Tips For Web Designers: A Basic Guide

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Tips For Web Designers: A Basic Guide
For new business owners looking to operate a business online, one of the biggest expenses incurred is hiring someone to build a website. If you're a newcomer to the online business world, you can save a lot of money by designing your own website. However, you should never cut corners. Use these tips below and you can start designing websites like the professionals.

Keep the size of your web pages small. A lot of modern web pages are full of unnecessary elements, including huge images, Flash advertising, and lots of AJAX. Many people, especially those in rural areas and other countries with less-developed internet infrastructure, don't have high-speed Internet and will have to wait forever for a large page to load.

For multimedia presentations, take advantage of the new HTML5 standard. Although HTML5 isn't quite as robust for animation and games as Flash, it has the advantage of working stably on mobile phone browsers, including those contained in Apple hardware. HTML5 is also quite a bit leaner than Flash, so load times will improve, as well.

Don't disable the visitor's right-click functionality. Some sites do this in order to prevent people from copying and pasting text or saving images from the site. The thing is, it doesn't work and disables other useful functions. OCR can be used to capture text from such sites, and grabbing images is as simple as taking a screenshot.

Make sure that you include efficient search capabilities when you're designing a large website. Make sure you add a search box allowing your viewers to search for terms in your site. Google and FreeFind both offer search functions for your website.

When the time comes that you must choose your webpage's background color, be mindful of the effectiveness and conservative choice that white is. A bright, white background makes it easier to read text; it also appears more professional. However, intricate background images are often difficult to pull off; more often than not they appear sloppy and distracting. Backgrounds should be simple and subtle.

Use breadcrumbs and make it so that clicking on the site logo returns you to the homepage. Breadcrumbs are markers that show where the visitor is in the site structure. For instance, the breadcrumbs might read "home > furniture > beds." When the user clicks a link in the breadcrumbs, he can return to a page further up in the site hierarchy. Clicking on a business logo should generally take the visitor back to the homepage as well.

When creating a website, it is important that you limit the amount of fonts you use. Also, think about how fonts look on a screen. For instance, tiny serif fonts, like Times New Roman, are difficult to read. Many websites use Verdana, which can be simple to read in various sizes and colors.

If you desire feedback from your visitors, design your site to include a feedback form rather than a guestbook. A feedback form lets your site visitors contact you without having anything negative be shown to everyone else who sees your site. If you have a guestbook then everyone can read both good and bad comments, something you really do not want people to see, especially when the comments are negative.

It's not going to be an easy journey from newbie to design expert. In fact, you'll probably mess up on a few different aspects of web design. But as long as you can apply the information you have learned throughout this article, you will begin to understand what web design entails and how you can build a great website that will attract customers.