Thursday 27 February 2014

Enhance Your Site With These Web Design Tips

By Layla Kinkel


Understanding how a website functions does not necessarily mean that you know how to build one. Tinkering with html code and adding various design features takes a skilled hand. If you want a site that looks great, schooling yourself in web design is a wise first step. Make sure to read these design tips below if you need a hand.

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.

Test your site to see if the major translation services work properly when translating your site. Some sites receive many international visitors, and these visitors sometimes use services like BabelFish and Google Translate to translate the text to their language. Certain web design problems, especially poor server side code, can break these services.

Keep your front page as simple as possible. People shopping around will immediately decide whether they will use your site or not, simply by how your front page looks. Be descriptive about what your business does, and your unique offerings, but keep everything else to a minimum to avoid distraction.

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.

Try to make sure that any music or pictures that you're linking to is hosted on your own web server. Do not hotlink to any other website images. This can be construed as bandwidth theft and it could put you in violation of a copyright too. It's not worth the risk. Of course, you won't find every single tip under the sun in one article. No article is that long. You should be able to get the hang of web design through these tips, however.

As stated in the beginning of this article, it is common for a person to have a webpage, be it for business or pleasure. In order for their design to look great, they have to know what they are doing. Now that you have read the above article, you will have no problem with designing the website of your dreams!




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