.

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. Your site should reflect you and your personality, so you want to make sure it’s not too generic.

Visitors often care more about your site’s content than the aesthetic quality of your design. Stay true to your original purpose and use imagery to help you achieve that; in other words, keep design simple and make sure it communicates your message. Keeping your page simple helps to speed up the time it takes to load.

Make sure someone is testing your website’s functionality as you go along. Whenever you include a new feature or make a change, give an impartial third party the chance to assess it. You might not think much of a video that loads slow, but another set of eyes can give a differing perspective. Make certain you are constant in your search for second opinions.

Remember, designing a website does not need to be expensive. 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 can accomplish many of the same things you might use paid software for, and it is free. Utilizing open source software can help you save a significant amount of money.

Create and install a website icon on your page. Make you site recognizable in your customer’s favorites list with this small graphic. When they look through their bookmark list, a memorable favicon can stand out from the rest. When designing a favicon, ensure it’s consistent with the logo and theme of your site.

Don’t host business websites on free hosting services. You don’t want advertising to draw focus away from your own products or services. Use a paid service for your hosting instead.

Don’t utilize Flash players on your website. Flash can appear high-tech and look amazing, but for some people who have slower computers it will not show up well, and cause a lag. Don’t forget, some mobile phones and tablets don’t have Flash enabled, so they are going to be frustrated when they can’t view your site.

Adobe Photoshop is a valuable software program for any dedicated web designer. Programs like Photoshop are great for new web designers, because it allows them to quickly create professional websites. Building a site from scratch can be overwhelming for amateur designers, so take advantage of design tools and programs that can do some of the heavy lifting for you.

Hire a professional to do your website design, not a friend or family member. You can’t fire family, it’s a fact, so if they design something you don’t want you’ll end up disappointed or they’ll leave frustrated.

Allow users to cancel an action if they so choose. An action may refer to signing up for e-mail notifications, newsletter subscriptions or filling out web forms. If visitors cannot cancel an action they are not interested in, such as providing their contact information, they will feel they do not have a choice and won’t buy anything.

Try not to use JavaScript too much. Even if JavaScript opens up interesting possibilities for your designs, not all your visitors will be able to see your content properly. Each web browser displays content differently, and your visitors will be using many different versions of each software platform. Keep in mind that not every single person who visits your site has the most up to date browser version. You should also be aware that some of your users will have JavaScript disabled through their browser. Your website may not have any functionality to offer these types of users as a result.

Every web page you create should be validated. There a lot of WYSIWYG editors that will add meaningless code to your website design. If you use those programs, take an extra step to validate your code with a validation service. W3C provides a free service, which you can use to validate your webpages.

Now that you have a better idea of what it takes to get into web design, you should start to feel a bit more confident about getting into it. Keep learning about web design. There’s always new information to learn that can help you design your site more effectively. If you abide by what you have learned here, then there is no reason why you cannot succeed in designing a great website.

Richard Vanderhurst

What Your Web Design Is Missing

Are you ready to create your own website, but you aren’t sure where to get started? You may have a very clear vision in your mind of the final product but no idea of the steps you must take to produce it. This is where the web design tips presented in this article will become beneficial. Continue to read and learn a few essential tips that can help with your website design.

Your host will likely have design tools that you can use for your basic layout. Don’t rely on these tools entirely, however. You should be able to customize your website to reflect your taste and personality, so this means adding enhancements that the website builder may not offer.

Other than the aesthetics of your site design, one of the most important things to consider is keeping all your file sizes to a minimum. File sizes are directly responsible for how quickly a website loads. Maximizing the loading speed of your website is always better. You should also keep in mind that not every visitor will be using a high speed Internet connection. Perform tests on your website to make sure that it loads fast, even when a dial-up connection is used.

Always look at a company’s design portfolio, when considering which company to hire for web design. You need to see proof that the company can produce high quality work. Viewing the sites they’ve designed and the clients they’ve worked with will assist you in choosing the company who has the most experience to offer you.

When you include videos on your site, you need to be aware that not everyone has a high Internet bandwidth. You may feel that your videos look their best when you stream them out at 5,000 kb/s, but a user with a much slower connection is not going to enjoy the experience. These people will have to wait for a long time to watch the video, and the video may freeze frequently while waiting for more data to load.

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. Make sure that you improve any features you take from other websites, and focus on creating novel designs and features that are all your own. Doing this will boost your website quality.

Never stop learning if you want your website design to keep growing. Once you master one facet of web design, move on to the next. This could lengthen the time it takes to build your initial site, but you’ll learn how to expertly crank them out by the time you’re done.

If you are hoping to outsource your site creation, you should avoid hiring close personal friends or family. Hiring anyone who you have a personal relationship with is a bad idea. It becomes much harder to express dissatisfaction with the work, or fire someone, if you are close with them.

Creating a newsletter can help you get repeat visitors. If your clientele are able to register at your website for information about product news or highlighted happenings in the near future, they’re more likely to keep visiting. Put the form in a convenient sidebar, and track the users who subscribe. Only send out a newsletter to people who have subscribed to it, otherwise you will have angry customers.

You should always make sure to implement a way that users can submit feedback to you about your website. You will find out if a link is broken or if a page is not loading properly. Letting your visitors get involved helps to ensure they will come to your site again.

You should be aware of any clashing colors when building your website. Make text visible against the background hues. It is generally agreed upon that dark text on a light background is the easiest to read. If you need help determining weak points of your website, show your current version to a friend for feedback.

Photoshop is a great tool that novice designers should invest in to help make better looking web designs. Photoshop and similar programs enable amateurs to design sites quickly. If you try to skimp on price by using a generic program that doesn’t do a good job, you may find yourself spending much more time than necessary to finish your website.

Visitors want to have access to a website quickly, which is why your pages should load easily. If a visitor to your site has to wait minutes for pages to laod, they’ll get bored and go elsewhere.

Every web page you create should be validated. You should be aware that a lot of WYSIWYG editors add unnecessary codes to your webpages. Therefore, when using these editors, it is essential to use a validation service to validate your code on your website. You can get your pages validated for free by using W3C.

If you are designing websites, you must be artistic. Always be prepared for inspiration to strike. Take notes anytime or anywhere you might have an idea to bring to life. If you think of something great during the workday, leave yourself a voicemail detailing the idea so that you can revisit it later on.

Keeping your website’s links working, and up-to-date, is vitally important. User-friendliness is crucial to good web design, and broken links will probably frustrate visitors to your site. Check each link on your website regularly to be sure they work correctly.

When the site is launched, the process of design isn’t finished. Keep as active as possible with your website. While there is no need to change things around every day, you must, nonetheless, update it regularly. That is particularly the case if you host videos or deal with current events. Updating a site isn’t like updating a blog. Website updates require more time and work.

As you’ve seen, it’s not really that difficult to design your own website. There are various fundamentals involved in web design, but learning them can help you understand the process. Apply the advice that you have read here to grasp a basic understanding of web design, and you will soon be able to add some wonderful features to your website.

Richard Vanderhurst

Easy Ways On How To Create Good Quality Web Design

While running a website is definitely hard work, it is even more difficult if you are not prepared to do so. This article will give you some ideas to consider as you go about designing your site.

If you are a new webmaster, you might want to consider using shared hosting or grid hosting, as oppose to hosting your website on a dedicated server. 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.

Keep all of the site files you use as small as possible, regardless of design. This is because the speed of your website loading is directly influenced by the file sizes. You want the speediest load times possible. You should remember also that some visitors may not use an Internet connection that is high speed. Perform a test of your website to be sure that it will load quickly on every speed of internet connection.

Put sharing links for social sites on every page of your site to encourage satisfied customers to promote your business. You will gain valuable visitors to your site, as well as increased awareness of what you have to offer.

You must create a website that is easily navigable to attract and keep traffic. It should always be easy to get from one page of the site to another. Having a menu bar on your site can also make navigation easier. Make sure that you have links posted to every page of the website. This will allow visitors to easily navigate the site.

Be sure to always look at the links on your site, and make sure none are broken. The right time to make this check is well before you upload a page and take it live. This is important, as visitors who click on your links expecting useful information, only to find a 404 page, will leave your site in disgust. Give all of your links a double check before uploading in order to prevent this problem.

Remember, designing your site needs not to cost a lot of money. You can find cheap or free website design tools that do the same things as expensive website design software. There are plenty of free software options that function in the same way as commercial software. You can realize significant savings by seeking out such open source alternatives for your software needs.

Make use of free software in your site setup. Investing in powerful software packages like Photoshop is only worth it if you think they’ll pay off in the end. All you have to do is a little searching to find the best free tools for you.

Photoshop is a well-known editing program that is important to learn about in order to have successful website designs. Fewer people are familiar with the program Dreamweaver, which can be just as useful.

Create a comprehensive “About Us” page. A lot of websites contain ugly, uninformative, generic “About Us” pages. Try spicing things up! Let people know a bit about you and what inspired you to get into web design and other things like that.

As you are designing your website, keep in mind that you are not required to utilize all of the space available. If you make excessive use of pixels, your website will seem too busy and cluttered. Give your users a break by allowing space between different elements on each page. You would be surprised how empty space can often be as valued as content.

Place keywords throughout your website design that are relevant to the interests of your target audience. Good web design is not just about aesthetics, it is also about effective marketing. It is a must to know who your development clientele are. What words can you use that your target audience will relate to? Establish three to five important keywords and scatter them within your design.

If you include a search box on your site, it should be positioned in the top, right-hand site of each page. The search field should accommodate 27 or more characters. The search button should clearly be labelled “SEARCH”. This will ensure your search box can be easily seen, used, and assist your visitors in discovering what they’re searching for.

Watch your color scheme on your site. Choose a font and color that will help your words stand out from the background. The text opted for should be dark in color, with a lighter color used for your backgrounds. If you’re not sure what will work, show it to a someone for feedback.

Broken links should never stay on your website, so always ensure all links are current and in proper working order. Good web design should always be easy to navigate, and free of error messages. Create a schedule of checkpoints at which you can test your links.

If you are hoping to outsource your site creation, you should avoid hiring close personal friends or family. When you are looking for someone to help you design your site, do not hire loved ones. If the work they perform is not satisfactory, you will have a difficult time letting someone go if you are close to them.

If your website is a commercial venture, you can save yourself a lot of hassle and potential losses by eschewing free web hosting. Although it is tempting to go for freebies, realize that your customers will have to navigate through multiple ads and spam. This can conflict with your web design as well as your company philosophy, and it will also repel customers.

Developing your web design skills is a great way to improve your website’s visibility and get in touch with your target customers. When done properly, it can make a huge impact on the effectiveness of your promotional strategy. By using what you’ve read here you’ll be able to begin right away in creating the site you need to succeed.

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Choosing A Creative Look For Your Website

Does it take fancy programs and special knowledge to be a good web designer? Only if you are not willing to invest some time and effort. The lazier you are, the more expensive your website will be. If you want to do the work and gain some great knowledge about website design, then check out this article to learn how to go about doing that.

Be certain that the website is simple to use and visually pleasing. If it isn’t, it is unlikely that your visitors will linger much at your site. Avoid frustrating your visitors by providing the information they need in a simple, straightforward manner.

Remember to add appropriate keywords geared to your target audience in your site design. It is vital to bear in mind that your web design isn’t great because it is artsy, but because it persuades the visitor. You need to understand who you are developing this website for. What are the words that can be utilized which will attract your target audience? You should focus on five keywords that correspond to your products and use them throughout your site.

Putting together your own site? Use grid or shared hosting, not dedicated hosting. It may not be possible for you to accurately predict traffic levels, but nonetheless you should not have to pay more money than is absolutely necessary.

To create a great site on the Internet, do not hesitate to tap into the dozens of valuable resources at your fingertips. 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. It’s a good way to learn more about web design and to get better at it.

You can use a What You See Is What You Get code editor (WYSIWYG), but using a text editor such as Notepad, gives you full flexibility when editing your code. With a platform, you design the page and then use the platform’s generated code. However, if you would like to keep the errors to a minimum, and increase your experience, then obtaining classic text editor would be the way forward.

Make sure you sign up for things like newsletters, so that you always have saved information on different web design information. This way if you for some reason lose sight during your web designing efforts, you can get straight back into it. Web designers can derive great benefits from newsletters, whether they are self-taught amateurs or experienced pros.

Draw a favorites icon for your website. This small graphic will give your site more recognition in case a visitor decides to bookmark your website. When they are looking at the bookmarks they have created, your little favicon will make an impression. If possible, create a favicon that’s consistent with your business logo, product, or theme.

Choose your fonts carefully. You should only choose fonts that look professional and are easy to read. Look at the font of a site and you can distinguish whether or not it’s professional. Avoid using fonts like Comic Sans and various fancy fonts that might not be on many computers. A font could be subset to a default font in the computer of your user, if they do not have it. This may make your entire design look bad.

Watch your color scheme on your site. Make sure that text can be easily read against background colors. A dark color for foreground text against a light background is often more readable for most audiences. When in doubt about the effectiveness of your color choices, solicit the opinions of friends.

Learning how to design good websites becomes even simpler the more you do it. So, try out your new skills and create a simple page using C+ and HTML. This will show you whether or not you have the basics down pat. Remember that practice makes perfect and that you have to start somewhere.

Concept sketches can be effective tools for web designers that are in the beginning stages of their sites. This can help you map out your site and develop a visual image of its structure and content. It is a very useful place to begin.

Large sites should always have search capabilities. Perhaps in the upper corner, a search box will ensure that your visitors can search for anything within your site. FreeFind and Google both distribute a search function which you can use on your site.

It is wise to develop a sitemap you can reference for planning purposes. With a visual sitemap, you will see exactly how your structure is developing. You can also find places that require improvement or maintenance. You can’t really make substitutions for this kind of visual.

With every web page that you are involved in designing, take the time to validate them. There are a lot of WYSIWYG editors that add junk codes to the website design. If you use those programs, take an extra step to validate your code with a validation service. There is a free service available to do this through W3C.

It does not matter how you have designed your website; you have to make sure that every file has a small file size. File sizes are directly responsible for how quickly a website loads. You want the speediest load times possible. Remember that not all visitors will have a high speed connection to the Internet. Test each section of your site to ensure it loads rapidly for every visitor.

Don’t assume that the design process has wrapped up just because the site is live. Do not simply abandon your site after you have launched it. Updating doesn’t need to be daily, but you must find a regular schedule and follow through consistently. That is particularly the case if you host videos or deal with current events. Maintaining your site is different from making an occasional post on your blog. You may need to implement a more diligent regime to be successful.

Learning web design is much easier than learning how to do open heart surgery. You don’t need a formal education, and you aren’t making any life or death decisions. Follow these tips to start creating great websites.