Give Yourself An Edge When It Comes To Web Design

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Give Yourself An Edge When It Comes To Web Design
You want to design a website, but you are not sure how to get started. You want your website to display pictures and videos, but actually setting it up is beyond your skill level. Fortunately, this handpicked selection of web design tips and tricks should help you along the way. Take a few minutes to go through these tips and plan out your web design project more efficiently.

Make sure your site passes the NoScript test. Download and activate the NoScript extension for Firefox and see if your site is still readable. Some content, such as ordering systems for products, can't work without scripts, but if your site is simply blank with scripts turned off, that's bad news.

Make sure all of your webpages actually have titles, and make sure they are descriptive. A surprising number of webpages out there are called "untitled document" or "new document". This not only denies visitors a useful piece of information to remember your site, but also absolutely destroys your SEO, since search engines weight page titles heavily when ranking sites.

Use a style sheet to stay consistent. There is almost nothing more disconcerting than being sent to a page that looks at nothing like the site you were just looking at, even if it is concerning the same subject. Style sheets help with saving your formatting, so each page looks similar to the rest.

Make your links obvious. Customers do not like spending time wading through your site searching for something they are interested in. Having a site map, as well as providing big, prominent links will help your viewer find what they are looking for without wasting time in a hunt. Lead them to your information.

To get repeat visitors, use an e-mail newsletter. You can keep your visitors informed about important events, updates, and changes when they sign up for a newsletter, and the flow of information will often tempt them to revisit your site. Put your sign up form on your site's sidebar to keep track of how many people sign up. Make sure you only send out the letter to those that have explicitly requested to view it.

If you believe your site may be accessed via mobile devices, you will want to keep your designs simple. The use of flash, excessive images, and complicated menus will not translate well to a mobile platform. Keep your page clean and simple, or create a specific mobile site for your users.

Make text easy to ready by using colors that contrast or backgrounds that are easy to read text on. When your text is harder to read because the background or text color creates eye strain or portions of text that are unreadable, site visitors are less likely to stick around.

Use custom error pages to make your site more informative. For instance, if you want people to report dead links on your site, either put a server-side script on your 404 page or have a form or email address that visitors can use to report the error. You should have custom pages for 403, 404, and 500 errors, at the very least.

As you can see, it is not too hard to design your own website. The basic principles of design are all you need to know to start, and from there you can learn techniques as you need them. These tips should make it much easier for you to start developing an attractive, user-friendly website.