Tag Archives: user experience

Web Design

Excellent Tips For Designing An Effective And Great-Looking Website

Web design often intrigues many at first, but a lot of them walk away because they think it is too complex. If you would like to try designing a website, but you think it is to hard, read the following article to become more familiar on the subject.

Try to avoid using Flash elements on your website. While Flash can make your website look futuristic and stylish, Flash will lag on slower computers, so not all of your website’s visitors will get the user experience that you want them to have. There are many tablets and phones that are not Flash enabled, and if people are using them to view your site, it can ruin their experience, and make them not come back again.

Put a title on your page that adequately describes your site. Take a moment to plug the words “untitled document” into your favorite search engine. You’ll see that this is a common mistake! You must make naming your site a priority. Search engines use site names to determine what sites are about.

Offer a sitewide search option at the top of every page. By doing this you will help to increase your site’s usability, and allows easy access to any information that a visitor might wish to see. Site searches are easy to make, and the benefits are worth the effort.

Make sure your domains, as well as your sub-domains, have taglines that are clearly visible. Use large text in bold that will grab attention, as this is the first thing seen by visitors when following links. This tagline will quickly inform them as to the page’s goal, offer, reasoning, or purpose and often determine whether they remain or click the “back” button.

Make favicon for your site. This is a very small graphic, but it will make it easier for your guests to bookmark your website. Memorable favicons help you stand out when people look at their bookmarks. Pick a favicon that matches your theme.

If you’re using FileZilla as a server, program the menu settings with the correct port and your username and domain. That way, you only need to select your settings from the personalized menu whenever you need to log back into the server. This saves a lot of time.

Draw up plans that detail exactly how you want your webpages to look like to your visitors. Show some people your designs, and get their feedback.

If you keep educating yourself as you go along, your website design process will benefit. When you figure out a certain portion of web design, you need to explore another one. This could slow down the process of site-building, but you’ll be rewarded with information that you need to create dozens of sites once you learn it.

Set realistic goals with regards to how long things will take to accomplish. If you set an unrealistic deadline for yourself, it will ultimately cause you to compromise the quality of your work. Give yourself time to work cautiously.

A visual sitemap can help you with advanced planning. You’ll be able to visualize how your site is growing as you add each new part. The sitemap lets you quickly identify any problems or weaknesses that need to be improved upon or repaired. Nothing compares to having a clear visual overview of your project.

Each page you design should be validated. A lot of WYSIWYG editors will put a bunch of junk code on the design of your site. If you use those programs, take an extra step to validate your code with a validation service. It doesn’t have to cost anything; the W3C, or consortium for the World Wide Web, provides a free validation service.

Most of your visitors will find popup windows and links that open in new windows irritating. Actually, many users have such attributes disabled through their browsers. Drop these features from your design to address this. If you wish to use pop-ups, you’d be well advised to rethink your overall strategy.

Make your visitor’s life a little easier by preserving the content they enter into forms. Saving data from one form to another, like username or email address, is imperative. Developing “sticky” data like this streamlines the user experience, and your visitors will likely appreciate the convenience.

Do not use a web hosting service that is free if you are going to be designing any type of commercial website. The reason is that you probably do not want advertisements for other products and companies distracting your visitors from what you have to offer. Purchasing web hosting services is a much better option.

Using proper and high-quality meta tags on your website is crucial to proper web design and attracting more traffic. Quality and relevant meta tags will provide search engines with information regarding your site. If you have poorly thought out the meta tags that have no reflection on what your sites content is, you will not be getting many visitors.

This should go without saying, but it’s important! Be sure that you look over every word on your site to ensure that there are no typos on your site. Poorly written content is the easiest way to make your site seem unprofessional and cause visitors to not return. Appearing to be unprofessional will probably cost you visitors.

Always check your website for broken hyperlinks. Do this before uploading the links to your server. This is very important because visitors will be put off if they repeatedly click on broken links on your website. In order to prevent this from occurring, proactively test thoroughly for full functionality.

When designing your site, use sound sparingly. Loud, distracting audio can be a huge turn-off to site visitors, especially if they are not given the chance to control it or reduce the volume. It is fine to provide audio links and video links with sound, but make sure that the user is the one who controls whether or not they hear something when he or she arrives at your site.

After learning a few new things about web design, you can begin to experiment with new techniques and strategies. Keep in mind that you can always learn more about web design, so always look for new knowledge. Staying up to date with your web design knowledge will bring you success.

Blogging

Can You Start A Blog? Here’s Some Help You Can Use

Blogging is really nothing more than sharing interesting content on a website. If blogging interests you, find a blog hosting site that is customizable, yet offers a quality user experience. Doing this will allow you to use your blog to its full potential. This article contains multiple suggestions to help you get started.

Spread your writing across the Internet. This strategy makes it possible to obtain a wide selection of viewers. Don’t limit yourself to a single publishing avenue. You want to get in as many people as possible with the best techniques. Use every outlet at your disposal.

In longer blog posts that you make, it is important that you separate the article and use subheadings throughout. Your posts will be more comprehensible and will attract more readers. Breaking down your blogs will also make them easier to share.

Sidestep writer’s block by creating audio content on some days, video content on other days and written content in between. Using different kinds of media on your blog will help make producing it feel less tedious. You will find it less challenging to produce new, gripping content that keeps you interested and engaged.

If you want to build up more traffic to your blog, be sure to focus on producing fresh and relevant content. Users will be more likely to keep coming back if they find your content to be of high quality, and most importantly that it comes across as personal and honest.

Know who your audience is and pull them in. For example, if you know your readers use social media sites regularly, so should you. Your readers want to read content that sounds like it’s coming from someone who is just like them, so providing it on sites that they visit often will achieve that relationship.

Try to make sure that you have plenty of visuals on your blog. This can be images, graphs, polls or even interesting videos. This will make your posts interesting to a broad range of readers.

Use concise and highly relevant content next to the link bar. People tend to look at the area near your link bar on a regular basis. One piece of information you can insert here is your total number of subscribers. Although it make not be as common at the beginning or end of a post, it can be used as an aid for subscribing.

If your blog has popup windows, make them load after all of your content has loaded so that the users will be able to view your content rather than just closing out of the pop-ups. This will improve the user experience of your blog, and it improves your chances of drawing repeat visitors.

Incentives, such as freebies, can be a great way to draw new visitors and keep them coming back. Everyone enjoys free things, and it doesn’t even need to be something significant. The more contests and freebies you have, the bigger the payoff for you, in terms of readers and followers. Readers will check your pages more often, if they think you might be giving away freebies.

Keep your blog posts short and direct. Although you should give readers the details they are looking for, too much information can bore them. Most of the time, blog readers are not interested in flowery descriptions or clever wordplay. In other words, focus on the meat of the post, not the garnish.

When you are blogging, you need to remember that you are writing in a more informal manner. A blog should be social and fun. Consider it this way when writing. The readers of your blog require a connection that is mostly informal and fun so they desire to visit your blog again and again.

Focus on other bloggers who are in your niche and make sure you are one step ahead. They are your competition, and it will only help you if you know what they are up to. Keep in mind that they will probably looking at your blog for the same reasons.

Announce your blog through your current social media accounts. Ask them if they can share your information so that you can reach a much wider audience. Your social networking account will show readers that you care.

Keep a top 10 list on your blog of your best work so users can see what your blog focuses on. Top 10 lists help readers quickly evaluate whether your blog meets their needs. In addition, you might increase your search rankings if you include this type of information.

See to it that all the important aspects regarding your site are in a place in which readers can see it. Try to place it in an area where they could see it every time they load a page. This will make your site into one that is simple to navigate, and visually attractive for your viewers.

Any blog that wants a close relation with its readers needs a contact form. Then readers can contact you directly if they have any input about your blog. This is helpful to both of you. Your readers can come from anywhere, and you may be surprised by the useful feedback that you will receive if you let them contact you.

When beginning your blog, start with a couple of excellent blog posts that introduce who you are and what your blog will be about. Get that basic information out first. Also add some pictures that tell more about your and your topic. You do not need to put up a personal picture, but you do want to include visuals that are relevant to your subject and are reflective of your own personal vision for the site.

You can decide how much time you want to devote to blogging and adjust your posting schedule accordingly. Put up your blog daily, weekly or monthly – whatever fits your schedule best. If you want to attract a lot of visitors, make sure you post frequently. Keep these ideas in mind, and it won’t be long before you are running a great blog!