Take a look at a high-level professional site, then compare that to a personal site on a free host, and you’ll quickly see that not all websites are created equal. The difference should be obvious, and these differences all come down to one thing in the end: web design. The advice shared here will be instrumental in helping you understand web design.
Those of you who are starting your own website should strongly consider using shared, or grid hosting, instead of using dedicated hosting or VPS hosting. This is because when your site is new you will have no idea how much traffic it will receive, and the last thing you want to do is pay for bandwidth that you don’t need. Remember, you can always upgrade your web hosting if needed.
If you are fortunate enough to have the funding for a major investment into your site, this does not mean that is a wise thing to host the site on your own. Designing the site yourself is a good idea, but when it comes to hosting, it’s usually better to use a third party. This will free up your time to concentrate on more important things.
Buy books that can help you become a great web designer. Stick to books for beginning web designers until you’ve mastered the basics, so that you won’t miss anything you need to know as you study web design.
Stay creative when designing your site. It’s okay to get ideas from other websites, but make your site as original as you can. Come up with features of your own, and enhance ones that you have found elsewhere. If you do this, you will be maximizing all of your efforts in your website design.
Begin by making smaller websites, so you can see your strengths and weaknesses before starting a major site. Start with an index page that introduces your business and products, then use what you learn from that page’s feedback to build additional informational pages.
Make sure to preserve personal information that may need to be entered again by the same user of your website. When a user needs to enter their information multiple times to sign up for various options you give them, make it so that they don’t have to enter duplicate info from beginning to end on their own repeatedly. With this “sticky” information, you create a simpler, easier experience for your users, which will prompt them to stay on-site longer.
The more work you put into learning web design, the easier it will get. Begin by creating basic pages with HTML or C++; this will allow you to judge how well you are doing. It’s important to practice to make sure you know the ropes of web design.
Have a homogeneous pattern of color and fonts all throughout your website. Be consistent with the colors and fonts you use to avoid confusion. This can be easily avoided by using consistent colors and images on all of your site’s pages. To achieve the maximum cohesiveness, also use the same font and color scheme in any brochure or literature you send out for your company.
As a web designer, you want to strive for perfection. Even if creating a perfect website is not possible, setting your mind on it will help you stay motivated and improve your work constantly. Regardless of the kind of website you are developing, this is always a good goal to keep in mind.
Throughout the design process, you should perform useability tests periodically. Whenever you include a new feature or make a change, give an impartial third party the chance to assess it. A video that loads slowly may mean nothing to you, but someone else may disagree. Even more importantly, a video may load quickly for you, but not load at all for someone else. Always seek out different, outside opinions.
Find a good web design newsletter to subscribe to. This will give you something to fall back on for inspiration when you need it. Anyone can benefit from something like a newsletter, regardless of whether they are a pro or novice.
Set up your site so that visitors can cancel actions they initiate if they change their minds. For example, allow users to cancel registration for newsletters or easily back out of a search. Visitors do not appreciate not being able to cancel things that they are not interested in completing, and they may not wish to return to your site for future purchases.
A well-written “About Us” page is worth the effort. Add some autobiographical information to share with visitors. Spice things up. Provide some insight for your visitors; tell them how and why you built your site and what goals you want it to reach for your company.
Learn as you go, adding new skills and techniques for web design. When you are confident in your abilities to use one technique, you should then move on to mastering the next skill. While this may take longer, it will ultimately produce better results. Fully mastering these skills will make it easier to achieve your goals.
If you’re wanting to design multiple sites, you need to learn how to work with multiple platforms. Learning Java, MySQL, PHP and other platforms is going to help you for years to come. Regardless of whether you intend to create websites for yourself or for others, being skilled in multiple areas will make you a better designer.
Photoshop is a program that is well-known, and most understand that they must become proficient with it to have the greatest success in web design. Yet a lot of people aren’t familiar with Dreamweaver, and all that it has to offer for web designers, check into this program and see how it can help you.
It is unlikely that you will be able to make a site like Facebook or Twitter. The odds aren’t in your favor. The best web design skills may help you make attractive and functional web designs like the pros. Use the tips you just read to get started designing a website right now!