Tips For Designing Your Website You Cannot Live Without

By Yalda Colby


Designing a website takes time, patience and a little bit of know-how. It can be easy if you already know what goes into great design, such as SEO and useful navigation. Read on to find some great tips and tricks which will help you build the website of your dreams!

Start by reading these tips below to get a handle on design.

If you are targeting a local population with your website, consider purchasing a country code top level domain. This will guarantee your domain name for that particular region of your country. A ccTLD is perfect for directing regional visitors to your site, when they may not have found it otherwise.

Avoid frames at all costs. Just don't use them. While they can make it simple for your menu or header to appear all throughout your site, the address bar won't change on each page. This can make it impossible for your visitors to link to any specific page on your site.

Optimize your site for older versions of Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8). Everyone loves to hate Internet Explorer, but the sad fact is that a large minority of internet users still use these old versions of IE. They don't render many elements in compliance with web standards, so workarounds are required. Specifically, read about the "box model bug" that plagued IE for years.

If you ever run into a problem don't be afraid to ask for advice. Go ahead and consult with a friend or someone through a forum or email who you think might be willing to help you. You aren't going to get anywhere if you don't get any help, we all need it from time to time so don't feel any shame.

Site maps are an excellent piece of technology that allow users and search engines to get a better view of your site's functions and layouts without extra work. Include a link to your sitemap from the homepage and leave it as simple as possible. The sitemap doesn't need fancy graphics or fonts, just layout your website and update it when needed.

When you wish to emphasize text on your website, you should not underline it to do so. Underlining is widely used for links. If you underline text, users will expect the text to be a link, and if the text does not take them to a different webpage when they click it, they will be confused. This can diminish the user experience. When emphasizing text, you should instead opt to bold or italicize it. You can also use a different color; however, do not use the color blue as that color is also widely used for links.

Launch an alternative if you can't launch something first-rate. Try a hobby or interest you have and launch a site about one of them. Once you get that small site under control and learn how to make a website work, then move on to the website you have dreamed of.

When you are working toward building a successful site, be sure to include a page that is full of real customer testimonials. You may even want to inquire as to whether some of your customers would be willing to submit photos of themselves that you can link to their review to make it more personable.

Create webpages that are "scannable". Reading online is different than reading a newspaper or a book. By default, site visitors scan webpages, looking for anything that stands out. Make sure your pages have lists, bolded words, titles, and short blocks of text. That way, your site will "feel better" to site visitors, enticing them to stay on your site.




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