A great way to generate income is to learn website creation. When you know how to construct a website, you can create your own or work to bring others’ vision to life. Obviously, you should start off doing this when you have nothing better to do, such as after work, as it allows you to focus all your attention on success and financial gain of your new business.
When developing a website, you must check out how it looks in various browsers. Make sure it looks good on every browser. So keep up with the latest browsers an test them out and check out your website on them. You may also want to view your site using a different computer operating system to make sure that everything is compatible whether they are using Windows, Mac, or Linux.
A successful website needs to work for visitors using any browser, so it is important to test your web pages to make sure they display properly in different browsers. If something works in Chrome it might not work in Firefox, for example. Test how your pages display with all major browsers prior to launch.
Design your front page to be a minimal as possible. Most people will decide whether or not to stay on your site just by looking at this page. Be clear about what your company is about, but be concise.
Alt Tags
When designing your site, use ALT tags when adding images. If someone cannot pull up the image, these tags let them know what should be in the space. Even if you use links for your images, the ALT tags will help to explain what the link does. Lastly, search engine crawlers make use of ALT tags, so employing them can help improve your search rank.
If you want your website to get more visitors, take care to use relevant, up-to-date meta tags on every page of your site. Quality meta tags will help search engines point interested people in your site’s direction. If you use poor meta tags, or worse, don’t use them at all, your site will get fewer visitors overall.
Make sure your site loads quickly. When visitors are faced with long load times, the usually leave soon. Speed your website up by having less scripts running, few graphics, minimal amount of flash, use SSI files, tweak the HTML, use server side caching, and lessen the amount of CSS and JS coding.
Do you have a bunch of different website ideas? If so, you’ll want to grab those domain names right away. Come up with something inventive, something that people will remember. However, reserve it right away, because these names go fast. Surprisingly, many people may have the same idea as each other. Great minds do think alike, after all!
Basic design tools will get you started on your website, but you will want to add some custom options. Make sure to infuse your unique personality into your site, rather than just focusing on a drag-and-drop tool that your hosting company might offer.
Find a good web design newsletter to subscribe to. This will give you something to fall back on for inspiration when you need it. Web designers can derive great benefits from newsletters, whether they are self-taught amateurs or experienced pros.
Build a microsite at first, as this will help you get an overall impression of your current strengths and weaknesses as a web designer. As a starting point, try to design two or three basic pages that only contain text, and then work your way upwards from there.
Always proofread any information you put up on your website. Keeping it simple allows visitors to find what you want them to find as quickly as possible. Errors on a website can really detract from the experience, and it’ll hurt your overall reputation.
Do not overlook the valuable knowledge that can be gained on website creation through printed books. Just keep in mind that since you are new to the web page design world, you want to start out with the basics and build from there. Avoid skipping any steps and learn at your own pace, so you can eventually become a great web designer.
A captcha is a great way to improve the security of user registration pages, but there are hardly any other places where one should be used. This causes your viewers to believe they have to do some type of difficult problem just for viewing a webpage. Most visitors will leave a webpage that requires too much personal information or the completion of difficult tasks.
When writing content on your website do not make it so only an Ivy league graduate can read it. Not everyone is a rouge scholar. Your content is useless to your visitors if they can’t understand it.
Once your site is online, do not assume your work as a designer is over. Be prepared to keep busy with your site. It will not be necessary to update every day, but do realize that fresh content must be a priority. You will find this to be particularly important if your business revolves around current happenings or if you utilize video on your site. Making changes to a website requires more work than posting on a blog. You will have to put work into it.
Consider the security of your site. An SSL certificate can be a vital purchase if your site will be handing personal identification or financial records. In addition, check with your website host for any offered security packages.
One of the biggest mistakes a designer makes is not realizing they built a site that is not accessible to all who may wish to visit it. Have someone in another country try to access your site. Sometimes content is displayed differently in other countries.
With everything you’ve learned here, you should now know more about website creation. Just use the information as best you can, and soon you will be a professional web designer.