6 Rules to a Killer Website Design

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It is good to have trust in the capabilities of your website design firm. However, it is smarter to learn a little something about web design so that you can make sure that the web design you are getting is worth the price you are paying for it.

1.     Usability

Wikipedia defines website usability in these words: “Web usability is an approach to make web sites easy to use for an end-user, without requiring her (or him) to undergo any specialized training”.

 A usable website should have clear concise directions about usage such as menu tips, a proper navigational menu, some way to search the website and readable / viewable presentation.  You would be surprised to hear that even the United States government has an entire website dedicated to web usability practices.

2.     Accessibility

Wikipedia describes web accessibility as, “Web accessibility refers to the practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality.”

When we talk about accessibility many business owners get concerned that they will be paying extra money to make their website accessible to disable people. Which is certainly not the case, if your website design is properly coded in standard HTML then most web browsers have accessibility features that can help people with disabilities to browser your website easily. For example if you have alt tags defined for your images then blind people can listen to the text and understand what’s been displayed.

3.     Search Engine Friendly

A search engine friendly website design can not only help you get indexed on most search engines. It will also help you generate lots of traffic to your website. A Search Engine Friendly website design has proper meta tags and descriptions, title tags, it uses h1 and h2 tags appropriately, and has a keyword rich content and URL structure.

4.     Social Media Ready

Social web marketing is helping lots of businesses in finding new clients and customers. However to take full advantage of social media marketing your website design needs to be social media ready. This means, that you should have options available on your web pages allowing visitors to share your content on their social networks. If you are not already on social media, perhaps its about time you make yourself accounts on twitter and facebook to promote your business and brand.

5.     Easily Updated

Some small businesses might not need to update their website that often. But you need to discuss this with your website design company. Most website design company does not offer a content management system with a website design. This means that if you want to update your website content you will have to pay them to do that for you. So if you plan to keep your website regularly updated with latest offerings and news then perhaps you ask your website design company for an easy way to update your website.

6.     Easily Maintained

A part from regular updates, you will need other features that will help you maintain your website easily. These other features include access to email accounts on your official domain name so that you can create email accounts for your staff or friends. Make sure that your website design is easy to maintain and you don’t have to pay any unnecessary money to your web design company for maintenance and other non-issues.