Mistakes to avoid
Let us begin with having a look at a couple of the most frequently made mistakes. In avoiding these you are on the right path to a beautiful and functional website.
Poor navigation
When designing a website there are lots of things to consider and one of the most crucial is the navigation of the site. For example, think about what the most natural and user-friendly way of setting up the menus is? Should they be vertical or horizontal, or maybe even both? Browse the web to check what the current trends are in order to stay up-to-date. Whatever you do, make sure you do not have way too many links and images as it will only leave your visitors confused as where to click.
Overusing Bandwidth
Most of you will probably get, or do already have, affordable quality hosting supporting your website but you will still have to be careful with overusing the bandwidth. This is especially true if your site is crammed with images or other heavy graphics. Also, remember that your visitors might not have an equally strong Internet connection as you do, resulting in a very slow experience for them. Visitors who feel that things are taking too long to load will most likely leave your website.
Making it too complex
We have already mentioned that your website should be user-friendly and publishing complex graphics is quite the opposite. We understand that it can be tempting to use for example Flash on a website but try to resist this urge. Flash will not get indexed by the search spiders and some visitors will have to download a plugin to see your Flash file, something that they do not want and should not have to do. If you can not resist using Flash – be sure to publish readable content that complements the Flash file.
Two simple tips
So you now know three things that you should try and avoid. Let us now instead take a look at two simple tips that can be good to keep in mind as well as trying to implement in the design plan when setting up your website.
Create pages
It is perhaps a no-brainer but the more content, read pages, you have on your website the more pages will get indexed by the search engines, hence boosting the authority of your site. However, remember what we said above – the site has to be easy navigated and too many pages can become confusing for your visitors. Yes, try to create a lot of content but do not add content and pages simply because the sake of creating content. It has to serve a purpose.
Link internally
One way of increasing the user-friendliness of your website is in creating and adding natural links internally. If done properly your visitors will be able to click, and surf, your site and find exactly what they were looking for and hopefully also much more. Linking internally is also good when working with SEO as search spiders like to look for good links. Do not use phrases such as “click here” when linking internally – try to use relevant keywords and phrases instead.
Optimize, optimize and optimize
The next important step to take is optimizing your website. You want people to find you, do you not?
