Web design is a term all too familiar with most internet users nowadays and especially those doing online businesses. After all, a website is the major way through which these people get to advertise their businesses. This makes web design a very crucial part of online businesses. The good news however, is that web design may not be as hard as you think. This article runs you through the basics of web design and what you may need to know as you set out to build your site.
First things first; so you need to know exactly what you require to start designing your site. You need a program to create your web pages and also to manipulate your images. Fortunately, there are many programs available in the market for free or just for a few bucks; that can accomplish these tasks. You also need a way to input your images into the computer in case you need to use images and this can be accomplished using a digital camera.
The next thing you need to be aware of is what makes a good website so that you can have an idea of what to capitalize on. The components of a good website are fairly simple. For a website to be successful, it must meet all the defined goals and in addition provide captivating content that keeps your target clients coming back. It is also easy to navigate and designed to complement the content. You should thus keep this in mind when setting up your site.
When it comes to content, there are several things you should have in mind. The content that you include in your site should be targeted to a particular audience. This means that you should identify your site’s goals and seek to meet them through the content. Have a list of content and divide the list of contents into pages in order to make your site presentable. You can have a chart of links between the pages and then create a navigation scheme to link all the pages together.
For the design and layout, there are several things that you need to consider. Have a visual theme that is consistent, play around with the use of color and text to enhance the effect that you want to create and use images intelligently without over doing it. Also, align elements on the page and group them together to give the viewer an easier time on your page.
After you put all things together, you need to set out to actually create your web pages. Even though you can use the document format, HTML does a better job in designing web pages not to mention that it can be done by anyone due to its simplicity. You will also need to edit your images and save them in a file format for them to be less bulky. With all the aforementioned things done, you are only left with the task of putting your site on the net which can easily be done through a web host.