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Clearly you need an effective website that is designed properly to generate traffic and revenue. When you design a site properly, you can outpace your competitors right away. Many people don't know what is involved with web design, and these tips can help with that. Below are some ideas to keep in mind when engaged in web design.

When you design a web page, always choose the graphics that are appropriate for your purposes. PNGs are currently the best standard for graphics online. For images that are not photographs, use PNG format for over 256 colors. If under 256 colors, use GIF format. JPEG files are best for photographs.

Stay away from using pop-up ads. Nobody appreciates new windows popping up automatically when they visit a webpage. Your customers will agree that if they visit a site, and are overwhelmed with pop-ups, they're likely not to return. Avoid using these irritating ads to keep your visitors happy. If the host you uses forces these pop-ups on you, you may want to consider looking for a new host.

Don't use many fonts as you design your page. You need to also be mindful of how some fonts appear on monitors, since smaller serif fonts are difficult to read. Many sites prefer Verdana, which is readable in many sizes and colors.

Try doing some research on a variety of keywords. While your primary focus should be providing website visitors with useful information, you also need to gain a customer base. Keywords are what search engines use to guide people to your website.

Content is the most important aspect of your site. The overall design is always important, but it's even more important to use content that keeps visitors coming back for more. Visitors will come back over and over when you provide content that is of value to them.

Choose file types carefully. GIF's are much easier to utilize on your site. You want to avoid PNG or BMP files as these take up too much memory space. Convert to smaller sizes to make visitors happy.

All load times on the website you design should be as fast as possible. Visitors to your site may be more likely to navigate away from your page if it takes too long to load pages. Try reducing your number of graphics, Flash, and script on your pages, optimizing your HTML, using SSI files, using client and server caching, creating expire headings, and minimizing your JS and CSS coding.

While you want to keep the aesthetics of your site in mind, you also need to make every effort to keep your file sizes to a minimum. This is because the speed of your website loading is directly influenced by the file sizes. You want your site to load as quick as possible. There are still people who will be using your website that do not have a high-speed connection. Try to test your site regularly, especially with a slower dial-up modem. This will help you to know for sure that it will quickly load in every situation.

When you're using the file server FileZilla, be sure to quick program the menu settings with the correct port, your username, and your domain. FileZilla will save your settings and let you connect right away thanks to your personalized settings. You will find this to be a time saver.

If you feel stuck, do some Google searches to find out how others worked through it. There are tons and tons of sites you can glean inspiration from. Look for a website that is interesting to you and use some of their ideas. Borrow ideas and create your own to build a truly unique page. Making improvements on borrowed ideas makes them yours.

As was mentioned before, web design is often pleasant to look at, but it must be done the right way. It's not difficult to distinguish an effective design from a poor one, but there are steps you can take to make effective ones. The advice in the article above should help you become a better web designer.


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