Top 10 Web Design Tips

Need a website or want to upgrade your existing website?

What are the Top 10 Questions you should be asking your web designer?

1) Is it Search Engine Friendly?

Many sites are constructed using technology which makes it diificult to be spidered by search engines. Ask you designer for a webaudit of your site before it goes live. An example web audit report can be found below.

WebScan_Audit_report_Example.pdf  266 kb

2) Does it have a full Content Management System (CMS)?

Make sure you have the ability to update site content yourself. We don't build sites with Wordpress. Many web designers will use Blog content management platforms such as WordPress to build cheap website we do not. Blogs are a great tool for distributing frequently updated cotent such as news items. Indeed a blog should form part of a good web presence rather being a replacement for one. Blogs are treated by Google and other search engines as news distribution platforms with the result they are expected to be updated more frequently than websites. On the plus side they are indexed by the search engine spiders more frequently than websites. On the negative side they will require more frequent content updates by you (the site owner) than a standard website. We have found most Small and Medium size business owners simply do not have the time or resources to keep content upto date as they focus instead on their core product support/service offerings.

There are many other CMS systems to be considered - Joomla being one of the best we have found to date. It is easy to use and supports integration of Blog functionality as a part of your overall web solution.

3) Does your site have Neat and Easy Navigation & Google Analyitcs?

Navigation of links on your site plays a big role in determining the stickiness of your site (how long your visitor stays and explores your site). Ask yourself this, What do visitors do as soon as they open your site? They would probably read the content of the present page and then look around to find any other page that interests them. Google Analytics is a free tool which allows you monitor how site vistors arrive at your site and and what they do once they arrive there.

4) Does your site have a clean layout design?:

A clean layout that uses a lot of white space enhances a site's looks. Avoid using uncommon fonts which may not be available on all computers.

5) Does it load up quickly?

Make sure it does load up quickly because site visitors are impatient and won't stick around to see your great graphics.

6) Does it employ complex Graphics, Flash or scripts?

They hugely increase your file size and should be avoided at all costs.

7) Does it have optimized HTML & script code?

Make sure that your site doesn't have any unwanted tags or unused scripts.

8) Does it operate for all Screen Resolutions?

A site that is easy-to-use always encourages visitors to stay and read your content.

9) Is your Website scaleable?

Make sure your code and design is scaleable. As technology advances and configuration of computers & their monitors keep increasing and varying it is impossible to test your site in all screen sizes and platforms.

10) Does it support all Web Browsers?

Make sure you check your site works for Internet Explorer 5+, Mozilla Firefox 1.0, Opera 7.0 and Netscape Navigator 6+ as they constitute 95% of the worlds browsers.