When you are trying to understand SEO, it is important to remember the most important thing, and that is to have a website that looks professionally done. If you haven't managed that much, trying anything else is pointless. Everything tails its way back to site design when it comes to the Internet. Website visitors like to go to professional looking sites that are easy to navigate. Use the following advice to please them.

Use a fixed-position navigation format for easy navigation for your users. This keeps the site menus in place as visitors scroll through your site. This isn't only very convenient for your visitors, but is also great for marketers.

You want to have a site that is easy to navigate, if you want to attract visitors. Your links need to be prominently placed, easy to understand and functional. Menus can also make it easier to navigate your site. Ensure that there are links to all of your main pages, such as the home and contact pages, in a prominent location on every page.

There are free applications that will help you create your site. Investing in powerful software packages like Photoshop is only worth it if you think they'll pay off in the end. Just look around a bit to locate the ones that will work best for what you need.

Pop-up windows are one feature you should avoid. The average user finds pop-up windows to be an annoying distraction, rather than something useful. When pop-up windows come up, you are quickly bringing frustration to your visitors. This may make them leave your website and not come back again.

Check link integrity on a regular basis. The best time to do this is just before you FTP the page over to the server. This is important, as visitors who click on your links expecting useful information, only to find a 404 page, will leave your site in disgust. The prevent this from happening to your site, check links frequently.

Do not use pop-ups. It's annoying to visit a website and get ambushed with a lot of pop-up ads. Many visitors to a site will just click away from a site with pop-ups, even if the site is a popular one. In addition, many people now have pop-up blockers anyway. Make sure your customers are happy by eliminating these pesky ads from your site. If your host forces pop-ups on you, it may be time to find a new one.

Make sure your site navigation is simple, well-maintained, and transparent. Where you locate your website's navigation links can make a huge difference in the amount of time a visitor will spend on your site. Your navigation structure should be easy to navigate for the best user experience.

Do not go overboard in using lots of fonts when creating your website. Consider how the ones you choose appear on standard screens since serifs like Times New Roman can be tough to read. A lot of sites use Verdana since it isn't hard to read when it's any color or size.

File types have a lot to do with the speed at which your website loads. Your graphics should normally be GIFs or JPEGs. PNG and BMP files take up a ton of bandwidth. Keep your graphics at a reasonable size to save space.

You don't have to use every inch of space when you design a website. Just because you have all of that space does not mean that you have to use it. Dividing up your site's elements with blank space, can make it easier for visitors to distinguish what elements perform what function. Even empty space in some areas serves just as good a purpose as content.

Remember, you don't have to break the bank to design a website. Every expensive tool has an affordable counterpart that works just as well. Free open source software, for example, can often help you accomplish the same tasks as paid software. You can save a lot of money by using freeware or open source software.

If you put videos on your site, make sure to optimize them so that people with slower connections can view them. If your videos Asheville Web Design are faster than your clients Internet access, then it will work against you. This means your user will be faced with a video that buffers frequently and loads very slowly.

An important aspect of your site is security. For example, if people are purchasing products from you and entering their credit card numbers, you want to get an SSL certificate. You can also consult with the host about security features they may have for the package you choose.

No one likes visiting complicated websites that take too long to load and are a tangled mess of links. You can get away from the things that are wrong with website design by using the great tips you're about to get here.