A professionally designed and developed website can really help a business stand out from the crowd, so as a web designer you need to know which methods are the best to follow and which ones are best avoided. For that purpose, a web designer should keep themselves equipped with the latest standards in web design. Here are a few tips to help the new web designers understand what’s best for their designing career.

1. Loading speed is of utmost importance for any website as this dictates how quickly a visitor can actually view your content. Slower websites aren’t great for visitors, so try to enhance the website speed as much as possible.

2. Avoid loud colours on your website. The text should be in a colour that is a suitable contrast from your main background colour. Take a look at other websites to get an idea of the colours used for the text and background.

3. Whilst interactivity in a website is a good thing – make sure that it doesn’t get in the way of the website user. Make sure only the essential elements of a contact form need to be filled in order to submit it, and that things like Newsletter pop ups don’t ask you to sign up time after time. Interactive elements like this should occur as the result of user interaction, not to get in the way of it.

4. Cross browser testing is a must before making any website live. Use various browsers to check the compatibility and proper display of your pages with them.

5. Backgrounds should be given due consideration while designing a website. GIFs for the background really aren’t a good choice to go for.

6. Make use of Photoshop, and other designing software where appropriate. Otherwise, you may have to suffer at the whims of CSS and it might end up taking more time to create intricate elements for the website.

7. Avoid using a lot of JavaScript. The more it is used the more it would take time for a website to load onto the screens of users.

8. Always get feedback from the site visitors in order to enhance the look and feel of a website. Give the site visitors reasons to visit your site again and again.

9. Start designing the basic web page wireframe template and then move towards the complete website.

10. Keep all of the file sizes small in order to make the website easy to load onto the screens of the site users. The reason is that not all the visitors have speedy net connection (think of mobile users too!), so to appeal to maximum number of visitors; a site should be easy and quick to load.

11. Acquire reliable hosting services instead of taking it in your own hands. Put maximum efforts in making the design stunning and then go for partnering with a respected hosting company.

12. Write an appealing About Us page for the target visitors so that they know they are at the right place. Tell them who you are and what your business is all about.

13. Start learning about the specific components of web designing (CSS, PHP, JavaScript) by reading some books on the related topic. You can buy them or get some from a library. Online books are also available to help you out in learning some best tips about web designing.

It’s not tough to distinguish a good design from a bad design. The main point is that a web designer needs to stay on top of their learning and keep up to date with any new programs or technologies. You may do what you do very well, but your clients will always expect the most up to date techniques used in their new website.

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