Designing your own website is key in promoting yourself or your business online. A beautiful, highly functional site will tell visitors that you are professional, trustworthy and an expert in your field.
Learning what it takes to design cleanly and efficiently is your first step, so continue reading for some tips which will teach you just that.
To help make your site more interactive incorporate games into your site. Having games on your site makes it a lot of fun for the visitor. If your visitors are not having a good time on your site, then they will leave and go look for something else to do.
To save money, use free stock images when designing your website. These images can be found throughout the internet and are often as high-quality as those you have to pay for. By saving money on the images you use, you can spend that money on other aspects of design and business.
Avoid using so-called "mystery meat navigation". This involves using unlabeled images or other elements for the site's navigation. In many cases, the visitor has to mouse over the buttons to even see what they do. Navigation is best kept simple. Use text links across the top or along the left side of the page.
Make certain that your website displays well at all screen resolutions. You can do this by utilizing percentages for the width and height of the elements on your webpage, as opposed to fixed pixel dimensions. In addition, a page that displays properly at a lower resolution, will generally work well at higher resolutions. Prior to making your website public, you should test it at various resolutions to ensure that all of your visitors will have a comfortable experience.
It may look pretty, but stay away from having too many animations on your site. Having your sales splash page rotate, spin and blink may look cool to you, but it will likely drive potential viewers away. When you add too many flashy splashes like that, it makes your site look amateurish which is not the message you want to convey.
When designing a website, you want to keep the privacy of your customer's information in mind. Set up proper encryption for submitting data, and never store customer passwords and such in a text document. Make sure you set up your website properly so that your customers know that visiting and interacting with your site is safe.
To help you create good web pages and fix mistakes on your own, learn computer languages. Educating yourself on how a website actually works will help you quickly fix any mistakes. Knowing how to deal with problems on your site will save you time and money, as you will not have to rely on outside help to remedy the situation.
Step one was to learn how to build a site, and step two is to get down to work and create your design.
Use the tips you've read here to assist you as you draft the layout, build the navigation and write content for your audience. Continue learning how to increase your traffic and you'll meet your goals in no time!