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Design Advice For Your Next Web Site

By Jeff Ben


At a minimum, novice web designers need to familiarize themselves with the fundamentals of web design in order to develop websites that are both appealing and effective. Many resources are available to get started, including this article. Read on to learn tips you can use to create better web designs.

You'll need some office space to design and manage a website. Avoid distractions, to make everything effectively work in your space. Make sure your tools are within easy access, and that you have enough space for your web design needs.

User-friendly web design programs, known as development platforms, can make building websites easier, but they are just not as trustworthy as hand-written code. A platform lets you choose the features you want for your site, and it then generates the code for you automatically. But if you want to cut back on the errors and get real hands-on experience, a classic text editor is the way to go.

Avoid using Captchas, except in the case of new user registration. Captchas can trigger a negative response from a viewer when it makes them perform the task just so they can view a basic webpage. All but a site's biggest fans will leave if they have to fill out too many CAPTCHAs.

Carefully use sound on your website. Visitors to your site can get annoyed if they are unable to control or mute sound on your website. It's perfectly fine to add an audio link and video links that include sound, but be sure to allow the user to control if there is sound when they land on your site.

Use Photoshop to create attractive websites if you are a beginner. Using this type of program will help a website look more professional in a short amount of time. You will expend a lot of extra time and lessen your chances of creating a professional site if you neglect investing in programs such as Photoshop.

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. When using such editors, it's vital that you validate any code using a validation service. The W3C provides a no cost service that validates web pages.

While you design the site, remember that it is not necessary to fill every square inch of your site with content. Using every pixel available to you can make the website feel overwhelming or cluttered. Let your white space frame your content, giving it focus and importance on the screen. You would be surprised how empty space can often be as valued as content.

Good websites must function with all browsers, and therefore you need to test each page so you know they work correctly under all circumstances. What works in Internet Explorer may not necessarily show up correctly in Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Test every page in each browser before you let your site go live.

Sketch out the layout of your site before you begin to build it. Talk to your friends and family members to see what their opinion of these sketches are; it will give you insight into what your visitors will think of your page one day. It will also give you new ideas for your site.

Domain auctions are a great location to acquire a domain name that fits your vision. At auctions like SEDO, you can get access to names that have been purchased previously but are now available for sale by their owners. It may cost more than buying a new domain, but all of the benefits make it worth every penny!

Do remember that website design does not need to be costly. For each costly, popular program or tool available for web design, there are equally useful programs or tools that are much cheaper. Free software, available online, is often just as useful as its expensive counterpart. Using open source programs can lead to a lot of savings.

It is wise to develop a sitemap you can reference for planning purposes. With the visual sitemap, you are going to see exactly how your site structure is coming along. This also helps you see areas that are lacking in content, or need other improvements at a glance. Nothing is more important that maintaining a visual element that is clear.

Go ahead and sign up for a newsletter that can inform you about web design periodically, so that if you ever lose sight of your web design goals you have a place to come back to and begin once again. Newsletters are helpful to both beginners and experienced designers.

Name your site something descriptive that reflects its content. For proof of why this matters, go to your favorite search engine and use "untitled document" as your query. As you can see, failure to include a title is a very common mistake. Take care to name your website correctly from the beginning. The title is one of the major pieces of information that search engines look at when they rank websites for relevancy.

If you are a web designer, it is good to be an artist. Look for inspiration and adapt your ideas to your business goals. If you have an epiphany while you're out and about, write it down on any scrap of paper you can find. If you get an idea at work, call and leave yourself a message for yourself on your phone, to remember later.

As you have seen, a new web designer must know the basics before they can create stunning websites that also function properly. The number of available resources can make it difficult to know what your starting point should be. This article has provided you with the basics that you need to understand web design.




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