The fortunes of any given website are determined largely by its unique design. Using appealing and effective web design elements will communicate to your visitors a website that is trustworthy, looks good, and simple to use. However, if you have bad web design, these visitors will exit out of your site without viewing any content. Follow the advice provided in this article to ensure that your website has a great design.

Make sure to view your website in a variety of browsers. What you’re seeing on your end may not be what others are seeing on theirs. Be sure you research all of the popular browsers that people are using and then design accordingly. Make sure to also send the site to someone running a different OS to make sure those browsers are compatible.

NoScript is your friend and a test your site has to pass in order for it to be deemed functional. This is a Firefox extension you can download, and it will check your site’s readability. Some content isn’t going to work without using scripts, but you don’t want to have a blank site with scripts turned on.

Include a link to the homepage on every page of your site. One of the best ways to do this is to make a graphic title for your page that can be included on all pages. Web users are used to clicking on a graphic to return home so there won’t be a learning curve to navigating your site.

Always mark files that must be opened in an external program with an icon. Many sites host PDF files, and less commonly, DOC files, that must be opened in Foxit Reader and Microsoft Word/OpenOffice, respectively. These files should be marked with an icon representing the file type, and a link to download the appropriate viewer if the user does not have it.

To help you attract a more professional crowd to your site, make sure you design your site with no spelling errors. When designing the site, utilize a spell checker and if need to, a grammar checker. If you have a site with poor spelling and grammar, people will not want to do business with you because they will think it is unprofessional.

Don’t accidentally place links on your site that lead to nowhere. Visitors to your page are more likely to click on a link when they know where the link will take them. If you have links that don’t specify where it takes you, then someone could mistakenly click it by using a keyboard shortcut.

To help you design a good site, you need to make it so it is simple to navigate. Navigation encompasses everything and is the backbone of your site. So construct a site that flows easily from one area to another, otherwise your site will be very confusing and people will not visit it.

Reserve your name for a website now, if you have some ideas. Get creative and choose something you want, but reserve the name early to ensure you have it. Many people have similar ideas and may take the name you want before you have a chance. Great minds often think alike.

A web design that is easy on the eyes, in addition to being easy to use, can make a big difference in the success of your website. You can boost traffic with a good web design. Conversely, making poor web design choices will depress your site’s traffic and discourage repeat visitors. Use the web design strategies you just learned to significantly boost the chance that your website will succeed.