Some great tips and tricks for your website.
[slideshare id=32578941&doc=userfriendlywebsite-140321082605-phpapp01]
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As more and more people use their mobile phones to access the Internet, CREATING A MOBILE OPTIMIZED WEBSITE has become a necessity. If your website cannot currently be accessed on mobile, you can create a MOBILE VERSION of your website for FREE with the help of web-based mobile website builders. ! Check how your existing website appears on mobile - 2. w w w. t e l e r i k . c o m
Here’s an example of well-created mobile version
Applied simple web design techniques to make sure your website can be accessed easily these on-screen readers. A user – friendly website should also be accessible to everyone including BLIND, DISABLED or THE ELDERLY. These users typically use screen-readers to access the Internet. ! Make your website available to a larger audience - 3. How information is ORGANIZED and PRESENTED on your website is vital for good usability. Plan your website sections and categories carefully and present the information in a way that it is EASY FOR USERS to find. ! Always think from the perspective of your users
- 4. The average Internet user skims through the content on a web page instead of reading each and every word from top to down. Users tend to scan through KEY PARTS OF THE PAGE quickly to determine if it is relevant to their needs. Good SOCIAL MEDIA integration is key to the success of any website today. Take steps to make sure your content is easily shareable. ! Make your website easy for readers to scan what is important for them
- 5. Free tool that you can use to find broken links is LINK CHECKER. No one likes to read a page filled with spelling errors. Go through your site regularly and check for broken links in your content and in any graphics that link out to other sites. ! Having broken links on your website makes you look unprofessional
- 6. Free tool that you can download: h t t p : / / w u m m e l . g i t h u b . i o / l i n k c h e c k e r /
- 7. Provide links to your HOMEPAGE and MAIN SECTIONS such as order form, contact page, products, and articles on every page. Try to limit the number of menu items as far as possible. You can also use cookie crumbs, linked headings you often see at the top of websites showing where a visitor is on the website. Highlight the navigation to indicate where the visitor is. ! Make sure that visitors always know where they are and where they need to go
- 8. Clearly label each section and if possible, use TEXT LINKS because they are SMALL IN SIZE and are also crawl able by search engines. If you want to provide site visitors with animated content, the best way is to use HTML5 and CSS3. ! Avoid using flash navigation or fancy JavaScript drop downs
- 9. Use KEYWORDS in titles, meta tags, headings, file names and in the content of your site. SEO is one of the most commonly neglected aspects of a website, but a website is useless if no one can find it. Do some research to see how often those keywords are searched for through a tool like Google’s Keyword Tool. ! Think about the keywords that users may search for to find a product or service you offer
- 10. A nice tool like Google Analytics will keep track of the number of people who come to your website, what pages they viewed, where they came from, what keywords they used in search engines, how many left after the first page and more … ! SEO can mean the difference between getting 500 visitors a month and 500+ visitors a day
- 11. Free tool that you can use:Â h t t p : / / s e o s i t e c h e c k u p . c o m /Â
- 12. To get the most out of your site, it is important to ensure the FORMS are easy to use and accessible to everyone. Forms are very IMPORTANT ELEMENT on business websites. They allow users to interact with the site. ! Avoid building complex forms with huge number of fields
- 13. Good ERROR HANDLING and DESCRIPTION on- screen messages are very important for good usability. ! Displaying the right error message improves the user experience and overall usability
- 14. Nothing is more annoying for website visitors than a website that takes long to load. In fact, SLOW SPEED is one of the main reasons why visitors LEAVE A WEBSITE. ! Making sure your website loads within 4 to 6 seconds is important for good usability
- 15. You can use free tool such as PINGDOM to test the speed of your website and to get suggestion on what you can do to improve your speed.
- 16. Reducing the size of your graphics is one way of getting pages to load faster You can use free tool such as PINGDOM to test the speed of your website and to get suggestion on what you can do to improve your speed.
- 17. It is important to ensure your website APPEARS and BEHAVES consistently across all major browsers such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera. Browser compatibility can be easily overlooked … ! Simple things like this set a professionally designed website apart from the rest
- 18. More information and markup validation tools can be found on W3C’s website A website that adheres to the relevant web design best practices and standards is often more ROBUST and DEPENDABLE.
h t t p : / / v a l i d a t o r . w 3 . o r g / - 19. Good contrast between background and text e.g. black text on a white background makes your content LEGIBLE and EASY TO READ. Lack of contrast, on the other hand, makes it very difficult for visitors to read your content.
- 20. Use correct labels for all fields. Try to keep the number of fields to a minimum. Offer tooltips and suggestions. Display on-screen message on completion. Use correct validation.
Goodluck !
