If you’re looking for affordable web design, the best option you have is to do the designing yourself. Yeah, it might sound like a difficult task, but it really isn’t. As long as you’re willing to read the tips below and follow them to the letter, you will be able to design a website like you’ve been doing it for years.

It is always good to add a favicon to your website. The favicon is a 16×16 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.

Avoid useless scripts. Scripts like counters and date/time scripts don’t really serve any purpose, and since they are all JavaScript, can add a few kilobytes to the page’s file size. Getting rid of these elements also frees up space on the homepage. Replace those useless scripts with useful content that keeps users coming back.

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.

Keep your site fresh and up-to-date, and promptly remove any outdated content. If your page is promoting a special event that happened 6 months ago, you have already lost readers. Users wants to browse sites that they know are updated frequented with relevant fresh content, but if the site has outdated information then they know it is not well-maintained. Mark a calendar for when you will sit down and update your website, being careful to take off anything that is not current or relative anymore.

Learn the basics of HTML and CSS. Although there are many 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.

Keep the sizes of your files and images small. Excessive loading times are a death knell for any site. The larger the files are that must load, the longer a user’s load time is going to be. Most users will click away if the page doesn’t start to load within the first few seconds of opening your page.

You want your home page to be simple. People shopping around will immediately decide whether they will use your site or not, simply by how your front page looks. Don’t add unnecessary distractions that hide the essence of what you offer to your customer.

If you have never designed a web page, try using pre-made layouts. These can easily be found online for several blogging web sites like Blogspot or Tumblr. Having an interesting layout will draw attention to content and give the site a professional look. Just make sure your layout is appealing to your target audience!

Provide a navigation menu on every page of your site. While this menu does not have to link every single page of your site, as this could be an exhaustive list if you have a very large site, it should provide links to the main pages. This ensures that your visitors do not have to return to the home page and start completely over when it is not necessary.

Make text easy to ready by using colors that contrast or backgrounds that are easy to read text on. When your text is harder to read because the background or text color creates eye strain or portions of text that are unreadable, site visitors are less likely to stick around.

Always use fonts that look professional and are readable. Most corporate sites use just a few basic fonts. Avoid fancy fonts that are hard to read or unprofessional fonts such as Comic Sans. If they don’t have that font on their computer, it might be subset to their default font. This will inevitably come off looking bad.

Website counters were popular in the 90s but are rather unattractive now. It adds nothing to your website and is an outdated feature. Therefore, it is a useless feature to display.

Pages of a website are very important for even the smallest sites, so make sure that you really have an eye for detail. You need to make sure that the latest page you have added to your site has the same dimensions and features of your previous pages. The last thing you want is a hodgepodge of different styles and themes on one site.

A great web design tip is to ensure that your site is able to be found with or without the subdomain. You should be able to find your site by typing www.mysitehere.com and also http://mysitehere.com. Sites that work like this are also able to be found without a prefix at all. You can type mysitehere and find it.

Even if you invest large amounts of money in your website, it’s not a good idea to host a site yourself. Design the site, or most of the site yourself, but let someone else host it so that you can focus on its security.

Practice by designing small websites to see where your strengths and weaknesses are. Start with a few basic pages containing a small amount of information, and then make your assessment.

The most important thing in site design is that you do it correctly. Other than that, you’re free to roam wherever your imagination takes you. Use what you have learned throughout this article so that you understand how to code correctly. After that, you’re ready to put your personal touches on your own website.