Building a website is exciting, and a little scary. Sometimes you may not know where to begin, what to look for and what is expected of you. These tips should help you create a basic plan to begin your website.

Look at your site in multiple browsers when designing it. Make sure it looks good on every browser. Make changes to your site to make it look good on all popular browsers. Before you decide to go live, you should always have others using different browsers and operating platforms review your site to verify it works on different systems.

Join online forums to learn even more about website development. There are countless websites that you can find with a quick search through Google that can help you.

Don’t use a lot of graphics. They are good for making your site more professional, but too much looks messy. Do not use graphics simply for decorating; utilize them for true improvement. Your site will be easier to navigate too if you keep the graphic clutter to a minimum.

Broken Links

Make sure all links on your website are working properly before you publish your site. Visitors do not like to click a link only to access an error page. You could check for broken links yourself, or get a program that scans and reports broken links for you.

Remember the background. There are sites out there that use animated GIF images for their backgrounds. This might be OK for a personal site, but it can also be a serious distraction that makes it hard for readers to focus on the text. Choose backgrounds that coordinate with your site, rather than clashing with it, and your message will be much more clear to your visitors.

A good key to remember is that your site should load in 10 seconds or less. Efficient sites should be visible in seconds so the viewer does not get side tracked. If it takes too long, a visitor is simply going to become frustrated and go elsewhere.

You want to make your site content compelling and intriguing. Website design is critical, but without content, it won’t matter. Visitors are likely to return to your website if they find the content informative and it fulfills their needs.

Make sure your navigation is easy. Navigation links help ensure a visitor can successfully navigate the website. In order for visitors to have a pleasant experience, it needs to be easy to navigate and clean-looking.

Do you have a bunch of different website ideas? If so, you’ll want to grab those domain names right away. Once you’ve thought of a domain name that you like, you should reserve it so that it’s still there when you’re ready to use it. It may shock you how others could possibly come up with the same domain name, but it happens countless times and you want what will work best for traffic and not settle for second best. It’s like everyone is connected or something similar.

Consider subscribing to newsletters about website design. Both pros and novices can benefit from reading good newsletters.

Learn all you can about website design by researching online. This is the easiest way for you to learn about designing websites. When you do not have advice from expert, you may end up with a badly designed website that people do not want to visit.

Create a usability test to see how effective your site is. These tasks involve finding information on your website. If your site is well-designed, the user will be able to accomplish the tasks. Then again, if not, it can provide insight in regards to which site aspects need improvement.

Host Videos

When looking to host videos on your site, you need to check with your particular web host to ensure that it’s allowed. There are many hosts that do not allow their servers to host videos. They do this because FLV files can take up quite a bit of space on a public server. Just make sure you check before doing this so that you do not waste a lot of time and effort.

Make certain that the search box you design is at the top of every web page, and contains 27 characters, at least. Ensure that the button which causes the search clearly states “search,” not “go” or “submit.” Doing this makes sure the search box can be easily seen, used and helps visitors to your site find exactly what they were looking for.

You may be feeling ready to try your own hand at website design at this point. Create a budget, look for advisors, and start your website. If you use these tips, you can design a great website without having to spend a lot.