Web Design Tips

Many experts are of the view that using a Flash introduction which is also known by the name of ?skip-intro? is not conducive to good web design and thus has no business being used on the web site. Essentially, such Flash introductions are any kind of animation that may also have accompanying music which could last from half a minute to two minutes and is usually present on the first page before the visitor can enter into the main web site.

The thinking behind using Flash skip-intros is no doubt because the web designer and/or owner believe it to be a cool thing to do, though they should know better because such use of Flash has absolutely no real value at all. It helps in taking away the focus of the customer and if you really intend on running a successful online business, you don?t want to place the focus on yourself; rather, it is the customer who is most important and so you should do all that is necessary to make him or her more comfortable and get them to think more about buying from you than being impressed by having to watch unnecessary skip-intro pages.

Apart from looking cool, skip-intros may impress the visitor once at most and will then become more of a liability to your web site rather than an asset, and it can certainly annoy visitors because it forces them to wait before they can really get stuck into your web site which is what they want to do most.

Another major drawback to hundred percent Flash-based introductions is that they are not very search engine friendly, because if there was a complete absence of text on your opening page, the search engine would fail to ?crawl? your web site thus dashing whatever hopes you may have had of being able to achieve good page rankings because the search engines only read up the text contained in the web pages and not Flash.

However, if you must have Flash on your web pages, you should pay heed to advice on how to get it to become more search engine friendly. For starters, you may want to wrap the Flash in the usual HTML coding or you could even use XHTML which will allow Flash to display text from a source that is external to your web site.

If you are using a Flash Splash page, place some text-only navigation bars immediately beneath the splash screen which will allow the search engine to find the rest of the pages a lot more easily. The same principal applies to use of Flash content and all you need to do is to ensure that you have some content containing text which will be useful when search engines are indexing your pages, and so you could go the hybrid way of having Flash animation on top of your web page followed by some amount of text which is good for visitors since there is content richness and it allows the search engines to use the text to properly index your pages.

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There are four significant rules that every designer needs to follow to ensure that the web site he or she is creating functions according to needs and so is more effective as well as successful. First off, you need to ensure that your web design allows for content that is easy to read, and thus when writing content it must be done keeping in mind that visitors generally do not read each and every word that has been written and they much rather prefer scanning the pages in order to locate what they are looking for.

It thus makes good sense for your web design to allow for breaking up of pages and having many headers so that major ideas can be highlighted thereby enabling the reader to find whatever piece of information they are looking for in an easy and quick manner. There should be headers that make sense in between paragraphs, which is also useful for your web site when it comes to search engine optimization. Also, headers should be from H1 through till H4 tags to make for better search engine optimization.

In addition, you can use contrasting colors for background and for actual text and opt for black and white which makes for better readability and generally choose a background color that is easy on the eyes. Also, it is better to use simple fonts than fancy ones that are often harder to read. And, it is better to use browsers such as FireFox that is Standards compliant when developing as well as testing your web site.

The second golden rule of good web design is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to navigate through your web site, and it thus pays to have more than one navigation point so that the visitor does not experience difficulty in finding whatever interests him or her and choose a left as well as right menu and also one at the top of the page as too one at the bottom.

Another significant rule in good web design is to ensure that the web design is consistent and there should not be any need to use more than a single or maximum two layouts and visitors to the site should become accustomed to looking in the same place to navigate the site as too for further sub-navigation and also to get through the content without any problems.

You also should be concerned with the page weight, which is nothing but the total size of your web page measured in bytes and includes images, code and also text. How much your web site?s page weight is will govern how well the visitor experiences reading your content. As a rule of thumb, if you keep the page weight low you should get better response from readers since such pages will download quicker and thus the visitor gets to view the pages a lot faster, which is what they want in any case. It would thus pay to have page weight not exceeding 64k though anything between 15 and 25k would be ideal.

The bottom line is that any visitor that comes to your site should easily locate what they are looking for and not need to click more than thrice to achieve their objective.

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When the World Wide Web first began, the web sites that were designed had to be made in a very basic form, or failing that had to be created with the help of software packages which only specialist web designers could understand and work. Thus, in those early days, the numbers of website designers were rather limited and you had to pay a substantial amount of money for their services. Mercifully, those times are in the past and now designing a web site is not all that complicated and in fact a lot simpler than you may be expecting.

When you want to have your very own web site, you obviously would want it to reflect your personality and also your business needs and it should also conform to current trends in website designing. Most people that visit websites want to come across websites that are appealing in their looks, and which should be easy to use as well. A web site that suffers from design flaws can easily turn off visitors to your web site and thus adversely affects your online business.

Thus, hiring a website designer will at least assure you that there will not be any design flaws and in fact today, these designers are very like fashion designers, and you may often get some pretty outrageous solutions to your website?s needs. Still, they will be able to create the right theme and know the best as far as colors and style go. Another advantage to hiring web designers to create your web site is that they can handle the technical aspect to creating the best websites, and they will also add their valuable inputs to making the website function as expected and maybe even better.

No doubt, you could consider using the free sites that specialize in creating websites though these are more useful when you want to play around with design ideas than for incorporating into a live website. In addition, you may also consider buying inexpensive software that no doubt can also help you create complex designs for your website in a simple as well as quick manner. However, if you consider the importance of having a professional web site then your best bet is still to hire a web designer.

Another important consideration that you should seriously take into account when choosing a web designer to create your website is to understand how powerful is the Internet. With many potential visitors expected to view your web site, you don?t want to have anything less than the best and a good web presence will help your online business immensely.

Web design is something that requires a great deal of skill since it involves more than a nice looking site, because it should work perfectly and its construction is best left in the capable hands of a professional web designer. After all, you don?t want your web site to look the same as hundreds of others, and hiring a professional web designer will at least assure you that it will be a unique web site without any other duplicate. Also, with things such as Search Engine Optimization techniques to consider, you would be well advised to hire a professional web site designer.

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As everyone knows, when your web pages are search engine friendly, they will be more likely to get higher page rankings than otherwise and when you have search engine friendly pages, your site will come up ranked higher, especially when it contains keywords that have been optimized for search engines. There are certain tips that every web site owner would do well to pay heed to that will help them get their sites ranked higher.

To begin with, before you actually create your web page, you should be sure in your mind about the specific keywords you want to have on the page and which will help optimize the page. It would be wise to use such keywords in different parts of the page though you don?t want to overload the page with too many keywords, which will only result in having your page considered as spam which will not be good for your present ranking.

The next thing you need to ensure is that when you use a page title, it should begin with the keyword and it is also not a good idea to have more than five words in the keyword tag and there should be a title, keyword as well as description as the three most important meta tags in each page, and these should be present on each page. Next, you need to understand the importance of your first paragraph which is what the search engines use for analyzing as well as ranking the page, though of course it is also just as important to pay attention to the other paragraphs as well, and remember that you must sprinkle the keywords throughout your web page.

When using the keyword in your headline tag, it is advisable to keep it bold which can help in elevating your page in the rankings though remember not to use the tag too often and twice or thrice on a page would be sufficient because then it can easily be changed whenever necessary. When using images, you should use ?alt? as well as ?title? tags since it is not possible for search engines to otherwise identify whatever graphics are being used on the page. It would also help to rename the images to a specific keyword since that can get your page ranked higher.

When naming your file names, it would be a good idea to have them keyword rich since it will be of great use for the search engines to properly identify the pages and such naming conventions also make it easy for you to remember what the page is all about. You can extend this to naming of folders and to directories also.

Another very important aspect to getting high page rankings is anchor text which is nothing but a mask for URLs, which is text that points to different links. However, when using links, you should make sure not to use more than one hundred of them in a single page. Other tips to help you with making your web pages achieve higher rankings include not using frames, not trying to fool the search engines, and having the best as far as content goes. You also need to ensure that you do not use tricks in order to fool the search engines.

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