Ten top tips on how to improve your website
Building an great website that everyone will visit again and again is tough, but there are things you can do to help. Some key things to focus on are making the site as easy to use and user-friendly as possible. It should also load quickly and provide what the readers want right up front.
We have put together ten top tips on how to improve your website and make it a place where readers will engage and spread the message.
Tip 1 Your webpages must load fast
If you do nothing else to improve your web pages, you should make them load as fast as possible. The thing about speed is that people only notice it when it’s absent. So creating fast web pages often feels unappreciated, but if you follow the tips in this article, your pages won’t be slow, and so your readers will stay longer, which ultimately leads to higher conversions.
Tip 2 Your pages should only be as long as they need to be
Writing for the web is different from writing for print. People skim online, especially when they first get to a page. You want the contents of your page to give them what they want quickly, but provide enough detail for those who want expansion on the basics.
Tip 3 Your pages need great navigation
If your readers can’t get around on the page or on the website they won’t stick around. You should have navigation on your web pages that is clear, direct, and easy to use. And if the page is long you should use anchor links to help readers find their way on the page.
Tip 4 You should use sprites and small images
Small images are about the download speed more than the physical size. Beginning web designers often create web pages that would be wonderful if their images weren’t so large. It’s not okay to take a photograph and upload it to your website without re-sizing it and optimizing it to be as small as possible (but no smaller).
CSS sprites are also a very important way to speed up your site images. If you have several images that are used across several pages on your site (such as your navigation icons or your logo), you can use sprites to cache the images so that they do not need to be re-downloaded on the second page your customers visit. Plus, with the images stored as one larger image, that reduces the HTTP requests for your page, which is a huge speed enhancement.
Tip 5 You should use appropriate colors
Color is critical on web pages, but colors have meanings to people, and using the wrong color can have the wrong connotation if you’re not careful. Web pages are, by their very nature, international. Even if you intend your page for a specific country or locality it will be seen by other people. And so you should be aware of what the color choices you use on your web page are saying to people around the world.
Tip 6 You should think local and write global
As mentioned above, websites are global and great websites recognize that. You should make sure that things like currencies, measurements, dates, and times are clear so that all your readers will know exactly what you mean.
Tip 7 You should spell everything correctly
Many people are not tolerant of spelling errors. You can write a completely error free topic for years, and then have one simple “teh” instead of “the” and you will get irate emails from some customers, and many will give up in disgust without contacting you at all. It may seem unfair, but people judge websites by the quality of the writing, and spelling and grammar errors are an obvious indicator of quality for many people.
Tip 8 Your links must work
Broken links are another sign for many readers (and search engines, too) that a site is not maintained. And why would anyone want to stick around on a site that even the owner doesn’t care for? Unfortunately,link rot is something that happens without even noticing. So it’s important to use a link checker to help you check older pages for broken links.
Tip 9 You should avoid saying just “click here”
Annotating your links means that you should write links that explain where the reader is going to go, and what they are going to find there. By creating links that are clear and explanatory, you help your readers and make them want to click.
While I don’t recommend writing “click here” for a link, you may discover that adding that type of directive right before a link can help some readers understand that the underlined, different colored text is intended to be clicked on. You shouldn’t use “click here” as the text of any link, but that direction can be useful for sites that cater to an older audience who might not understand how links work.
Tip 10 Your pages should have contact information
Many web designers are uncomfortable with contact information on their website. It feels like a violation of privacy. You may be thinking “but what if they actually contact me?” It’s true, it could happen. But most contacts you receive are going to be related to your site or useful in some fashion. I’m not advocating you place information on your site that you aren’t comfortable with, but providing some way to contact you is important for a website.
Contact information reminds people that the site is maintained by another person. This means they may be more charitable and more willing to respect you when they do make contact. Plus by putting contact information on your site, you are helping your readers trust you. If there is an email address or phone number, they know they can contact you if there’s a problem.
And finally, if you do have contact information on your site, follow up on it. Answering your contacts is the best way to create a long-lasting customer, especially as so many email messages go unanswered.