A great business or personal website is an important marketing tool in the 21st century. Most people research products and services online before purchasing them in physical stores. People search for local businesses near them online. For instance, if you want coffee, and you are in a new town, high chances are you will search for “great coffee shops near me.” Therefore, an online presence is vital for any business and in this post we'll give you tips for building a better website.
There are many tools, some are drag and drop, that nearly anyone can use to design and build a website. There are also many websites and YouTube channels, such as this createwpsite YouTube channel, that are out there to help you create the best website. In addition to those tools, here are some tips to help you build better and faster websites.
A good website is one with clearly defined processes, output, and error control mechanisms. Most visitors to your site want to see it and are not tech-savvy. They do not want to take a lot of time trying to understand how to perform simple tasks or the output of a given task.
A simple website does not overwhelm the visual acuity of people visiting your site. Have at least 4-7 colors for your website. Ensure your website relays critical information, but also do not clutter so many things on one page. Cluttering hurts the eyes as users try to understand all the contents and navigate to what they want.
For the websites developed with Content Management Systems such as WordPress, you should choose strong themes that allow for future expandability and flexible visual design. AMPWPTools is a package that includes such themes, as well as other fast WordPress plugins. The choice of a theme determines the loading speed of a website. The right plugins will help you add essential functionalities to the user interface and back-end. Some of the plugins include those for social media and email pop-ups. As much as plugins are good for your website, overloading your WordPress site with plugins can lead to sluggish transition and load times, site crashes, and long downtimes.
Most people walk around with their smartphones, and they want everything to be accessible through their phones. Therefore, the success of a website is heavily dependent on its responsiveness. Web developers cannot include a resolution for every device in their program codes. This is where responsive web design comes in.
Responsive web design is a design criterion where the design and development of a website respond to the screen size, orientation, and platform of the user’s device. This is achieved through a mix of flexible layouts, images, grids, and CSS media queries. As the user changes from a laptop to a phone, to an iPad, the website switches to accommodate the screen sizes and resolution without affecting display quality on each device.
People are so impatient with slow websites. The load time of your business determines whether people buy from you or learn about your company. Google web crawlers can return up to one billion search results. Therefore, if your site is taking forever to load, people will go on to the next search results. Audit the performance of your site by regularly checking the speed, load time, formatting, and quality of images and texts. The load time of a site is determined by the choice of themes, plugins, size of the database, and location of the database.
It is important to consider people with disabilities such as color blindness when looking at tips for building a better website. Plan the design and development to ensure that such people can also interact with your website and learn about your company and services.
Your development should also consider people with slow internet connections. Progressive web apps use service workers, which allow people to interact with the website even when they are offline, and submit their data when they connect to the internet.
User experience refers to a person’s emotions and attitude when using a website. It goes hand in hand with usability, which refers to the efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction, and ability of a user to interact with a site.
Your site should have an impressive look and feel. Organize your website such that people can skim through to get specific information. A well-designed and structured website is appealing, and clients should use little effort to navigate through and perform simple tasks.
With the advent of Content Management Systems such as WordPress, anyone can create a website. But building a truly customized website requires coding expertise, which can be honed with online coding exercises. Regardless of the design and development techniques applied, it is important to keep the design simple but elegant. Also, avoid cluttering your website with too much information and colors. Finally, speed is very important when it comes to website development. These tips for building a better website can hopefully give you guidance on the key components and your next steps forward.
