January 4, 2013

Building A Better Website: Design Tips That Work

More and more of our lives take place online these days, so web pages that do not work well are not going to receive much positive attention. If you need to learn more about designing an effective web page that will get people coming back again and again to your website, this article is for you.

One thing that every web designer should understand is that it is never a good idea to store unencrypted passwords from the sites users. Saving passwords as simple text documents is a recipe for disaster so make sure that any passwords you plan on storing are encrypted so as to avoid and future problems.

Although it is common to see the www. at the front of a website URL, you should try to make sure that you can access your site whether you choose to include it or not. This will make it much easier for anyone to access regardless of how they type it.

It's not the 90's anymore, so stay away from using frames. Frames were of great use in the early days of web design but it had a lot of flaws. Frame designs make it harder for readers to bookmark your site and scrolling becomes a chore. There are much easier ways to provide your users a flow through your website.

Don't disable the visitor's right-click functionality. Some sites do this in order to prevent people from copying and pasting text or saving images from the site. The thing is, it doesn't work and disables other useful functions. OCR can be used to capture text from such sites, and grabbing images is as simple as taking a screenshot.

Break up long text blocks. Having a huge wave of text is unnecessary for any site, especially when you can break it up by using images, or even separating it into different pages. Boring your viewers will only make them leave, so keep things as simple and fresh as possible.

A great tip for web designers who are in the conceptualization stages of their website is simply to brainstorm. This simple, yet underutilized method is a great way to get your ideas down on paper so that you can better visualize what you would like the final product to be.

No matter who your target audience is or what your site is intended for, you should always aim to keep loading time to ten seconds or less. A well-designed, efficient site should pop up in visitors' browsers in a matter of moments. The majority of online users demand instant gratification, and it is in your best interest to provide it.

Never force the viewer on a path of your choosing or break them away from their current workflow. This means not pushing surveys or offers into their window that they must complete before they continue. By removing a viewer's options and forcing them to do as you please, you are likely losing their service and creating a bad review for your domain.

As you have seen, designing a high quality web page does not have to be as difficult as you may fear. Once you know what you are doing, you can put together a website that runs smoothly and does not distract from your content. Just remember what you learned in this article.

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