Your website is your business’s primary online portal and in a time when more and more people are turning to the Internet to make purchases and learn more about a company’s products and services, it is more important than ever to ensure that your website’s design is up to scratch. The Internet is constantly changing and evolving and for this reason, it is essential for any webmaster to pay attention to the latest design trends and keep their sites in touch with the modern world. Whether you are revamping an existing website or building an entirely new one, you should always pay attention to the following essentials of web design.
Mobile Friendly Design
The traditional desktop and laptop are no longer the primary device of the majority when it comes to connecting to the Internet. These days, many people access the Internet when they’re on the move. A lot of people use smartphones such as the ubiquitous iPhone. Others use tablet computers and some even use Internet-enabled TVs or video game consoles as their primary Web browsing devices.
As far as online business goes, this offers the advantage of getting more people online than ever before but it also makes the job of a web designer rather more complicated. No longer can you simply get away with designing a website entirely with traditional desktop browsers in mind. Your website needs to look good on mobile devices as well. If people find it hard to view your website on their mobile device, they will often quickly turn elsewhere and you will lose a potential customer.
Making a website mobile friendly means making its design as scalable as possible. Your site needs to be able to fit the lower screen resolutions of portable devices while still looking great on the big screen. You should also use universally supported design methods and themes. This means avoiding relying on technologies such as Flash, which is unsupported on many mobile devices. If your website is multimedia intensive, you may want to consider having a separate version of it for mobile devices. For many sites, this presents the best solution of all. When someone accesses your site on a mobile device, the mobile Web browser should automatically display the mobile version of the site, while on desktop and laptop computers, the full version can be displayed.
Similar to making your site mobile friendly, you should also make it touchscreen friendly. Some websites, such as Facebook, even have a third version of their site designed for tablet computers all of which have high resolution touchscreens. With the launch of Windows 8, touchscreen computing, particularly with regards to tablet computers, will likely become the mainstream. Making a touchscreen friendly website means having larger buttons and more accessible navigational features. This can also make the browsing experience more pleasant for traditional computer users.
Search Engine Optimisation
As the search engines continue to evolve to work more like people when it comes to scanning and indexing sites, the importance of search engine optimisation is greater than ever. SEO is no longer a simple matter of smattering your content with relevant key words and phrases. Creating quality, original content should be your first priority. Plagiarism of any kind is absolutely out of the question. Search engines are clever enough these days to filter out and penalise duplicate content, even if you are copying your own content.
While you should always be writing with your readers in mind, it’s important to remember not to neglect the importance of optimising your site for search engines also. Be sure to use keywords and phrases in your content as well as in titles, Meta tags and page descriptions. Ensure that they fit in naturally and do not overuse them.
Also, remember that some types of content cannot be indexed by the search engines. For this reason, you should avoid using Flash and Java content except when it is necessary.
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