With a down-turned economy and few jobs available, many people are going online to begin a home business. Web design is critical to finding success online though. Keep reading to learn how to make a successful website.

If you’re creating a website, make sure you look at it in different browsers. What you see on your screen may be different from what others see. You need to know how your site looks to all visitors that are arriving at your page. Also check your site with different operating systems.

Watch your use of color combinations when building your site. You should be striving to achieve easily readable and visible text set against your chosen background shade. The text opted for should be dark in color, with a lighter color used for your backgrounds. Let your friends see your color scheme to get their input.

Keep your website fresh and free of dated content. For example, if your web page is promoting some event that occurred a year ago, you’ve probably lost a lot of your readers. Allowing information that is outdated to remain on your website is a sign to users that you have not taken the time to update your site and it implies that you don’t care about their time. Put removing outdated content on your to-do list, to do every 2-4 weeks.

Learn about shortcuts, and use them often. There are many shortcuts that can be used when designing your website. Learn as much as you can about shortcuts. It is even possible to find HTML codes that permit you to implement quick changes on pages without the need to upload them again.

Research your keywords. While your primary focus should be providing website visitors with useful information, you also need to gain a customer base. Knowing the right keywords will help you bring people that have an interest in the things you have on your site.

Don’t use too many fonts when making your website. You definitely want to consider what the fonts are actually going to look like on different screens and whether they are too small to read easily. Verdana is a good font that is popular on the Internet.

You need to have content that moves and excites your visitors. The appearance of the site design is crucial, but content keeps visitors coming back. When you have relevant content on your site that appeals to your viewers and takes into account what they are looking for, there is a good chance they will want to visit again in the near future.

Optimize your site for older versions of Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8). Many people still use old IE versions. IE doesn’t render some modern design elements very well, so it may require a workaround. Familiarize yourself with the concept of the notorious “box model bug” which caused trouble for Internet Explorer for years.

Web design doesn’t need to be complicated. While some methods can be hard, using these tips can make things simpler to accomplish. You can create a fantastic site using these suggestions, regardless of your reasons for pursuing web design.