Your website is the key to your success and can allow clients to find you from all around the globe. On average, a viewer will remain on a webpage for 15 seconds before deciding whether to stay or search elsewhere. This is why it is so important to keep your website up-to-date and make it the best it can possible be.

Check out the top ways you or a professional web and graphic designer can help improve your site in 5 minutes I found on Fadastic.com. They feature some great tips and ideas to showcase your website. Enjoy!

Usability/Accessibility

– Use your logo: Link it to your homepage. Sounds simple enough but it will save time for your users.

– Make links obvious: It’s a quick job to style them so they contrast against regular body copy.

– Make text readable: Don’t worry about cramming text so small so it stays ‘above the fold’ – let your text breathe by adding line height and space. And don’t be shy about increasing your font size.

– Make a useful 404 page: Maybe put a few words to explain what a 404 error is and point people to your site map, homepage or search facility.

– Offer a way to contact: Sounds simple, but if there is no way to contact you, people may not be able to tell you of issues on the site.

SEO

– Add title attributes: Add relevant title attributes to your main navigation. It will strengthen on-page SEO with very little effort.

– Create a Google site map: There are many generators and it only takes minutes. You can increase your website’s saturation almost instantly.

– Optimise title tags: Check title tags are relevant on your key pages and improve them where necessary.

– Check headers: Check that pages make use of H1, H2 and H3 tags. Check that these contain your main keywords (and still make perfect sense to the reader. No spammy tactics, else a kitten will tread on broken glass remember.)

– Link from your copy: Often forgotten about, why not interlink from key pages deeper into the site?

Design/Development

– Feedback: Get a few people to make one suggestion each about your site. It’s easy to be blind to mistakes on your own website.

– Browsers: Check your main website’s functionality in (e-commerce/gallery etc) in as many browsers as possible. Note any issues to fix later.

– Give direction: Your homepage isn’t an ‘about’ page. Give visitors a reason to click around. (Log in / Sign up / Request brochure etc.)

– Let the user be in control: Avoid pop-ups, resizers and all those nasty things. It’s the users browser, not yours. Most pop-ups can simply be placed on a new page.

– Animation: I’m not against a bit of useful animation, but don’t let images animate continually whilst the user is trying to read the content or look at a product. It’s like trying to sell a car to someone whilst dancing around distractingly in the background in a giant banana suit. Almost.

Content

– Rewrite: Read your opening paragraph. If it doesn’t engage you then rewrite it.

– Simplify: If you use too much jargon, replace as many instances as you can with clear wording. Jargon doesn’t help anyone.

– RSS: Let your RSS feed be auto-discovered. It’s easier for the user to locate that way.

– Don’t overdo it: People don’t have all day. Put key information in succinct paragraphs on the page. Waffling (except for around here!) is not for the web.

– Accessible: Check that you can access all the key pages of your site as a first time user. You may need a volunteer or two to test this theory.