Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Easy Steps To A More Successful Web Design

By Layla Kinkel


If you've ever seen those commercials boasting about technical schools, then you already know that careers like web design are in high demand. What you might not have known, however, is that you do not need to attend a special school or take a course to learn web design. You can pick up the skills necessary from these tips below.

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.

To help you design a site that is easy for people to read all the information, make sure the pages are not too wide. If the pages are not too wide then they will fit on most people's computer screens. If the page is too wide, then part of your valuable information could be left off the page.

Build your website using a content management system. Knowing how to build a website using just HTML and CSS is good foundation knowledge, but this can only produce a static website. Web design has evolved into providing dynamic content. If you couple your coding skills with the use of a content management system, you can practically build any type of website that you desire.

For the best layout, make sure that the colors you choose for the background and font are restful to the eyes. Choosing moving backgrounds or neon colors can make it hard for people to read, and they may navigate to another web site. However, include pictures to break up your content and make the site complete.

Provide a navigation menu on every page of your site. While this menu does not have to link every single page of your site, as this could be an exhaustive list if you have a very large site, it should provide links to the main pages. This ensures that your visitors do not have to return to the home page and start completely over when it is not necessary.

Make sure to ensure priority of your user's needs. The web designer needs to be focused on the end user's needs at all times. These include usability, user experience, accessibility, and user interaction. These are vital considerations you must take into consideration. Try to see things from your visitor's perspective when you design.

Do not use images for your background. When you think about some of the biggest websites on the Internet, they do not have images as backgrounds. When you use image backgrounds, you represent yourself as someone who is not well-versed in web designing. Images as backgrounds also cause your site to load slower, which can lead to user frustration.

To summarize, your search has stopped for how to make sure that your web design fits in with your company's overall plan. Ideally, the information that was provided here is not only going to get you energized about creating great web design, but will also prepare you for the best ways to implement it.




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