Whether for personal or business reasons, many people have a website these days. But, the most common problem they face is coming up with an eye-catching design for their website. With some helpful advice, like what you are about to read, a site can look better than ever imagined.
Use a site map on your website. A web site does two things. First, it makes your site easier for site visitors to understand. They can find what they are looking for, and they can see what you have to offer on one easy map. Secondly, a site map is great for search engine optimization, or SEO. It easier for the search engines to find and "crawl" your site.
Be sure to check around for people that can assist you with learning programs such as dreamweaver and photoshop. You can learn a lot through the internet but nothing beats hands on training from someone who is experienced with these programs, so talk to a friend and see what they can teach you.
Before you meet with a website design company you should take the time to get an idea of what you want your website to look like and what information you want it to contain. The company bases their web design off of the information that they are given and will stay within the guidelines that you give them. You need to have the information readily available to them.
Give your visitors the ability to search your site so that they can more easily find what they are looking for. If someone cannot find what they are looking for right away, their next thought will be to look for a search field. Put this somewhere obvious and include a search button.
If you're working on web design use the right graphics for the job. Remember, bitmap images are huge and usually don't work well, PNGs work fine. For screenshots, text buttons, and other non-photographic images, use PNG if the image has more than 256 colors, and GIF if not. For photos, you can use JPEG images.
Design informative error pages. Many times someone will click onto a broken link, or a link that has been moved, and receive a generic error page that confuses them. Design your error pages so that you give a visitor a reason they may have gotten that error, along with a link to your home page so that they remain on your site.
The number one tip for web designers is that you must keep the pages simple enough to load quickly. They make look nice when you add a bunch of extra scripting to them, but if they take too long to load, your visitors are going to get tired of waiting and leave.
As stated in the beginning of this article, it is common for a person to have a webpage, be it for business or pleasure. In order for their design to look great, they have to know what they are doing. Now that you have read the above article, you will have no problem with designing the website of your dreams!
