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Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Looking To Build An Interactive Website? Try These Great Tips!

By Jeff Ben


Building a brand-new website can be fun or it can be a hassle, or even a mixture of the two. It can be hard to decide where or how to begin or who you should get advice from. The following tips should give you enough information to draw up a basic plan and start building a quality website.

Use a basic layout that will help you build a web design foundation on which to build. You are going to want to begin with the basics and then move on and become advanced later when you are better and become more accustomed with the web design process.

You should cultivate the attitude that you want your websites to be as close to perfect as possible if you want to be a successful web designer. It is true that there is no perfect website, though if you have this mindset, you will be constantly trying to improve what you have created, and it will always be better than it was before. No matter which type of website you are trying to build, having this attitude will help you out.

If you include a search box on your site, it should be positioned in the top, right-hand site of each page. The search field should accommodate 27 or more characters. Furthermore, the action button after the search field should be labeled "search", rather than "submit" or "go". Doing this makes sure the search box can be easily seen, used and helps visitors to your site find exactly what they were looking for.

Use your friends or colleagues as a source for refreshing your information from the various design elements you use. It is important to ensure that you learn as much as possible about designing your site. Otherwise, you run the risk of making costly errors.

Give your website some time every day. Putting in a few minutes here and there is likely to be less effective than devoting larger amounts of time. Diligent work with your website will boost your own profits as well as your skill level.

Photoshop is a good program for creating great content for your new web site. It is also novice friendly. By using this type of program, a novice designer will be able to make high quality looking websites at a fast pace. If you don't have PS, it can be difficult and time consuming building a nice site quickly.

Make sure that you thoroughly check the code on each webpage that you design. Easy-to-use WYSIWYG web editing programs tend to burden your pages with junk code that is extraneous or even harmful. When using those programs, it's important to take the extra step and validate your code through a validation service. The W3C's web site has an HTML validation widget that will validate your pages at no cost.

When deciding on a web hosting service to utilize for your new website, it could be beneficial to opt for shared or grid web hosting solutions as opposed to dedicated or VPS hosting. Most new web designers won't make sites that get tons of hits, and buying dedicated hosting for a small site will waste hundreds of dollars over the course of a year.

From the onset, it is best to avoid using free web hosting services if you own a commercial website. These services can cause you a lot of problems and lost business in the future. Everyone likes free stuff, especially entrepreneurs who are just getting their businesses off the ground, but free hosting comes with a catch: ads, lots and lots of ads. This can conflict with your web design as well as your company philosophy, and it will also repel customers.

If there is a logo placed on your site, that logo needs to link back to your homepage if someone clicks on it. At this point, people expect that a logo is clickable and will return anyone to your main page. Visitors will become frustrated if there is no easy way to return to the home page. Allowing them to click on the logo makes your website easier to navigate.

Web hosting is a package deal and you need to take the time to understand what the host is providing you for the price. The things that are important to know are bandwidth, CPU usage, disk space and any other areas that they highlight in their package. Be certain to know exactly what you will be getting.

When designing a site, use free software. Some people assume that spending hundreds of dollars on a software program is an absolute must. However, there are dozens of programs that offer comparable results for less money. You simply must be willing to find these helpful design resources.

Make your design different than that of other sites in your niche. It's easy to see what others are doing by visiting their site. You don't want to be classed as "one of the pack", the more unique you are, the more noticeable you will be. You'll just look like a generic version of these previous ones.

With the amount of time that your visitors likely spend on social networking sites, it makes sense to add links to your site to let them share your content on their favorite social sites. This can boost your traffic and help you get discovered easily.

Make sure your content is relevant to many different contexts and cultures. For example, currencies, measurements and ways of writing dates vary from country to country. Try to make these as universal as possible, or at least, make them easy for foreign visitors to read and understand. Since not all of your website visitors are from one country, ensure that your site is friendly to the viewer no matter where they are from.

Have a favicon created for the website you designed. That tiny little image will make sure that your site stands out if your visitor bookmarks your website. When a visitor browses his bookmarks, a distinctive favicon will stand out. Take some time to create a favicon that reflects the theme of your site and mirrors your logo.

It is unlikely that you will be the next creator of a craze like Facebook or Google. Odds are weighted against your favor. Yet don't be discouraged by this because you can create sites with high quality that millions of users can come to appreciate. Use everything you have just learned and start designing your site today!




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