All About Bridals Journal

Tips About Effective Web Design For Your Site

Mar 28

 

Hiring a professional web designer to develop your website is a large investment. The high cost does not always guarantee a satisfactory result. Actually, it's simply not possible to convey your exact wishes. You're the only one that knows what you want. If you want your website to really meet all the goals you have for it, learning a bit more about web design will help you achieve a satisfying result.

Affordable Web Design

When designing webpages it is important that you use the correct graphics. Remember, bitmap images are huge and usually don't work well, PNGs work fine. Use PNGs for images over 256 colors for text buttons and the like or use GIF files for images smaller than 256 colors. You can use Jpegs for photos.

Use JavaScript to include a custom font on your webpages. Libraries like Typekit and Google Web Fonts make it easy to include esoteric fonts on webpages, even if most visitors don't have those fonts on their computers. It works by embedding the font itself into JavaScript so that it can be decoded by the client on the fly.

Always mark files that must be opened in an external program with an icon. Many sites host PDF files, and less commonly, DOC files, that must be opened in Foxit Reader and Microsoft Word/OpenOffice, respectively. These files should be marked with an icon representing the file type, and a link to download the appropriate viewer if the user does not have it.

Always ensure you are giving meaningful feedback, as this is what creates the communication between a website and its visitors. For example, if an action taken by a visitor results in an error, do not simply display "error occurred."� Instead, provide a message that explains what happened and how the visitor can correct the error by taking a different action. Without this feedback, visitors are more likely to grow frustrated and just give up by leaving your website.

Learn the basics of HTML and CSS. Although there are many templates that allow you to just fill in the blanks, in order to create a web page, these templates provide only limited design possibilities. Understanding how the mark-up language and stylesheet work together will enable you to customize your website to your heart's content.

Test your website in the most popular browsers and platforms to make sure that it displays correctly. Sometimes scripts that work in one browser may not produce the same results in another browser. So you may need take extra measures, like adding a function for browser detection, in order to ensure that your website will display properly under most conditions.

If you intend to use advertisements on your site as a way to increase your earnings, make sure to maintain an appropriate ratio. Keeping your advertisements at no more than 25 percent of your content ensure your site is not cluttered with too many of them. Just like people would not watch television if it was nothing but commercials, site visitors are less likely to stay on your site if you have too many advertisements.

Be sure that your website has small files, no matter how aesthetically designed your site is. The size of the files making up your website is the direct cause of your site's load times. You want your site to load instantly. You should also keep in mind that not every visitor will be using a high speed Internet connection. Perform tests on your website to make sure that it loads fast, even when a dial-up connection is used.

Learning some basic HTML will help you add some interesting extras to your site. For example, you can have words that follow your cursor, or a banner that flashes important information. Make sure to change the colors and fonts occasionally, so you seem more involved with the web site and its design.

Include text content on your link page. The content makes the link visible to the users who are on your site. Any links on your website should contain text because links without text can be accidentally selected without the viewer's knowing.

Test early and test often to maintain accuracy. Testing early can help weed out problems before they get bigger or affect other aspects. As your website grows test it.

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.

A great thing about designing web pages, other than it being simple to do, is that you are able to bring your vision to life with just a few easy clicks or some lines of code. Implement what you just learned from the article above, and you'll have a great site in no time. Ensure that you utilize them.

Affordable Web Design