Make an awesome website. And when I say “web” site, it has nothing to do with Spiderman. The Silver Surfer can’t even offer a hand. Keep the viewers coming back for more and let them recommended it to others. Remember that audience comes from around the world and have different internet speeds. Knowing a thing or two will help you get by and super humans are out of the question.
AUDIENCE
Before starting to write contents and upload images, figure out your target market first, be specific and not greedy. Give free information that is useful for them. Consistency is a must so loyal followers increases as time goes by.
SPEED
Search engines give higher ranking for pages that load fast. A blankpage is very fast but content is very important on a webpage, hence, a blank page is a very bad idea. Optimize images on a web editor not on HTML or CSS. Don’t make surfers wait for a lifetime to see them; they’ll just click the close button.
NAVIGATION
Plan the links well. It shouldn’t take a rocket science to go from one page to another. Make the buttons as few as possible to avoid confusion on the audience part. Names or images of the links should be easily understood.
CONTENT
Make the articles short but not too short. Writing a novel is different from writing for a web page. Most people don’t spend a lot of time reading in cyberspace, they’d rather go to a library or grab a book from a bookstore. Content should be short yet provides useful tips. It should also be global. Readers come from different parts of the world so make sure that they understand the message that you’re implying. Spelling and Grammar should be perfect; surfers are very critical and judge the quality of the website from this.
FONT
There are tons of fonts available but the most common ones are Serif and Sans Serif. It is tempting to use unique and striking ones but this can be distracting to the readers. Font sizes should be considered as well. It should be visually pleasing to the eyes. Special fonts should be used as branding or for the logo. This shouldn’t be used on the content page; it wouldn’t be special anymore.
WIDGETS
Most people spend time on social media than surfing the web. Install social media widgets such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Insragram, Flickr and a lot more. Through these, they can follow you and you can gain free advertisement when they post your link. Social media now is a new form of marketing that works well.
LINKS
Broken links are no-no’s. If there are any, it means that the website has been abandoned. Link rot is inevitable and there is no notice that links has been changed or deleted by other web developers. It gives the reader a 404 or “page not found” message, HTML validator and link checker can check these errors.
ANNOTATIONS
Help readers where they can go next and what they can find there. It’s old school putting a “click here” text before the link. Web surfers have grown and figured out that underlined and different colored texts can be clicked and lead to another page.
COLORS
There are four types of color schemes to choose from: monochromatic, analogous, complementary and triadic. Monochromatic uses colors of the same hue, the black and white of the color differs. Analogous colors can be seen close to each other in the color wheel while complementary is in opposite ends. Lastly, triadic are colors that are equally distanced in the wheel.
CONTACT INFO
Contact information can help the website’s credibility. However, some people are uncomfortable putting up personal info on the internet because of privacy and theft-related issues. If so, reply to the client’s needs and inquiries to gain their trust. This should be done as quickly as possible.
Bio:
This post is written by Marlin Codie who works for leading-seo.com that caters SEO packages for growing online businesses.