Web Design: Do It Like A Pro

Oct 30, 2012 by andygs83

Avoid using too many graphics. While graphics are important to give your website a professional, cohesive and well-designed look, using too many of them can create clutter. You should never use graphics simply to decorate your site; they are used to improve your site. Having the appropriate number of graphics that do not create clutter improves the usability of your website, too.

Don’t use JavaScript too much when designing your website. Some people do not have java-enabled on their machine, and many are still using out-of-date browsers. Instead of using too much JavaScript and AJAX, make your sites clean and lean a bit more on graceful degradation. Remember, the goal is to make your site user-friendly for all users.

You should hire a web design professional who is a full-time web designer rather than a part-time designer. There are many people who choose to do web design in their spare time because it is often a job that they can do from the comfort of their own home and in their free time. This type of person may be drained and careless when designing your website.

When designing your website, you should avoid using too many different types of fonts. You must also consider how different fonts appear on the standard computer screen; smaller serif fonts (Times New Roman, for example) are somewhat hard to read. Most sites use Vedrana, which is easily read in different colors and sizes.

A great tip for every web designer out there is to research their target audience. Understanding what type of people will be using the site is an excellent way to decide how to build it. Make sure it is a site that the target audience will be comfortable using.

It is imperative that all of your webpages have titles. Forgetting to include titles while designing your website can have disastrous consequences. The biggest reason is that it makes your website look unprofessional when there is no title, both on the webpage itself, and also on a search results page. Search engines also place heavy emphasis on titles when determining the content of your website. Remember to utilize keywords, and make your titles descriptive.

Make sure that you include an “About Us” page on your site as you are designing it. Do not just add blocks of text that are boring to read – Jazz it up a bit! Provide background information, maybe include some photos of you as you work toward getting to the point where you are at today.

Personalize your site. Your clients want to feel comfortable with you, so use testimonials from trusted customers, as well as photographs of people. Building trust with your customers is very important, so be sure to let them know you personally care about the product or service you are providing them.

To help your visitors be able to easily read your site, you should design it using contrasting colors. If you use colors that contrast, it makes the text stand out. If you have black text with a black background you will not be able to see the information, but if you have black text with a white background it becomes simple to read.

You should ask previous clients about their experience with the company you are hiring to do the web design for your website. You need to be sure that the company offered good customer service. If anything arises that requires changes you will want to be doing business with a company that has great customer service and not one that has poor customer service.

In conclusion, one of the most important things to consider when creating a web site for your company is to use the best web design methods available. It would prove foolish to try to just get by. Ideally, you are much more comfortable with web design methods after reading the previous tips.

Sheldon Bujnowski focuses on website design