Sunday, February 23, 2014

Tips You Can Use When Designing Your Site

By Lacie Tonge


As a web designer myself, I can say that learning as much as I could from experts was how I got started. I looked at their sites, checked out their code, and even borrowed from their designs. Today there is a great deal of information available to help you get into the game, and this article is a great place to start learning.

On the Internet today, speed is where it's at. So you must make sure everything on your site loads fast. No visitor is going to wait more than a few seconds for your page to load, so ensure they get what they want quickly so they don't go to your competition's website instead.

Include a search element that allows visitors to search within your website content. If those visiting your site are looking for something specific, the first thing they will look for is a search box. When you don"?t have one, they are more likely to move on to another site that does. Always place the box at the top right of the page, as this is the first place visitors tend to look for one.

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.

To help make your website more attractive, incorporate some pictures that you took. Having pictures on your website gives off a more user-friendly approach to your site. When people see pictures they tend to spend more time looking at your site and cannot wait to click on the next picture.

Optimize your site for older versions of Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8). Everyone loves to hate Internet Explorer, but the sad fact is that a large minority of internet users still use these old versions of IE. They don't render many elements in compliance with web standards, so workarounds are required. Specifically, read about the "box model bug" that plagued IE for years.

Make sure everything is easy to locate on your website. Spend some serious thought on how everything on your site will be laid out. When content is randomly thrown on your site with little thought to the layout, you are making things harder for the people whose use of your site ensures your online success - your site visitors.

A lot of times when you load up a page to your file server, you cannot find it when you type in the address via your browser. You always need to double-check and ensure that you named the file correctly. Some people literally waste days trying to pinpoint the problem they believe is major, when in reality it's only a simple typo.

Tackling something like web design really isn't that hard, at least when you know what you're doing. Hopefully with what you learned from this article you're feeling a little more confident in the subject and you're able to apply all the knowledge you gained to reach any of your endeavors.




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