Building your own website may seem like a daunting task, especially if you’re not skilled in web development or are running on a limited budget and resources. But even if you’re just starting out and building your first website, you can still follow some best practices that will help ensure your success online. These web development best practices will make sure that your website performs well and looks great, regardless of whether it’s brand new or has been around for years.
9 Web Development Best Practices to Create a Successful Website
- Start By Planning
In order to create a successful website, you need to start by planning your site. Carefully consider what information you want to include on your site and how it will be displayed. This is also an opportunity to think about how users will interact with your site and if there are any special considerations that should be made when developing it. Make sure to include all of these details in your plan.
- Create Strong CTAs
Because they’re so high-impact, Call-to-Action buttons should be an important part of your design. CTAs should be visually strong and easy to find. They should fit in with your website’s color scheme, or at least be easily recognizable as something that visitors can click on if they want to learn more about your products or services. In addition, you can improve conversions by adding a visual element (like highlighting words) and making sure that CTAs are above the fold so that users don’t have to scroll past them to get at other content on your site.
- Fast Loading Time
If your website has a slow loading time, your users are likely to be frustrated and abandon it. A website designing company suggests that you test your site in different network connections. Time of the day matters too—as more people get online during peak hours like evenings, there will be higher traffic on your website, which may contribute to slow speeds. If you notice performance issues in certain parts of your website, consider reducing server response time by caching and other optimizations instead of switching hosting providers.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
According to industry reports, over 70% of users who visit your website will do so from a search engine. It is thus crucial that you focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as user experience (UX). A good SEO strategy helps to create relevant and useful content on your website to get high rankings on search engines like Google. The best way to do SEO is by hiring an SEO expert from a reputed Web design and development company.
- Visual Hierarchy
Having elements on your website where you want them to be will help develop that Visual Hierarchy. Learn more about how we do that here: Website designing company. This will make it easier for visitors to take in information from your site and make it more likely they’ll return again and again to see what’s new and exciting.
- Mobile Friendly
More than half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. You want to make sure your website can be accessed and used by all of your visitors, regardless of whether they’re using their phones or laptops. Mobile-friendliness is vital to success on today’s web.
- Easy Navigation
When building your website, it’s important to ensure your site is user-friendly. The way you present information and your website’s interface can have a big impact on how easily customers can find what they are looking for. A clear and easy-to-navigate site will not only keep users coming back but will also attract new visitors—making navigation one of web development’s best practices that are well worth incorporating into your process.
- Quality Images
Users often look to your website’s images as they are one of many ways of determining how professional your site is. However, make sure your website design company uses high-quality images in all their designs. If you use lower quality images, visitors may assume that you are also not concerned with providing high-quality products and services. Also, be wary of using stock photos that can make you appear like other websites that have used those same pictures.
- User-Centric Design
Though not strictly development-related, user-centric design is just as vital to a successful website. As an industry, we sometimes get so caught up in what we think is best that we forget that our websites are built for users, not us. With the user-centric design, it’s essential to consider who you’re building your site for and how they’ll use it.
Conclusion
These tips should help make your next web development project run smoother and more efficiently. Designing, developing, and hosting a website is one of our specialties as an award-winning web design and development company. In addition to these best practices, we also offer many services from in-house content creation to print marketing collateral.