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10 Easy Steps to a Useable Website
By Andy
Building a useable website can seem daunting. Here is a
quick guideline to help you on your way.
1.It's all about your content
To get your website listed appropriately the content of
your website needs to be nested between the tags. This way
it gets read by the search engines. Your content also
needs to be unique and get your point across.What is it
about your product or service that is better and different
from your competitions. This is called your usp or unique
selling proposition and should be conveyed clearly and
immediately upon hitting the page.
2.Make effective use of your title and description tags
These are your two most important tags when it comes to
referencing your page content. Meta keywords rarely have
any impact what so ever on your pages listings.
3.Make sure content is well formatted
It is very important to break up your content with italics,
bold text, bulleted lists, etc. Well formatted content
makes your pages more accessible to visitors but the search
engines also. Visitors scan across your page rather than
read it so it makes sense to format your page so it can
be browsed yet still convey your message.
4.Proper code
Having proper progamming in place is quite simply a must.
Web standards have changed substantially over the years
and it is important to make sure your pages validate both
html and css. Think of it this way. How effective could you
get your point across if you were talking swahili. Your
code is no different. Why make it difficult for the search
bots to index your content.
5.Do not use Front Page, Dreamweaver, or any other WYSIWYG
editor.
While accurate, MS Front Page, for example, makes it easy
for just about anyone to throw up a web page it doesn't take
W3C compliancy into account Hence the code it outputs is
an absolute train wreck. This is terminal for your website
as you need a strong code base (foundation) or your site
will never stand up to the competitions.
6.Don't design in Flash
Seemingly technical in nature or "neat" perhaps flash
animation only serves to distract visitors from what they
came to your site for in the first place, your product or
service. Your services are what visitors are interested in
not a blinking, noisy, website. Flash also creates major
problems with getting it properly indexed. There is no
way for the search engines to extract content from your
website as it is all contained with in the swf. If you
absolutely must have a flash page it is imparitive to
offer an html version as well.
7.Easy on the eyes
Graphical elements play a huge role in a website design
as well. You need to make sure you don't have any extreme
contrasts between colors and that you don't use really
bright colors as they are quite hard on the eyes. Your
logo or brand should be clearly displayed on the home
page and in more than one place.
8.Instill a sense of well being with ease of use
Make sure you have all legal documents in place such as
privacy and return policies. It is also important to have
all of your contact information pricing etc. displayed
in a manner that conveys legitimacy. It should be very
easy to contact you for any questions your visitors may
have.
9.Include an opt-in newsletter
A great way to generate return customers is to offer an
opt-in newsletter. This allows for direct marketing to
people who you know are already interested in your
product or service. What better way is there to keep
customers abreast of new products or changes in the
services you offer.
10.Use a trademark or tag line
In our case we trademarked the manipulated at symbol
with the phrase bringing e-solutions to you, thereby
effectively increasing the strength of our brand. We
are now able to effectively convey who we are but give
a good creative idea as to what we do.
Article Written by Andy MacDonald.
About the Author
Author Bio::
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Andy MacDonald
web design company usa
affordable web design company usa
email: webmaster_soal@yahoo.com
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/27260.html
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