Free Website Design Tips

Below are free website design tips to help you design and build your own website. These free website design tips are not everything you need to know about building a website but they help. When creating a website, your goals are to ensure that the website you create does exactly what it needs to do. A great website does not have to be flashy, sometimes a simple website does a better job.

Free website design tip #1: Avoid splash pages

First of all, what is a splash page? A splash page is a landing page that usually has beautiful graphics and a single button that says things like 'enter' or 'next' or 'skip'. Some people think having a splash page on a website is a good thing since it tends to look professional and beautiful. However, when building your own website you need to think whether a splash page will serve your purpose. You have to consider that some people do not like splash pages and will click away from your site. Movies sites can have splash pages because people will wait to for it whereas they might not your business website.

Free website design tip #2: Don't have too much ads on your website

One or a few advertisements on your website is acceptable. In fact, 99% of great websites out there have advertisements of some sort on them. However, some badly design websites have too many ads on display that are in the way of people browsing your website. Most people are so bombarded with ads displays that they have learned and trained their eyes to ignore them. Unless your banner ads are very targeted for your website visitors, you will be wasting the valuable space on your website and risk annoying your visitors enough for them to leave your website and never come back. When browsing websites, most people like to be interested by themselves and not having multiple ads flashed at them all the time.

Free website design tip #3: Clear and simple website menu for ease of navigation

Have you been to a website where it is hard to find what you are looking for on there? Is it frustrated? A lot of SEO newbies feel like it is artsy and cool to be innovative with the website menu by putting it in weird places on the website or hide it with graphics. However, statistics show that the simplest and most straight forward website menu does far better than any other types. When building your website, you want you menu to be simple to find enough that even a child can navigate through your website. Flash based menus should be avoided. Even multi tiered dropdown menus are less effective. If you don't make navigating your website easy for visitors then they will leave your site and go elsewhere.

Free website design tip #4: Web pages should be in logical order

Not only this is good for visitors to browse your web site, search engines also look for some sort of logical orders. Having a logical order to your web pages allow visitors to navigate your website easily.

Free website design tip #5: Audio files

Having audio files on websites did not used to be popular. However, nowadays with innovative ways to monetize and advertise on websites, audio files have gained some popularity. However, if you use audio files on your website you have to ensure that the audio files are not conflicting with content on your website. You don't want your visitors to be annoyed when they are already interested in your content. Short audio files are preferable so that no one has a chance to get very annoyed by them. You should also install mute or volume control buttons to keep your visitors happy if the audio files are longer than a few seconds.