If you provide links to specific products or other websites, you have to check periodically that the sites to which you are linking still exist. If your site is too large for you to do this manually, then software is available free on the internet that will check all your links and identify any that are broken. To find them carry out a search for ?broken link analysis? and take your choice.

How are your graphics? Are they all displayed as they should be? These little red ?Xs? inside empty rectangles in place of a graphic can make a web page look bad, and indicate to the reader that you are either not bothered about your site or don?t have the knowledge to resolve the problem. This does not instil confidence and the visitor is likely to leave. This problem is easy to resolve, normally by increasing the size of the table or box that the graphic is contained in, or by editing the graphic pixel count or physical size.

You have designed your site to look good in Internet Explorer, but how about other browsers such as Firefox? In fact Firefox is becoming more popular. Used by 25% of internet users at the beginning of 2006, that had increased to 31% by March 2007, so don?t ignore it. If your website resolves poorly in Firefox you should fix it. Otherwise, you are restricting sales to only 69% of people who use the internet.

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Web Design is an area which can be extremely important to the success of a website. It’s fair to say that most people who design their first website don’t do a good job. They may think that there design is good enough to upload to the web but in actual fact the only reason they think that is because they were the ones who designed it. This is a common issue which most amateur designers experience but it’s very important to keep practicing and keep telling yourself I can do better than this. It may sound cliche but practice does make perfect and the more times you redesign your website layouts, the better you will get.

It’s not impossible to design a great website on your first attempt but you shouldn’t expect to. Please read the rest of this article and take note of the tips and advice given and you will be on your way to designing a website that is nice to look at and easy for people to use.

Keep it Simple Most people who start off designing a website think that more is better. That’s completely wrong and will turn your visitors away. Do not have lots of images, background music, flaming text and a hundred different colors fonts. All this stuff will increase the loading time of your website and believe it when I tell you that most people get impatient after waiting more than 10 seconds.

If you don’t believe me look at every popular website, take Google for example! All the site consists of is a plain white background, a nice logo, a few links and the search box. Some may say Google’s design is poor but experienced designers would say to you that it’s a nice design. Google became popular because it provided better content and loaded much faster than competing search engines at the time. Sites such as eBay, hotornot.com and papal all have simple designs but still look professional. That’s exactly what you should be aiming for with your website layouts.

Here is a more exhaustive list of design tips you should follow:

Don’t use frames Don’t have background music Don’t have too many images Stick to one main font for your text Don’t use too many colors for your layout, stick with 2 or 3 main colors If using flash, don’t overuse it. Don’t use things like flaming text, animated gif images they look tacky Don’t use bright text on a bright background and vise versa Don’t make your text size too large or too small Arial and Verdana are the two most popular website fonts Don’t make the width of your website too large test it on multiple sized monitors and on several screen resolutions

The above points are very important. Please remember that having an excellent design is really no better than having a good design. However a good design is much better than having a bad design. The truth is that it’s your content or website concept that will determine the success of your website but having a bad design can affect your chances of success, so take note!

About the Author

Darrell Knox is a writer and entrepreneur with 15 years of home business and marketing experience.Website: http://myacetemplates.net/design.pl/photo-law.html/website.html

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