Web Design - A Beginners Guide

To learn Web Design I suggest the following path to become successful.

• Understand the concept.
• Learn Software Skills
• Develop promotional strategies.

A Good web designer concentrates on six aspects to develop a quality web site:

• Content
• Accessibility
• Layout
• Navigation
• Interactivity
• Maintenance

Content

The content is the king. Quality parameter for content is very simple. It should be original and fresh (updated). Any original content comes out of the right brain and it has got its value. Every human being is unique. Everyone is a blend of unique skills. Hence original content benefits every visitor. The subject could be anything depends upon the purpose of your site. Authenticated information, with simple writing, necessary illustrations, Animations are key ingredients of good contents.

Accessibility

Make the content to access by everyone. Categorizing content properly, using right colours, text size readable by all age groups, considering the people of inabilities all these makes your content.

Layout

The layout is wireframe for all design works. Always Design for content. Need not to make the content for design. You need to understand the content first and draw a wireframe model on paper before working in computer. Simple websites consists the following sections:

• Header
• Navigation
• Submenu
• breadcrumb trail (a navigation technique)
• Body for content
• Footer for text link

Navigation

Navigation should be visible and easily recognised by everyone.

Interactivity

Web is an Interactive media. Not like Television. Make your visitor to interact. Usage of forms helps the users to interact with you and your website users.

Maintenance

Updating information regularly, improving quality by adding new features and Maintain data backup helps your site grow steadily in terms of traffic and achieve the goals of website.

Essential Software Skills to begin Web Design

• Learn some HTML basic Tags head, title, body, H1, H2, P, UL, LI, DIV, Table, IMG, A, etc. from http://www.w3schools.com/ and Learn any HTML editor like Adobe Dreamweaver
• CSS
• Javascript
• Any one Graphic Design Software such as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw etc. Learn to use simple tools like irfanview to reduce the file size and managing your web graphics
• For animation learn Adobe Flash
• If you want to develop interactive dynamic web site learn any programming language such as PHP, ASP or Java

For Promotion of Web Site

Learn the SEO. SEO basic rules can be summarized as follows:

• Develop useful content. So that others will give you a link without request.
• Take a minute to write your Title and Description tags for every page. Don't use same Title and description in all pages. Write separately suitable title and description with keywords for every pages. Search engines stores web pages not sites.
• Use keywords in h1, h2, text links, filenames and sub directory of your web pages.
• Use original content. So search engine will not delete your link as duplicate content.
• Always get organic (natural) traffic. Analyse your visitors traffic report regularly and keep your get updated and fresh.