Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.
Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.
Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.
Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.
Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.
Use CSS to style your page content because they save a lot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.
wrirren by Neil Parnham
And to get you a great website that not only looks good but also performs well, you can hire professional web design services and get experts to work for you. However, there are a few things that you should take care of during your web design project. Provide Samples and Examples
Explaining your web designers about your likes and dislikes with pen and paper will do no good. Send them links of websites that have themes and designs that you like. This will enable them to get a clear picture of what exactly you have in mind and they will know what your expectations are regarding quality, layout and graphics of the potential website.
Use Web Analytics
Web analytics provide you with crucial information about your website like what content is really working on the site, what is hit most and what is left untouched. Empowered by thus knowledge, you can seek to improve the audience response of you site.
Hire Designers as well as Programmers
Some companies have different personals for designing and programming tasks. Browse through both their work samples and make sure they gel up well to get you an ideal website.
Plan Ahead for the Future
Businesses change and expand with the course of time. And you will need to update your website too. So while getting your website designed, make sure that it has an inbuilt Content Management System so that you can easily update the content as and when required. Also don't forget to ask for raw files of any graphics.
Easy Hosting
The hosting services for your website should be easy and smooth. And it is best to use a third party web hosting company to host your website. Ask your designers for recommendations and expect about 99% uptime.
Buy E-Commerce and Shopping Cart Functions
Buy e-commerce and shopping cart functions off-the-shelf for products and services on your website. Companies usually charge a monthly fee for these services.
Price Quotient
The cost of developing a website depends on how complex it is and how many pages it contains. In broader guides,
? A simple website of 4-6 pages should be about $400-900 for a web template. But make sure you have an appropriate CMS in place.
? A customized website should cost about $800-3,000 depending on the complexity and size.
? A website with complex functionalities is billed according to the number of projected development hours. They can cost anywhere from $40 to $200 per hour.
? A website that is driven on complex databases can cost about $50,000-$100,000.
Payment Timings
A partial payment should be make up-front with and agreement of full payment upon the completion of the project and delivery of the finished product. Make sure you include a delivery time in your proposals.
Ownership Rights
Make sure that you own what you pay for. A designer may argue about the intellectual property rights pertaining to the task but be ready to buy it from them. It is less expensive if you co-own the website with the designer. But do specify ownership rights in the contact.
Both Brad & Maneet Puri are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Maneet Puri has sinced written about articles on various topics from Internet Marketing, Legal Matters and Entrepreneurship. Maneet Puri leads LeXolution IT Services, a top- notch IT firm that deals with a range of and KPO solutions. He leads histeam of. Maneet Puri's top article generates over 33100 views. to your Favourites.