What You Need To Know About Web Design Before Starting
While web design interests many people, the prospect of learning all the technicalities about it can be disheartening. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed while trying to learn about web design, read on to learn some basics.
It is important to make use of forums and other information avenues to keep up with new ideas in web design. If you aren’t sure where to begin, do an Internet search to see what you can find.
Avoid trying to add every new gadget to your website. It can be tempting to make your site look cutting edge by including every new web design option out there but it can end up turning people off. Simple will generally get the job done even better than a flashy layout.
Don’t force users to install strange BHOs. Many tech-savvy users won’t do it. Common offenders include unusual video players, image viewers, and platforms for interactive games. For most standard use cases, there is a trusted plugin, such as Windows Media Player or even Flash) that will do what you want without driving away users.
Use ALT tags whenever possible. These helpful tags describe an image to a viewer, assisting the visually impaired, as well as those who prefer to browse without images. As an added bonus, some search engines include these tags in their rankings, so you may get a boost by using them.
Make sure that you use the right anchor text. The anchor text of a link should clearly describe what the visitor should expect to see when he clicks on the link. For instance, if a link leads to your widget ordering page, the anchor text might read “Order widgets.” Specifically, avoid using “click here” as anchor text.
To help you attract a more professional crowd to your site, make sure you design your site with no spelling errors. When designing the site, utilize a spell checker and if need to, a grammar checker. If you have a site with poor spelling and grammar, people will not want to do business with you because they will think it is unprofessional.
Use a tracking service, rather than displaying your visitor counter for all to read. Many websites still display their counters, yet they do not serve any real purpose. There are many high-quality tracking services available, and some are even free. Use these instead of showing off how many people visit you.
Make your links obvious. Customers do not like spending time wading through your site searching for something they are interested in. Having a site map, as well as providing big, prominent links will help your viewer find what they are looking for without wasting time in a hunt. Lead them to your information.
Keep your homepage simple. The look of your front page will help people determine if they want to stay on your site or leave it. Don’t add unnecessary distractions that hide the essence of what you offer to your customer.
Don’t use many fonts as you design your page. You must also consider how different fonts appear on the standard computer screen; smaller serif fonts (Times New Roman, for example) are somewhat hard to read. A lot of sites use Verdana since it isn’t hard to read when it’s any color or size.
When designing your site, try to come up with three or four keywords that you expect users to input into search engines as they try to find your page. These keywords should then be repeated frequently throughout the title, page body and description meta tag. This will make it easier for users to locate your site on the web.
White is an effective choice of color for your website’s background. A bright, white background makes it easier to read text; it also appears more professional. Complicated background designs, however, can be distracting, or make your site appear amateur. When it comes to backgrounds, simpler is generally better.
Make sure that you periodically go back and try to remember all that you’ve learned thus far. One of the biggest problems people have when they first start out with web design is that they learn one or two things and forget them a couple of days later, which can hurt their website progress.
Understand how your webpage will be read at a glance, rather than word for word. Most viewers won’t spend their time gathering every piece of written content on a page; at least not until after they’ve scanned it. Words that are larger, bold, or emphasized should be the most important and placed sparingly to get your ideas across.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with some good pointers about web design, and you are more confident than ever about diving 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 apply all this knowledge, then you have an easy path towards success in website design.