October 13, 2010 in Blog, Business, SEO, Web Development by David Dungan

New Website Checklist

Some important considerations are often ignored during a website design or redesign. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Cross Browser Compatibility

How does your website look on Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera? Most people will be probably viewing it on IE7 or IE8 but you need to make sure it looks good on the lot of them! If a user arrives to your site to find it looks skewed on their browser chances are they’ll leave.

Cross Platform Compatibility

Can your website be viewed across multiple platforms on iPads and iPhones for instance. More and more people access the Internet via these devices and in 2 years time that number will be even greater! Also does your site use much Flash or Javascript? Flash cannot be viewed on iPads or iPhones and there are a few people who disable Javascript on their browsers.

Accessibility

Is your website viewable to people with disabilities? Can it be viewed on text-only browsers? Is there alternative text for images and videos? More info here…

Search Engine Optimisation

Your website should be optimised for search engines. This includes having keyword specific landing pages, a blog so you can add content regularly and keyword rich text and html particularly tile tags, alt tags and headings.

Calls to action

Every website should have visible calls to action. A call to action could be a a purchase facility or a simple contact form or email link. These should be accessible from every page of the website.

Blog

I know I’ve mentioned this before but it is one of the most important things and every website should have one! A blog is a way of adding valuable content on a regular basis. This content will bring people back to your site, encourage them to share and link to your site and give search engines some meat. Search engines love nothing more then regular, new content.

Sociability

Is your content sharable and do you have links to your social networks? Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter are how people communicate and share content on the web. You need to include a re-tweet button for Twitter and a Share button for Facebook on each of your blog-posts at the very least.

I hope this helps a little. Any questions drop me an email or leave a comment below.