Aesthetically pleasing design.
1. Simpler design - Yes, you hear right! Simplicity is the key to a successful website. Many businesses are taking web design back to the basics with minimalistic design, featuring simpler layouts, fewer pages with emphasis on excessive use of white space. Wave goodbye to bulky flash, content-heavy websites! Modern age has arrived.
2. Clear objective - Simpler design, clearer the objective. Just as Mies van der Rohe use to say “less-is-more”, same principle follows to web design. What’s your real purpose of your website? What are you trying to convey to your users? Focus on that. Don't let it get lost in the clutter on your site.
3. Stay consistent - Use the same colour palette throughout the site, keep the vertical & horizontal spacing between elements consistent and you’ll be all right.
4. Familiar design - Don’t go all crazy adding unnecessary features to your site just because other people do it, doesn’t mean you should too! Experimenting with unfamiliar website layouts can be dangerous. Design trends come and go, don’t get fooled! Stay with slightly more traditional layouts, as your users are more familiar with those.
5. Quality images - Wow your users with beautiful imagery, worth a thousand words. First impression matters, spicy up your content with some quality images. Tell a story that would be remembered!
6. Good domain name - Noticed the name in the top of your browser? The name in the address bar… That’s the URL of a website you’re currently browsing. A URL is an address on the internet. Extremely important! Make sure your URL is short and easy to remember.
Simple easy-to-use website navigation.
7. Clear navigation - The navigation on your website is like a road sign. You can’t reach your destination without knowing where you’re going. You need to allow your customers to access pages easily and effectively.
8. Structured/Categorised navigation - Plan your website structure just like an architect would before building the new Empire State Building. You need to figure out which elements are the most and least important and structure them in a logical way so that they’re easily accessible.
9. Familiar navigation - The main website navigation should appear in a bar across the top of your website if on desktop and as a little “hamburger menu icon” on mobile.
10. Accessible navigation (mobile/tablet/laptop/desktop) - More users around the world are accessing the internet from their smartphone than they do from desktop computers. Therefore it’s crucial that the main navigation is simple and easy to use even on small mobile devices.
Responsive design.
11. Mobile friendly website - Back in April 2015, Google has released a significant mobile-friendly ranking algorithm also known as the “mobilegeddon”, designed to give a ranking boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google search results. Everyone has been hustling since to upgrade their website so they are easily viewable regardless of what device the website is being viewed on. Having a responsive website is a must; don’t listen to anyone that disagrees!
User focused & SEO optimised content.
12. Meta title - Appears in your browser tab, also most importantly as a title in your search results. The title tag is used to tell search engines and a visitor of your website what’s the website is about in the most concise way possible.
13. Meta description - Short paragraph used primarily for the search engines to describe what the page content is about.
14. Clean and descriptive URLs - Style your website URLs for people. Make sure that the URLs don’t contain any query string and are easily readable. Search engines prefer clean and descriptive URLs just so it happens that website users do too.
15. Blog filled with juicy content - This year, quality content is the primary ranking factor on Google. Websites that provide users with quality information will have greater success than those that target the search engine alone. Make sure your content is written for your visitors not the search engine!
16. Web hosting - Good reliable, fast and secure hosting is extremely important. Avoid any free hosting solutions as they’re super slow and unsecure! The page load speed matters too in terms of search engine ranking and user satisfaction. Therefore please, make sure you use an adequate hosting solution for your cutting-edge website!
Recommended blog articles.
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- Enterprise ecommerce content management system (CMS:42)
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