Website Design – Reminder of the Basic Essentials!
Ability to access websites quickly and easily from laptop and netbook to smartphone and ebook via any number of new apps or social networks has become critical! Keeping up is important to business survival online but a reminder of website basics is essential to visitor experience and conversion.
Maintaining visibility, and attracting and retaining visitor traffic to deliver desired results is a key function of integrated website design and online marketing. The development of social media networks is driving the interactive communication channels that a website must now offer to create customer communities and precisely targeted, bespoke service supply.
Issues of wide reaching website accessibility can be critical in the current economic climate, where the competition for every enquiry, word search and site visitor in a given niche market, is keenly fought for.
Even though a reminder of the basic essentials may seem a retrograde step, in fact, it can prove valuable for tiny but important improvements that make all the difference :
Fast Loading – In today’s instant, on the move – on demand – online world, extra seconds count against you! If your site doesn’t load within a few seconds, forget it! No matter how wizzy and cool the design – the impatient searcher has already clicked away to your competitor!
Clear Navigation – A visitor needs to know, be shown and led through your site. If when they first arrive, they are put off for any reason, they’re gone! You need to have clear navigation. Make sure all your important links are in a prominent places. Make use of menus on the right and the left. Try to link to as many pages of your site. Let your information be accessible from all parts of the site. Try to also use the footer for your important links.
Browser Compatibility And Resolutions – Today, cross browser compatibility is complicated by the requirement of display for the different range of screen resolutions and technologies available, whether from a netbook, iPhone, or iPad! Firefox is rapidly replacing Internet Explorer as the browser of choice.
Readable Fonts – Correct size, type and colour are vital! Avoid Comic Sans or similar, and stick with dark type on a light background, or the reverse. Remember – if the font you use is not available in a visitors computer, the website will use the default font of your computer, which may not give optimal results. So try to keep to commonly used and professional web fonts, such as Arial and Verdana.
Minimal Imagery – Simple, neat designs are the most effective for the web. Don’t clutter your page with big, bulky images that take too long to load. Straightforward layouts and attractive eye – catching images and icons will draw a visitor’s attention to a particular section of your site. Visuals are key but remember – visitors are usually more interested in seeing and reading relevant written content than in design.
White Space - Try not to clutter up your page with too many images, backgrounds and colourful fonts. Keep it simple by minimizing the use of graphics and using a lot of white space. White space is easy on the eye, especially to help encourage a visitor to stay and read further.
Link Checking – Absolute necessity before uploading to your web server. Link building is essential to build traffic and nothing displeases a visitor more than feeling they have wasted time by clicking on broken links – or worse, sent to an incorrect linking page!
The above items can sometimes be overlooked , but by just attending to some of these most basic of requirements that a website must have to be viable, a significant increase in traffic and consequently, Google rankings, can actually be made!