Designing a website isn’t always an easy task. How can you make a website that catches someone’s eye the first time they visit it? Where do you start when it comes to coding? The following paragraphs contain ideas, insights and advice you can apply towards coming with an attractive website that gets your message out.

Speed is critical online, so you have to be certain that your website pages load very quickly. If your visitors are waiting forever while something is loading on your site, there is a good chance they will quickly leave and never return.

Use basic fonts which every user will be able to see. The font type on a website is a quick indicator of how professional it is. Don’t use handwriting or comic fonts as most people won’t have them installed. If one of your visitors does not have your chosen font on their own computer, another font is substituted. This can look worse.

While development platforms generate code for you automatically, they cannot duplicate the reliability of classic text editors. When you use a platform, in theory it will provide workable code to produce the website features and appearance that you want. But if you desire a true creator experience and want to reduce errors, stick with classic text editors.

Consider using free software to design you website. Some people assume that spending hundreds of dollars on a software program is an absolute must. However, there are dozens of programs that offer comparable results for less money. A basic Internet search should produce a number of free design programs from which you can choose.

If you are fortunate enough to have the funding for a major investment into your site, this does not mean that is a wise thing to host the site on your own. Design the site, or most of the site yourself, but let someone else host it so that you can focus on its security.

Make your content globally friendly. It is in your best interest to create content that recognizes different measuring systems, currencies and time zones. Since not all of your website visitors are from one country, ensure that your site is friendly to the viewer no matter where they are from.

Many people do not like popup windows or links that pull up in a new tab. As a matter of fact, you will find many will get this functionality removed through their browser. Therefore, you should avoid these techniques. If you want to use popups in your navigation, it’s probably a sign that you need to rethink your navigation scheme.

Use consistent color schemes, themes, and fonts across all of the pages on your site. If you use many different fonts and colors throughout your site, visitors won’t understand what they are supposed to be doing. They may even think they aren’t on your website anymore. Keep your graphics consistent, and you can avoid this problem all together. To extend this consistency even further, use your website’s fonts and colors in your company’s offline marketing materials.

Testing your website in every browser available is a great way to ensure it works as you wish it to for every visitor. A page that works well in Firefox may display improperly in Safari, Internet Explorer or Chrome. Prior to releasing your website to the public, you should verify that all of your webpages appear as intended on every popular web browser.

Make your own favicon. The little graphic will have your site looking more noticeable, especially if your visitors bookmark the site. A favicon will make it easy for your customers to pick your site out of their list of bookmarks. Your favicon should, ideally, match your website’s general theme and logo.

You should always create a visual sitemap so that you can plan ahead accurately. A visual site map will show you how the structure of your site is evolving. From this point, you will have the ability to identify the areas on the site that need improvements. You will also be able to see what areas you may have forgotten about. Visualizing the project in advance is essential, and a sitemap will make it easier.

If you decide to hire a professional web designer, choose someone with whom you do not have a pre-existing relationship. In general, and especially with web pages, mixing family and friends with your work environment rarely works out well. If they do not do a good enough job, firing them can prove more difficult than firing someone you do not know as well.

Good meta tags are a quick way to ensure your website makes it to a good rank on search engines. Quality meta tags will help the search engines to recognize what your site is all about. If you use poor meta tags, or worse, don’t use them at all, your site will get fewer visitors overall.

Limit the advertisements on your site. The more you include, the more your site becomes cluttered and unprofessional-looking. Only include advertisements that you feel are relevant to your site and important to you.

Making realistic estimates of how long each portion of the design process is going to take is an important part of good web design. 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. It’s far better to devote an adequate chunk of time to each task.

Check with your host to make sure video hosting is allowed if you have the intent of hosting videos on your site. Many hosts don’t allow video hosting. FLV files occupy a lot of room on servers, so make sure you’re allowed before you waste a lot of time.

The information in this article is a good starting point, so implement it when coming up with your layout plans. Keep reading and learning to keep up with all the new technologies and advancements that appear daily to ensure your website is better than the competitions’!