Common mistakes by new web designers
This article discusses the most common
mistakes made by web designers when they create web pages. It is aimed at those
earlier in their career or those just starting out to help them not to make the
mistake so many of us do in our first months.
Starting out in web design is exciting,
you’ve learnt a whole new set of skills and you’re ready to take on the big bad
world of freelancing. You need a site something that says “I’m the best; choose
me for your work. So your pour everything into creating it, all the stuff
you’ve learnt over the past few months or even years. Two months later you have
your masterpiece coded up and ready to go.
Everyone you know says it looks great and you look at it everyday just
to make sure it still as good.
Then you speak to someone in the industry,
they rip your site to shreds, this is wrong, that’s the wrong colour, it’s not
valid. At first you hate them but you will slowly realise they are right.
I went through all this, it wasn’t fun but
slowly I realised my “masterpiece was not perfect. Industry professionals,
while overly harsh are experienced and their advice will be critical to your
success. To save you too much embarrassment here are some handy things to check
in the construction stages of your website.
Page
Size & Loading
Loads of people have broadband these days
but not everyone. A good percentage of people, around 40% at last survey still
use 56k to view the net. As you are bound to know most people will leave a site
if it hasn’t loaded in a few seconds so you need to keep loading times down.
This means keeping images small and to a minimum and designing in divs not
massive chains of tables.
You also need to reduce the amount of
unnecessary code in the page this means using complete external CSS and not
stick random flash or java in there just for the sake of it. These scripts can
achieve some fantastic effects but they can easily annoy visitors and potential
clients as well as slow the page down.
Generally valid code also loads better than
invalid code. Not only that but many higher level clients look for W3C
compliance in your work, it shows diligence and ability and will also make your
site eligible for listing in special compliance directories.
Free
Hosting and Emails
Making your website look professional is
only half the battle, you need to appear professional from all angles.
Registering a domain for both your site and emails is essential. Free hosting
service may seem like a good idea while you are “starting out but clients will
just see it as unprofessional and cheapskate.
Free hosts will also plaster your site with
ads and script restrictions so you may not even be able to do what you actually
want with the design.
Small
Site Mistakes
Disabling
the right click
I have lost count of the amount of websites
by new designers that I have seen this on. Without a doubt it is one of the
most pointless activities on the ent. Not only does it massively frustrate
anyone viewing the page. Assuming that a right click is designated for saving
an image is stupid; in this modern age of browsers right click menus contain
thousands of commands including bookmarking the page. More importantly it does
not actually stop anyone stealing images.
Background
Music
Another common mistake from new web
designers, especially flash heavy ones. Do you really think your page is so
important to other people browsing the net you have to take over control of the
audio output of their computer? What if they are on multiple sites? What if
they are listening to music or watching a video in another window?
There are very, very few websites that need
background music so do not include it in your portfolio page.
Hit
Counters
Monitoring and targeting your traffic is an
extremely important procedure but not one that the visitor needs to see. Far
from making your page look tacky invisible hit counters can seriously
compromise SEO. Avoid including them on your page and instead plump for more
comprehensive offsite solutions like Google Analytics or AWStats.
Make sure none of these errors occur on
your page and you will be a few steps ahead of many other new (and old) web
designers out there. Good luck in the web design industry and remember to keep
on top of the newest trends , which will always be the way to win business.
About the author
Frank Woodford is a professional web
designer from Nottingham England.
He began working freelance 14 years ago and is now working for a major web
design agency. He specialises in valid PHP and Xhtml web design and flash.
Tags: chains, construction stages, embarrassment, external css, freelancing, images, industry professionals, loading times, masterpiece, mistake, sake, scripts, shreds, unnecessary code, web design, web designers, web pages
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