Adobe Dreamweaver is the starting point of study for almost all web designers. It is probably the most used web-development environment in the world. In order to take advantage of Dreamweaver professionally as a web designer, a thorough comprehension of the whole Adobe Web Creative Suite (including Flash and Action Script) is without doubt a bonus. Having such skills means, you can go onto become either an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) or Adobe Certified Professional (ACP).

Understanding how to build a website is only the beginning. Driving traffic, content maintenance and programming database-driven sites should come next. Consider courses with bolt-ons to include these skills perhaps HTML, PHP and MySQL, along with E-Commerce and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

A typical blunder that potential students often succumb to is to concentrate on the course itself, rather than starting with where they want to get to. Universities have thousands of unaware students that chose an 'interesting' course - rather than what would get them the job they want. It's a testament to the marketing skills of the big companies, but thousands of new students start out on programs that sound amazing in the syllabus guide, but which provides the end-result of a job that is of no interest at all. Try talking to typical university leavers and you'll see where we're coming from.

It's well worth a long chat to see what expectations industry may have of you. Which precise certifications you'll need and in what way you can gain some industry experience. It's definitely worth spending time assessing how far you think you'll want to build your skill-set as it will control your selection of accreditations. Sense dictates that you take guidance from an experienced industry professional before making your final decision on a study course, so you're sure from the outset that the specific package will give the appropriate skill-set.

It only makes sense to consider study programmes that'll move onto commercially approved qualifications. There's a plethora of small companies suggesting unknown 'in-house' certificates which will prove unusable in today's commercial market. You'll find that only recognised qualifications from companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA and Adobe will be useful to a future employer.

People attracted to this sort of work are usually quite practically-minded, and don't really enjoy classrooms, and struggling through thick study-volumes. If this is putting you off studying, use multimedia, interactive learning, where learning is video-based. Research has repeatedly confirmed that getting into our studies physically, is proven to produce longer-lasting and deeper memory retention.

Study programs now come in disc format, where your computer becomes the centre of your learning. Utilising the latest video technology, you will be able to see the instructor presenting exactly how to do something, followed by your chance to practice - with interactive lab sessions. Always insist on a demonstration of the study materials from any training college. You should ask for instructor videos, demonstrations, slide-shows and fully interactive skills-lab's.

Often, companies will only use purely on-line training; while you can get away with this much of the time, consider how you'll deal with it when you don't have access to the internet or you only get very a very slow connection sometimes. It is usually safer to have CD and DVD ROM materials which will not have these problems.

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