Following are ten most useful tips if you're just starting a new website or a blog:
1. Fills it with all necessary buttons and links BUT keep it SIMPLE!
Many beginners made mistakes by inputting everything that they think is necessary for the website: labels, links, social media link, page number, slideshows, recent post, latest post, search button, and many more. But it should be noted that a site that’s too complicated will confuse the audiences. When they visit a website, they’ll be more thrilled if they are presented with a clear and easy to understand layout so that they can find what they wanted swiftly. And most of times it means that you shall not crowds your pages – leaves a lot of white and blank area so that visitors can focus on important parts of the web. Good navigation is a must!
2. Don’t put annoying stuffs laying around
Stuffs like music that automatically plays when you open the site will sometimes annoy the audience. Videos, flash files, flashy GIF animation, and other streaming media – they all bothering and slowing down the site’s loading process; thus won’t help promote your site.
3. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) scripts instead of tables
For controlling page layout, it is better to use CSS instead of tables because it allows better control over the layout and separates contents from presentation.
4. Find the most optimizes position for label
Labels are one of the first thing visitor see when visited a site because it shows what the site has to offer. Thus, it should be placed in a perfect position with nice background, clear fonts, and adequate mouse-click area.
5. Watch out for your post structures!
One of the best structures for a post is: descriptive, broad, and narrow.
The first paragraph would explain the basic description of what you’re going to say for the rest of your post. It is similar to a summary of the post.
“This post will explain about …….”
After the descriptive part, it then followed by a broad description of the post. It defines the base of what you’re writing about and gives readers a big picture before entering more specific stuffs.
“Many people don’t know about the importance of…….”
And finally a narrow description is added on the final parts of the post. This parts lets users dig deeper and understand further of a specific topic.
6. Don’t put up any popup windows!
There’s nothing that readers hate more than annoying popup windows that give information that you don’t want to know or don’t need. It is most annoying if the popup misleads into one of the adult site or sites with inappropriate images for children. This why you should NOT add any popup windows! If you want to gain money from your site, there’s much more other ways that are less annoying.
7. Think like the audience!
Many designers create and writes for according to text books to create the perfect design. But there’s no such thing as perfect design! Because different topics will be read by audiences that demands different design. Things to consider:
- Does the title will attract the desired audience?
- What is the best keyword that’s a popular niche in search engines?
- Does the post is good enough for audiences that I’ve targeted?
8. Check and re-check your spelling and grammar
This is one of the most forgotten things by website designers. It is really important to have a nice writing and layout that has nice spelling and grammar. For example when you write “the”, you might spelled it all wrong and becomes “the”. This might seem like a simple stuff, but it is really necessary if you want your site to be considered professional by visitors, because professional-looking website will have more chance of attracting visitors.
9. Stay on one specific topic only!
Sites with a specific topic (e.g.: business software, webhosting tips, beach furniture) will more likely get more unique visitors rather than those with common topic. What worse are sites with multiple unrelated topics – this is the kind of sites that you should avoid to make.
10. Updates, updates, and updates
Broken links and posts that are not up-to-date could be considered annoying and not professional by audiences. This is one of the main reason that your website should be maintained and updated regularly depends on the topic. Some sites like software seller should updates frequently to follow up with newer version of software that’s keep coming every few months or even weeks.