When you are designing a website it is important to define your message in the design layout as well as presentation/delivery of your business. Your goal would be to create a website that has an attractive, professional design, both fast and functional, and that will be visible to many people and call the visitor to an action while strategically educating the reader about your company. You want to fully ensure that the website is easy to navigate and that the information the visitor is trying to gain is easy to locate and fast to load. With website design there are some common principles to follow when designing a website or hiring a Website Design Company to design your website. Content is what information or message you display and compatibility and speed ensure that your website is visible and effective to those who are searching or eager to learn more information about your products and services.
Cross Browser Compatibility
There are many (hundreds) of browsers to chose from when performing a search online. It is important to test your website to see if it is visible or viewable in multiple browsers. Ideally, it is good for a website to be updated to be compatible with all of the popular or widely accepted web browsers. Popular Website browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Netscape. Because so many people do not have the latest versions of each popular browser it is also good to ensure that your website is visible in browsers as well as the older versions. You have to also consider if the website is compatible on Macs, PC’s, Linux Box’s, etc. It is important to keep your html “good and clean” by validating your HTML and CSS and then test it in each individual browser to guarantee the page is compatible. The W3 Consortium has great online tools and validates that can guide you through the validation of your code. Specifying your encoding is also a great way to help browsers render the text on your page. Browsers are constantly improving and many people will continue to upgrade to the latest versions. It is still important to be visible to multiple browsers to ensure your website is available to all the potential viewers. Just because technology is improving does not mean everyone is constantly keeping update with the latest versions.
Websites Designed for Speed
The world we live in is always running at a fast pace. When you think of your website, think of the impatient driver who cut you off or ran the red-light this morning. Do you think they will wait 5 minutes for your page to load before they leave your website? In general a website should take no longer then 10 or 11 seconds to load. Website design and speed go hand in hand. Optimizing Website Speed has a lot to do with the optimizing images, graphics, and media files. Reducing the size of images is a great way to help the page load faster; however you do not want to sacrifice too much image quality. It is important to define the height and width in your image attributes which can help speed up the loading of the page. Although it is highly advised to not include flash, you may also want to include other forms of media on your website such as flash or videos. For flash, Google finds embedded URL’s in flash files and index the content but Google continues to revise and improve the way the index flash files. To learn more about how Google indexes Flash files you can go to Google’s Webmaster Central under Flash and Other Rich Media Files.
Basic Conclusion
Visibility and speed are both very important factors to consider for your businesses website design. Truly optimizing your code and image files can play a big role in your visibility online. It is important to reach your targeted audience and leave a good genuine impression on them as to what your business is about. Fast loading pages that are compatible browsers can help you gain more traffic and increase the awareness through a professional presentation of your business.
