A lot of people say that designing websites is extremely challenging. However, this is only a true statement for people who are not armed with the right knowledge or advice on web design. This article contains a number of pieces of advice to help you on your way to designing on the web with ease.
Does your site pass the NoScript test? Download the NoScript extension on the Firefox web browser and activate it to see if your website can still be read. Some ordering systems or other types of content cannot run script-free, but if the site is blank without the script on, that's not good.
Your front page should be simple and inviting. A lot of people will only look at the front page. That's where they are making the decision whether to spend more time on your site. Describe your business in detail and what it does, but keep other distractions and details to a minimum.
Although it is common to see the www. at the front of a website URL, you should try to make sure that you can access your site whether you choose to include it or not. This will make it much easier for anyone to access regardless of how they type it.
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.
Wherever your logo appears on your site, you should accompany it with a complementary slogan or tagline. Ideally, this tagline should be catchy and informative, and should offer some basic summary of the purpose of your site or product offering. The combination of your logo and tagline should appear on every page to create a sense of cohesion.
Research keywords. Your customers should always be the top focus, but search engine optimization is still necessary to bring those customers to your pages. You need to understand the proper keywords that will attract visitors to your website.
For images, use ALT tags. These tags help describe images for those that use graphic-disabled browsers and for those that are visually impaired and who use tools to translate the images to voice. If the images are links, the tags let you describe the link as well. Lastly, ALT tags offer search engines a target that will help in boosting your rankings in searches.
Don't include pop-up windows when designing your website. Most people will be turned off by a site that pop's windows up in their face. If customers see these popups and get frustrated, they may not come back to your site.
Don't load rich content automatically. Rich content mainly refers to music and videos, but anything other than text or graphics qualifies. Many people browse in work environments where sounds suddenly playing is a big problem. Also, many people find such rich content annoying in general. Rich content should require some interaction from the user before playing.
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.
If you are designing a commercial website, you do not want to use free web hosting. This brings annoying ads onto your site, and it detracts from a professional look to your commerce site. Instead, pay for some basic or professional web hosting, in which you more info do not have to put up with this.
When you are making a number of pages that require the same template, the simplest way to do this is to use copy/paste. Instead of writing your HTML from scratch every time, use the shared section of code as a template and make the necessary changes, then use "save as" to save the file under a new name. The index page can be worked off of ad infinitum.
Allowing guest content on your site is a good idea, but never, ever let someone else get into your server to post it! You need to receive the content via email. A lot of amateur site designers actually allow people to access their host's server. Even if this doesn't lead to theft, it's still a really bad idea.
Focusing on your target audience is important even for website design. For instance, if you're designing a site in order to sell winter coats, you're not exactly going to have a beach themed background with Joe Strummer tunes playing upon entry. Keep your site closely related to its targeted audience.
Web design can be a fun way to get to your target audience, and promote your company or product. If you do this right, you will be a stronger promotions professional. Begin utilizing the advice in this piece immediately in order to maximize your results.