This commentary is intended to be slightly sarcastic because I have seen disasters and in all good conscience need to recommend hiring a professional, even for a basic website. If you are one of the many who choose to make your own website then please let me give you some advice.  This may seem very simple or logical but the following comments are based on mistakes I have seen made repeatedly.

I hope these tips will help you improve the end product.

  1. Websites should be developed with a template that includes a header and well planned menu system that is applied consistently on each page.  The header should contain your branding information; usually a professional looking logo, company name, and other important information such as a phone number. The template should be developed as a CSS linked file so that edits are applied across the entire site.
  2. Please do not make it difficult for me to navigate to important pages.  If your business logically needs a location map then make it really easy for me to find… so I can find you.  The same applies for all content but I have particular issues with sites that make it difficult to find maps, phone numbers, and contact information.
  3. Have a title for every page and don’t leave it as an Untitled Page or just the business name. Along the same line of reason, make sure to craft a meta-description that means something to accurately describe the page. Poor use of meta-tags makes a page look unprofessional and does not give the necessary information for search engine listings. Also a poor job will render your page useless for indexing and SEO.
  4. The design of each page should have some harmony.  If pages look different then we will start to wonder what year the site was developed and are you still in business.  Remember your website reflects your business, in a very sensory way, to many different types of people.
  5. If your website is an e-commerce site, don’t put too many products on the same page it will take a long time to load and visitors do NOT like to scroll down long pages.  Please group your products by categories and subcategories so that we can narrow down our selections and navigate to specific areas.
  6. Avoid using large blocks of color, especially darker colors.  This ‘patchwork’ look is very dated and your new site may come across looking like it is several years old.
  7. Cleanly and clearly present your content and once you have a page style developed, apply consistently across other pages. If some of the content is redundant it should be combined in the same page. Navigating several pages to get minimal information is a frustrating user experience.

Credit: webmedia-solutions

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