Designing a website can seem like a daunting task! How can you create a design that visitors will enjoy? Where do you begin? The following article addresses all of these issues and will help you create a website that is both elegant and functional.

It is always good to add a favicon to your website. The favicon is a 16x16 image file in the .Ico format. This image is the one you see next to the URL bar, next to the title of the page on an opened tab and is also visible on your bookmarks tab if you choose to bookmark a page. The favicon will help users quickly recognize your page in their browser without reading any text or directly viewing the page.

Don't neglect cascading style sheets. Using a style sheet webdevelopmentco.com makes it easy to give all pages of your site the same look and feel. It also reduces the file size of your pages, as the CSS file can be accessed once on the server and then from the user's local cache thereafter.

When you're thinking about how to design a website, you need to be sure to think about the navigation. You want your navigation to be easily accessible and easy to use. Put the navigation bar on every page in a noticeable place. Also, make sure that it flows well with the rest of your page and doesn't distract visitors.

Although it is common to see the www. at the front of a website URL, you should try to make sure that you can access your site whether you choose to include it or not. This will make it much easier for anyone to access regardless of how they type it.

Unless your website can be viewed on a variety of browsers, it is unlikely to produce the desired results. Ensure that the site can be easily navigated on the most popular browsers. Something that functions fine in Firefox, might not even appear on the screen of a computer using Internet Explorer or Chrome. Visually test your website in every browser you can prior to launch.

Incorporate a search function that lets visitors find what they need. When visitors want to find something, they are going to search for your search box. If your site is not equipped with one, visitors may go to an alternate site. You should put this search box on the top of your page, preferably the right side. This is where many visitors look for it.

Before you publish any web page, check it carefully for broken links. An error page after clicking a link is very frustrating for visitors to your page. Most people choose one of the many programs or extensions available that verify working links but it can also be completed manually if you only have a few to do.

To help your web pages load quickly, you should compress all the images on the website page. If you have images that are compressed then pages will load much faster. Nothing is more frustrating to viewers than waiting for a 250k graphic to load when it should really only be 20k.

Learn the basics of HTML and CSS. Although there are many web-hosting templates that allow you to just fill in the blanks, in order to create a web page, these templates provide only limited design possibilities. Understanding how the mark-up language and stylesheet work together will enable you to customize your website to your heart's content.

The advice that you read in this article will help you when you start creating your website, so keep note of what was written here and apply it when you begin. Keep finding news ways to improve the quality of the websites you create, and you will not only match the corporate giants, but actually beat them.