Aug 03, 2017 09:25 PM
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The web is a very competitive place. Developing a website and getting people to your website is only half the job done. Once they are there, you need to keep them engaged. You also have to give them reasons to return to your site in the future and to share the site with others in their social circles. Website management and promotion is an ongoing endeavor.
Ultimately, there are no magic pills to create a great web page that everyone will visit again and again, but there are things you can do that will certainly help.
First - Your pages must load faster: If you do nothing else to improve your web pages, you should make them load as fast as possible. Internet connections may have gotten faster and faster over the years, but no matter how fast the average connection is for your readers, there is always more data, more content, more images, more everything for them to download. You also need to consider mobile visitors who may not have such wonderful connection speeds at the moment that they are visiting your page!
Second - Your pages should only be as long as they need to be: Writing for the web is different from writing for print. People skim online, especially when they first get to a page. You want the content of your page to give them what they want quickly, but provide enough detail for those who want expansion on the basics. You basically need to walk that fine line between having too much content and having too little detail.
Third - Your pages need great navigation: If your readers can't get around on the page or on the website, they won't stick around. You should have navigation on your web pages that are clear, direct, and easy to use. The bottom line is that if your users are confused by a site's navigation, the only place they will navigate to is a different site altogether.
Fourth - You should use small images: Beginning web designers often create web pages that would be wonderful if their images weren't so large. It's not okay to take a photograph and upload it to your website without resizing it and optimizing it to be as small as possible. CSS sprites are also a very important way to speed up your site images. If you have several images that are used across several pages on your site, you can use sprites to cache the image so that they do not need to be re-downloaded on the second page your customer visit. Plus, with the images stored as one larger image, that reduces the HTTP requests for your page, which is a huge speed enhancement.
Fifth - Using appropriate colors: Color is critical on web pages, but colors have meanings to people, and using the wrong color can have the wrong connotation if you're not careful. Web pages are, by their very nature, international. Even if you intend your page for a specific country or locality, it will be seen by other people. And so you should be aware of what the choices you use on your web page are saying to people around the world. When you create your web color scheme, keep in mind color symbolism.
Sixth - Think Local and write Global: As mentioned above, websites are global and great websites recognize that. You should make sure that things like currencies, measurements, dates, and times are clear so that all your readers will know exactly what you mean.
Seventh - Spell everything correctly: Very few people are tolerant of spelling errors, especially on a professional website. You can write a completely error free topic for years, and then have one simple "teh" instead of "the" and you will start getting emails from some customers, and many will give up in disgust without contacting you at all. It may seem unfair, but people judge websites by the quality of the writing, and spelling and grammar error are an obvious indicator of quality for many people.
Eighth - You links must work: Broken links are another sign for many readers that a site is not well maintained. Unfortunately, link rot is something that happens without even noticing. So it is important to use an HTML validator and link checker to help you check older pages for broken links. Even if links were coded properly at the launch of the site, those links may need to be updated now to ensure they are still valid.
Ninth - Include contact information in your pages: Some people, even in this day and age, be uncomfortable with contact information on their website. They need to get over this. If someone cannot easily contact you on a site, they won't! That likely defeats the purpose of any site hoping to be used for business reasons.
So that's all you need to know when you develop a website. Thank you guys!
