Starting your first website can be overwhelming. Before you can be free to regularly create content, there are numerous tasks to complete, including the technical ones.
If you want to run a website and prepare a thing or two before getting started, you’ve come to the right place. This article covers some tips to decide on a hosting provider, optimize site speed, design a website, and understand a bit about search engine optimization (SEO).
Without further ado, here are the eight proven tips for building the perfect website.
1. Have a Scalable Website
Scalability is an essential factor to consider when building a website. This is because your site will only get bigger over time. Apart from upgrading your resources, you also need more bandwidth to contain the increasing traffic.
Powering 41% of all websites worldwide, WordPress is the perfect content management system (CMS) to build your website on. On top of that, you can easily find an excellent hosting plan specializing in optimizing the CMS.
One of the top examples comes from Hostinger WordPress hosting. With it, you can start small and scale up as your website grows. Additionally, the provider guarantees up to 99.9% server uptime, resulting in a more stable 24/7 online availability.
2. Optimize Website Speed
Website loading speed is one of Google’s ranking factors. Thus, make sure to have stellar site speed to help rank on the search engine results pages (SERP).
As two-second load time is the benchmark, monitor your website speed regularly to check its health. Typically, a speed test tool will give you suggestions on what to work on for further improvement.
Additionally, redundant data on your code can also bring your website’s performance down. For that, minify your code by deleting the unnecessary spaces and comments. On top of that, install only trustworthy plugins, as they also add some weight to your website.
3. Keep the Design Simple
While your website design should be eye-catching, you don’t need to make it complicated. In fact, minimalist design helps you obtain a good first impression easily.
Be consistent with your colour palette and typography, as it’ll bring uniformity throughout your website’s pages. Note that you can’t combine more than three variations for both aspects. Otherwise, you won’t achieve the simplicity you’re aiming for.
4. Add Plenty of White Space
Abundant white space is another feature of minimalist design. Besides serving a clean website look, it helps highlight your most important information.
Suppose your homepage is cluttered. In that case, your bounce rate will suffer. When that happens, Google and other search engines will have to sacrifice your SERP positioning. Consequently, you’ll lose a good amount of traffic.
Also Read: 12 Must-Have Features for an Ecommerce Website
Larq provides a great example of this practice. While not necessarily using a white background, it incorporates light blue to match with its navy-coloured font. Moreover, the web designer chooses a simple typeface that also screams for minimalism.
5. Have Easy Navigation
Clear navigation helps your visitors find what they’re looking for more conveniently. Also, easy navigation reduces your bounce rate and improves your session, as your visitors won’t have a hard time jumping from one page to the next.
Here are some tips for better site navigation:
- Place the menu bar appropriately. While it’s not restrictive to be creative, putting things where people expect them is the best way to ensure easier accessibility.
- Provide a search bar. Don’t forget this feature as it lets your site visitors find your content more quickly.
- Highlight your sidebar. Separate the feature from the rest of your content with colours or columns. That way, your visitors won’t overlook it.
- Use a sticky header. The model allows your menu bar to stay on top of the visitors’ screens as they scroll down your website page.
- Display a back-to-top widget. If you have a long-scrolling website, this feature is an alternative to a sticky header.
- Utilize the footer. Take advantage of it to include other pages, such as a sitemap, privacy policy, copyright information, company address, phone number, and social media icons.
6. Provide Clear Call-to-Actions
This relates closely to the point above, displaying an eye-catching call-to-action contributes to easier navigation. It helps visitors decide what to do next. Additionally, a strong call-to-action is a great tool to drive your site visitors to conversions.
To get a compelling call to action, use language that encourages action. Suppose you have an eCommerce website. In that case, it’s great to put the “Add to Cart” button on your product page. On top of that, use colour to emphasize the button. That way, it’ll catch your visitors’ attention.
7. Make It Mobile-Friendly
As of 2021’s first quarter, mobile devices account for 54.25% of all web traffic. On top of that, it’s been years since Google announced its mobile-first website indexing strategy. That said, using a responsive theme is no longer an option – it’s a must.
The theme must be fluid. Meaning, it allows your site to be adaptive to whatever screens it’s on. Thus, you can provide the same excellent user experience no matter what devices your visitors use to access your website.
For that, check your selected theme before installing it on your website. Typically, the developer will list “mobile responsive” on the theme description, along with the other features. Thus, inspect thoroughly.
8. Include Effective SEO
Search engine optimization boosts your content marketing efforts. When done right, SEO can help improve the lead quantity and quality. It’s because SEO practices help you get to the search engine page one, elevating your website visibility.
YoastSEO is one of the best, most popular WordPress SEO plugins. It uses a traffic-light-like scoring system to let you know if an article is appropriately optimized. Suppose you see red. In that case, check the analysis to find out what you’ve missed or what needs to be improved.
The tool will assess your focus keyword use, keyword density, and readability. However, it also urges you to take care of your slug, meta description, and image’s alt tag. If all of those elements are optimized, the lamp will turn green. By all means, the piece is ready to publish.
Conclusion
Building a website of any type is fun yet challenging. Ranking in the search results to get good traffic is another thing. Thus, you would need to deepen your SEO experience and be familiar with important Google updates and rank transition algorithms to make informed decisions on how you would proceed with the development of your website.
The eight simple steps above are the primary focus you need to work on when developing your website. Also, keep in mind that you need to choose an excellent WordPress hosting that allows scalability. Thus, conduct your research thoroughly, and good luck with your website.