Here is a list of 8 tips on building a better website in 2016:
Keep your design fresh and simple
The homepage is the most important part of your website – it’s the first thing a potential customer sees. Make sure your homepage provides visitors with all the information they requiere in order to make a purchase – what you have to offer, who you are and your contact information. Think about the fact that you have less than 10 seconds to make a good impression and what you want to communicate to potential customers. It’s a good idea to keep your homepage clean and easy to read – your overall text should not be longer than 120 words.
Make sure your website is fast
Nobody likes to wait for pages to load. If your page fails to load quickly enough you’ll most likely miss out on a potential customer. There’s a direct correlation between website speed and the conversion rate of a website. Apart from that, Google also takes loading time into account – a slower loading website will rank lower than a fast loading website. So, if you want to have a great website you’ll need to consider your speed. Try getting a better host for your website, minimize HTTP requests, use a CDN, minimize CSS, JavaScript and HTML and you’re good to go.
Image optimization is important
One of the most important parts of a website is images – these tend to be very large and take a considerable amount of bandwidth, effectively slowing your website. By using a few tools you can make your website faster and also save bandwidth. Image optimization is based on choosing the right size and format, using images only when it is necessary and finding a balance between weight and quality.
Build a mobile friendly website
Mobile browsing recently surpassed desktop browsing so it’s extremely important to have a fully functional mobile friendly website. Luckily enough, it’s not hard to modify your website and make it responsive. You can simply use CSS media queries to get the job done.
Using webfonts instead of icons is a great idea
Using webfonts instead of icons is extremely easy. All you need to do is download a font or create your own. Once that’s done, you’ll need to upload your files to your webserver and add the downloaded stylesheet to your website – you can increase performance by copying the stylesheet’s content directly into your website’s style.css file. Now, all you need to do is just drop the markup in the html file. If you prefer SVG icons, you can use those as well in the same way.
Search engine marketing & search engine optimization are important
SEM and SEO should be your second priority – search engine marketing or search engine optimization campaigns can either make or break a business, thus they are two extremely important concepts especially for small businesses. When in doubt, always seek professional help – it can help you on your road to success.
Content is critical
Bad content will just make visitors leave your website. Pay attention to your headlines as these can be the difference between a visitor leaving your website or staying to read the rest of the content. It’s a good idea to write catchy and relevant headlines so that visitors can quickly scan it and decide if it’s worth the read or not – large blocks of text simply will not do. Keeping your content fresh and relevant will make visitors turn into customers quicker.
Get a high quality hosting service
You can’t have a high quality website without a high quality server – if you want a fast and reliable website you’ll have to use a better hosting provider. Look for a hosting provider with unlimited bandwidth, 24/7 customer service and dedicated servers.
