When you start building your website, you may want to add all the bells and whistles. However, it is important to note that your website isn't there to show off. Your website should be the basis for your business and your designs should showcase this accordingly. This article will provide you with six solid points of advice that can help you create a website you can be proud of!
Try to save images in small file sizes. It is imperative that you understand how important bandwidth can be for some people. If they take the time to download images that eat away at your megabytes, you can end up wasting your website's bandwidth. If you have unlimited bandwidth, this won't be a problem for you. However, if your website has limited bandwidth or you're designing it for someone else, keep the image sizes in mind.
Even though you're not a graphic designer, you graphics still need to be appropriate for the content you are looking to portray. This makes it vital to your design that you select graphics that complement your content. For example, if you're running a website on anti-aging products, avoid putting graphics of swimsuit models. You need a bit of common sense mixed in with your designs.
Animated images can be the bane of anyone's existence; especially, if they have slow Internet connection. When designing a functional layout, avoid relying heavily on animated images. Animated images are a definite no and so are ones that blink. These types of images are hard on the eyes of the visitor and take away focus from the content you have written. Think about it this way: if you have blinking cherries on the screen, would you read the text?
It can be tempting to display all of your talents in one layout. Much like an artist with too much paint on their hands, avoid doing this. The downfall of any layout can be the fancy and overdone scripting. Don't make this mistake! You can avoid this pitfall by shying away from fancy layouts and sticking to something standard. A standard layout should have good navigation, well thought out graphics and content that isn't overwhelming.
Always use standard fonts and never more than two font types mixed together. If you have a particular font that isn't considered standard and you use it for your layout, it can be a disaster. Computers that don't have that font will not display it and use a different font for which the layout wasn't designed for. Use common sense when choosing your fonts and pair fonts together that actually go together. Comic Sans wouldn't complement Times New Roman. However, you can pair Arial and Verdana as they are often similar, but easy on the eyes.
Utilize the space on your website wisely. Avoid installing a busy background or having too much text. Think of yourself as an artist! You need to utilize space, but you also need to stop yourself when you know you're putting too much on one page. There is no shame in having a bit of white space left in your layout. This gives peoples' eyes a break!
Don't make the web design mistakes that many people before you have made. Take a comprehensive and wise approach to your designs! Utilize what you have learned from this article today, and you can be on your way to better web design.