In this day and age, you would be foolish to not even consider using advanced web design methods as a way to get your company’s name out to the world. With the amount of devices that are used to connect to the Internet that exist today, you will want to read this article in order to make sure that you take hold of this opportunity and make the most out of it.
Don’t try to fit too much onto one page when you’re designing a website. If your page is too busy it will take a lot longer to load and can overwhelm visitors. When you’re going to be putting up a lot of content, create pages for everything you can to reduce the clutter on your page.
Make sure your webpages aren’t too long. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and if your most important content is “below the fold,” it may not even be read. If you have a lot of related content that needs to stay together, consider breaking it up into sections and adding links to each section.
Don’t use splash pages for your site unless required by law, and especially don’t use a Flash intro. Most people just want to get to your content as quickly as possible, and don’t care to look at useless splash pages. If you have some amusing content that you absolutely want visitors to see, integrate it into the homepage instead.
Don’t use a lot of graphics. You want the site to look professional and well-designed instead of cluttered. Graphics should be used to improve the site, not overdecorate it. Having the appropriate number of graphics that do not create clutter improves the usability of your website, too.
Use images wisely. Bitmap images do not tend to fare well for internet use, and some GIFs do not work well with lots of color. Image size is important as well, as larger images may make your viewers have to wait for them to download. Choose smaller images, and use them sparingly to make your site more manageable.
No matter the niche or what the intent of the site is, you must aim to make them have 10 second or less loading times. Properly designed sites ought to pop up in browsers almost immediately. Your viewers want instant gratification, so you need to provide it.
Personalize your site. Your clients want to feel comfortable with you, so use testimonials from trusted customers, as well as photographs of people. Building trust with your customers is very important, so be sure to let them know you personally care about the product or service you are providing them.
If you have never designed a web page, try using pre-made layouts. These can easily be found online for several blogging web sites like Blogspot or Tumblr. Having an interesting layout will draw attention to content and give the site a professional look. Just make sure your layout is appealing to your target audience!
The best web sites communicate a lot of information in a small amount of words. If you are long-winded, people will easily get bored and find another site that is more concise. Make sure any content is relevant and easy to understand – newspapers use an eighth grade reading level, which is the most common literacy level.
Provide a navigation menu on every page of your site. While this menu does not have to link every single page of your site, as this could be an exhaustive list if you have a very large site, it should provide links to the main pages. This ensures that your visitors do not have to return to the home page and start completely over when it is not necessary.
Make sure you have enough details on your company page to allow your visitors to know more about who you are and what you can offer them. Often, a website will contain a boring, half thought-out page to cover this. Get your visitors engaged! Provide some insight about your own story. How did you get inspiration? What are your goals? What led you to web design?
Have clear navigation. When a visitor comes to your site, make sure they can go through your site. You must have clear navigation to do this. Have all important links in prominent places. Try linking many pages in your site. Allow information be found from every part of the site.
Become familiar with photoshop as much as you can if you are just starting out with web design. You want to be as diverse with a lot of programs as possible and photoshop is crucial towards becoming a pro at web design. So learn this program and get ready for others as well.
Write content for your page with literacy levels in mind. There are going to be people with all different levels of education viewing your site. Create content that can be understood by the audience you wish to grow.
Have another person constantly test your website functionality through the entire design process. Whenever you include a new feature or make a change, give an impartial third party the chance to assess it. While a video that loads slowly may not seem too terrible in your eyes, someone else might think differently. Always seek out different, outside opinions.
When adding videos to your website, you should take into account that some people’s Internet bandwidth isn’t very high at all. If you choose conversion at 5,000 kilobytes per second, that may overwhelm some users’ connections. These people will have to wait for a long time to watch the video, and the video may freeze frequently while waiting for more data to load.
In conclusion, one of the most important things to consider when creating a web site for your company is to use the best web design methods available. It would prove foolish to try to just get by. Ideally, you are much more comfortable with web design methods after reading the previous tips.