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I Need To Improve My Website, Any Tips?
This article was written for Business Doctor in the GM Chamber of Commerce Magazine - 53 Degress.
Q. I need to improve my website, any tips?
Tim Harding, Managing Director of Really Useful Websites Limited:
The exact answer will vary in each case, but in general effective websites are those that have been designed to appeal to their target audience, have relevant content and are usable. Be careful that your design has the right mix of images and text (search engines can’t read images). The key to usability is the navigation system and the main navigation bar should appear either in the top row or left hand column on every page and most content should be three clicks maximum from the home page. Make sure any features on the site work properly (ask staff, customers or friends to try them out) and include well written content that is broken up into readable chunks using paragraphs, headers and bullet points (unlike printed materials people scan web pages). Check your site has appropriate hosting so that it downloads quickly (it isn’t usable if it doesn’t) and use an analytics package to understand how many people use your site and how they use it. Also, think about how you are going to drive traffic to your site before having it built or updated, as the key SEO considerations for natural search need to be built into the design.
Really Useful Websites Limited
0870 350 3045
www.reallyusefulwebsites.co.uk
