My OperaWeb Design - 10 Do's and Don'ts to Help You Get the Most From Your Website
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 11:11:35 PM
Working in the web design industry you can discover lot of great websites, as well as a lot of very badly designed web sites. With web design you only have a few seconds to make an impact on your visitor which will determine if they stay or go. To increase your likelihood of keeping your visitor after those first couple of seconds (and hopefully inticing them to return) I have assembled a brief list for anyone to brew a good start in the proper direction. Web Design Coventry has some terrific tips to get people started.
1. Do - put yourself inside shoes or your aim for visitor.
You should analyze your audience and write your content with your visitors in your mind. This is important for both these potential customers and search engines. Ensure you keep the content relevant to keep your visitors engaged and entice them to return. You should also make certain you include your keywords within your content, that way both the customers and search engines are assured that your site is indeed what they are seeking.
2. Don't - count on something for nothing. For a website to be of any real benefit time and effort need to be part of the process. A 10 minute occupation may do more hurt than good where company perception can be involved. If you have a poor website visitors will associate that feeling with all your company, likewise on the other hand when your website is great then visitors may be more inclined to handle your company. This doesn't just drop to appearance of your site however, make sure you include all the relevant details including contact details, help sections if appropriate, and if your business requires good customer service make sure it's in place.
3. Accomplish - have simple together with clear navigation. Once a visitor offers landed on your site you ought to keep them onboard, so make certain they can use and locate the info they need. Avoid complicated menu systems that are not guaranteed to work on your visitor's machines. Also avoid dead-end pages, ensure that your visitors can always bring back to a main page, whether this can be a homepage or a below section page - there's nothing worse than feeling lost.
4. Don't - use splash pages. As the forefront and also 'shop window' of your website you need to have a positive impact, but even though it may look pretty to have a splash page they don't help much purpose. Not only do you risk losing your visitor through potential loading times, confusion, or annoyance but you'll find that you limit the content a search engine has to index.
5. Do - prevent your site fresh and up-to-date. This works well from both a visitor viewpoint and for SEO (search engine optimisation). For visitors having new content will offer them more reason to return to your site, for search engine listings it lets them know that your website is currently active. Recommended ways of doing this include having a news section or commencing a blog.
6. Don't - forget to make sure that your pages validate. With so many browsers, screen resolutions, os's etc. you should try to verify your site will work in several different situations as probable. Validation and accessibility checks as provided by W3C should be on your list of activities to limit alienating probable visitors.
7. Do - make certain your pages load quickly. By using well written code, optimised images and table-less code to mention a few. Limiting your load instances will in turn limit the number of visitors that leave by way of waiting times.
8. Don't - forget to check your site extensively just before it goes live. Make certain there are no broken links, and if linking to external websites that target page is still relevant along with the owner has not changed a person who.
9. Do - employ stylesheets. Keep all of your formatting out of your main pages to eliminate repetition, using an external stylesheet means you'll only need to define styles once. Then whenever you change a style you'll only need to update one file and not x number of pages. Your stylesheet is also where to reference any background/decorative graphics.
10. Don't - stop looking for ways to improve your website. Once a website has been put live it doesn't mean the work stops there. Keep on your site to get the most out of it. Implement ongoing SEO to constantly improve rankings browsing engines (or not to lose high rankings), add and save your eye on analytics, be wary of visitor trends and use these to your great advantage.
Web Design Coventry can help you further and have many hints and tips of how to achieve the best web design.
Remember - If you need to your website to work for you, you need to work for your website.
1. Do - put yourself inside shoes or your aim for visitor.
You should analyze your audience and write your content with your visitors in your mind. This is important for both these potential customers and search engines. Ensure you keep the content relevant to keep your visitors engaged and entice them to return. You should also make certain you include your keywords within your content, that way both the customers and search engines are assured that your site is indeed what they are seeking.
2. Don't - count on something for nothing. For a website to be of any real benefit time and effort need to be part of the process. A 10 minute occupation may do more hurt than good where company perception can be involved. If you have a poor website visitors will associate that feeling with all your company, likewise on the other hand when your website is great then visitors may be more inclined to handle your company. This doesn't just drop to appearance of your site however, make sure you include all the relevant details including contact details, help sections if appropriate, and if your business requires good customer service make sure it's in place.
3. Accomplish - have simple together with clear navigation. Once a visitor offers landed on your site you ought to keep them onboard, so make certain they can use and locate the info they need. Avoid complicated menu systems that are not guaranteed to work on your visitor's machines. Also avoid dead-end pages, ensure that your visitors can always bring back to a main page, whether this can be a homepage or a below section page - there's nothing worse than feeling lost.
4. Don't - use splash pages. As the forefront and also 'shop window' of your website you need to have a positive impact, but even though it may look pretty to have a splash page they don't help much purpose. Not only do you risk losing your visitor through potential loading times, confusion, or annoyance but you'll find that you limit the content a search engine has to index.
5. Do - prevent your site fresh and up-to-date. This works well from both a visitor viewpoint and for SEO (search engine optimisation). For visitors having new content will offer them more reason to return to your site, for search engine listings it lets them know that your website is currently active. Recommended ways of doing this include having a news section or commencing a blog.
6. Don't - forget to make sure that your pages validate. With so many browsers, screen resolutions, os's etc. you should try to verify your site will work in several different situations as probable. Validation and accessibility checks as provided by W3C should be on your list of activities to limit alienating probable visitors.
7. Do - make certain your pages load quickly. By using well written code, optimised images and table-less code to mention a few. Limiting your load instances will in turn limit the number of visitors that leave by way of waiting times.
8. Don't - forget to check your site extensively just before it goes live. Make certain there are no broken links, and if linking to external websites that target page is still relevant along with the owner has not changed a person who.
9. Do - employ stylesheets. Keep all of your formatting out of your main pages to eliminate repetition, using an external stylesheet means you'll only need to define styles once. Then whenever you change a style you'll only need to update one file and not x number of pages. Your stylesheet is also where to reference any background/decorative graphics.
10. Don't - stop looking for ways to improve your website. Once a website has been put live it doesn't mean the work stops there. Keep on your site to get the most out of it. Implement ongoing SEO to constantly improve rankings browsing engines (or not to lose high rankings), add and save your eye on analytics, be wary of visitor trends and use these to your great advantage.
Web Design Coventry can help you further and have many hints and tips of how to achieve the best web design.
Remember - If you need to your website to work for you, you need to work for your website.
