Website Design: Simple moves to success
So you have taken a couple of days or hours designing this master piece but don’t rush the last few steps as they are the key to the website design success. I have seen so many great looking websites fail because the web designer/developer did not spend that extra 1 or 2 hours finishing it off properly.
I take it that you have completed all the design work and have completely coded the website in HTML.
Here’s what you have left to do in no particular order:
Favicon
This is that small icon that appears next to the address bar in your browser (latest browsers), websites that have not used a favicon get a default white page icon. Basically all you do is create a small icon image (.ico) then add a small piece of code to all your web pages. First create a 16×16 image in your favorite image editing tool and export it as a JPEG. Download IcoFX, it’s a free icon editing tool. Then import your Jpeg image you made previously into IcoFX and select “save as” to save you new icon (.ico). Upload this icon to your server.
Place on every page of your website this code:
<link rel=”SHORTCUT ICON” href=”replace this text with URL of icon”>
Page Title and Meta Tags (SEO)
Probably one of the most important steps in completing your website design is your Title and meta tags. These tell search engines what your website is about and under what keywords to index your website. Website without these set get a “Untitled” title. Search “untitled” in google and see what I mean.
Simply copy and paste the below code into your website between the <head> and </head> html tags on ALL PAGES:
<TITLE>replace with your websites title</TITLE>
<meta name=”description” content=”replace with your websites description ” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”replace with your websites keywords ” />
Some tips:
- Use the same keyword phrase in your Title, Description and Keywords tag. This will make you rank well on this keyword phrase in most search engines.
- Don’t repeat the same keyword phrase in any of the tags
- Don’t insert keywords that are not present in your content text of your website.
Image alt text (SEO)
Insert the alt property on all your images. The text you use should be your keyword phrases. Don’t repeat the same keywords more than once.
After these few steps your website will look as though a professional has designed it.
Test, Test
Once your website has been uploaded test it in Internet Explorer and in Mozilla Firefox. Many times a website will look fine in one of the browsers but break up in the other. Take note of the load time for your website, if it seems that it take a long time to load then you may have to optimize your images a bit more. Check all buttons and links that they work. Spell check your whole website to ensure that there are no spelling mistakes. Spelling mistakes make the website design look very unprofessional.
With the completion of these easy steps you will end up with a professional well rounded off website.
The Simple moves to success - Part 1
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Comments
Nice post. Thanks for the advices. I m waiting for 2nd part. Testing of website is most important part of web designing.
Look forward to part 2 of this section. Really interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing these ideas