Tips For Designing A Wildly Successful Website

By Author: direbollu
Total Articles: 3
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Check your site in all of the different browsers. Make sure it looks good on every browser. You need to know how your site looks to all visitors that are arriving at your page. Send your website to a bunch of friends to see if they have trouble.

Include a link to the homepage on every page of your site. One of the best ways to do this is to make a graphic title for your page that can be included on all pages. Web users are used to clicking on a graphic to return home so there won't be a learning curve to navigating your site.

Always mark files that must be opened in an external program with an icon. Many sites host PDF files, and less commonly, DOC files, that must be opened in Foxit Reader and Microsoft Word/OpenOffice, respectively. These files should be marked with an icon representing the file type, and a link to download the appropriate viewer if the user does not have it.

Incorporate a site map into your website. Site maps serve several purposes. First, they make navigation throughout your site much easier for visitors. Second, the major search engines can utilize it to index your entire site. This ...
... means your search engine optimization improves, and your website receives more exposure, giving you more profit-earning potential.

Make sure that you use the right anchor text. The anchor text of a link should clearly describe what the visitor should expect to see when he clicks on the link. For instance, if a link leads to your widget ordering page, the anchor text might read "Order widgets." Specifically avoid using "click here" as anchor text.

Regularly distributing a newsletter can help to secure repeat visitors. When a customer can get frequently updated on things, they will keep visiting to see more. Place a signup form on your site in a sidebar, while maintaining a list of everyone who signs up. Only send out a newsletter to people who have subscribed to it, otherwise you will have angry customers.

If you intend to use advertisements on your site as a way to increase your earnings, make sure to maintain an appropriate ratio. Keeping your advertisements at no more than 25 percent of your content ensure your site is not cluttered with too many of them. Just like people would not watch television if it was nothing but commercials, site visitors are less likely to stay on your site if you have too many advertisements.

When designing your website, you should utilize cascading style sheets, or CSS. These style sheets can be applied to every webpage on your website, and will ensure that the user experience is consistent throughout the website. They are also effective for making quick design changes to your website due to the fact that you only need to change the style sheet as opposed to making alterations on every webpage.

As you add images, use ALT tags. It helps those who are surfing the web with disable graphics. It also helps those with visual impairments, as images can be translated to voice. Using ALT tags also help to explain what clicking on the link will do. Lastly, search spiders use ALT tags, so this can help you in the SERPs.

To help your website function the way it is intended to, make sure all your links are working. If you have broken links then your visitors may get frustrated when they try to click on something that interests them. Frustrated visitors is not something you want because they end up leaving your site mad.

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.

When designing a website, you want to keep the privacy of your customer's information in mind. Set up proper encryption for submitting data, and never store customer passwords and such in a text document. Make sure you set up your website properly so that your customers know that visiting and interacting with your site is safe.

If user or customer agreements are found on our website, speak plainly in them, avoiding legal jargon as much as possible. You want your customers to feel like they know what is going on and being said. Legal jargon will confuse your customers, and it will make them uneasy about your site.

Focusing on your target audience is important even for website design. For instance, if you're designing a site in order to sell winter coats, you're not exactly going to have a beach themed background with Joe Strummer tunes playing upon entry. Keep your site closely related to its targeted audience.

When it comes to web design you don't want to be left in the dust, you want to be up to date so that you know how to program your site as well as what people want. So even though you understand how to build a website make sure that you always fill your brain with new knowledge.

Don't use Flash on your site. While Flash can look very high-tech and exciting, on some devices it will cause everything to slow down. Also, keep in mind that there are mobile phones and tablet PC's which are not flash enabled, and if your visitor goes to your site it will not be a fun experience.

I hope you've learned from this article and feel confident that you're ready to get started in the world of web design. Whether you are just starting to create your own site or you plan to build websites as a career, your first step is learning how it's done. Now you can move on to the fun stuff, enjoy!