Website Design Tips

Why this is Important

Your website will look more professional if pages that do similar tasks have the same "look and feel". This also subtly reassures your visitors that they haven't accidentally wandered off your site.

How to Fix It

It is actually much easier to create pages with the same "look and feel" than to have different color schemes for each page. You get one page looking the way you want it, with standard links at the bottom, banner at the top, or whatever. Then you save a spare copy to use as a template. For each new page, you copy the template and then modify it - instead of starting from scratch each time.

Even if you don't use a template, your visitors will appreciate the fact that your navigation links are always in the same place on every page - wherever you decide to place them.

Another advantage of using the same background, bullets, buttons and bars graphics on each page is that if you want to redecorate, you can just upload new graphics using the same names. If the new graphics are the same size, and don't force changes in text and link color, then you won't have to edit any of your html files - instant entire website update!

This also helps with the load time on your inside pages. Any images already in cache will load much faster as far as your visitors are concerned. It is perfectly acceptable to vary your backgrounds, but this is a strong incentive to stick to one main "look" for most of your site.

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