Web design has to be one of the most arduous modern day professions. Seeing your website going live may make up for all the hardships during development, but the result does not erase the fact that to reach it, you had to spend countless hours perfecting the code, troubleshooting, and minding the overall design. We offer several Do's and Don'ts that might cut your checklist shorter by reminding you of the few things you should be aware of at all times during development.
Don?t gamble early on
Don?t immediately go for the latest software or the greatest new build out, if you don?t have a solid plan how to go about working with it. Taking an unnecessary risk, in this case, might not grant you a high reward. By choosing the latest software that you and your colleagues might not be familiar with, you are using up time you do not have and opening up possibilities for bugs and troubleshooting for days on end. Start with a reliable software or platform, and once you have settled in comfortably, take smaller steps to experiment with completely new software. That way, if it even comes to losses, they are minimal.
Don?t access a user database directly with user-supplied information
When a database is accessed directly with the information supplied by the users, you are leaving the door wide open for possible security breaches. This could erase archives with very sensitive data, or give access to confidential information regarding your users. And it can all go into the input box on your website.
This is easily addressed by sanitizing user input: you limit how many characters they can use to input a username or a password, whether they can or cannot contain other symbols, and have the code reject any character input you have not pre-approved.
Don?t neglect SEO
Many developers have the tendency to leave SEO as the last thing to do for the website when, in fact, it is something that needs to be tackled as you go along. SEO is more than just keywords, content, alt text in images, etc. It also deals with back linking between pages, accounts for load time, gets rid of duplicated content, and keeps the hierarchy of important pages and links refreshed and constantly updated. So, to avoid having to restructure entire sections of your website, later on, take SEO into consideration from the very start.
Do keep users in mind
The safest way to stay on track with the original idea and design is to create a profile of what your typical user would be. When you know the demographic, and the target audience, it is easier to analyze the type of people that will be visiting our website. You can build the website around the given data: their age, occupation, financial standing, and lifestyle. These will dictate the user experience, from font styles to the navigation between pages.
Do focus on multi – platforming
You can decide to optimize your website for PC users only. And in a time when fewer and fewer people sit at their computers for longer periods of time, this would be a big mistake. A lot of e-commerce and browsing nowadays occurs via tablets, smartphones and other devices. To ensure the website is visited as frequently as possible, adapt the website so it can be seen and read clearly across multiple platforms.
Do save the user?s time
The attention span has been in decline over the last twenty years, and new technologies only sped up the process. It is the reality of the modern age and in order to succeed, you will have to adapt to this. Many expert web developers from Sydney advise ?trimming the fat? wherever possible. Get rid of excess imagery in your gallery or pages that cause slow loading time; write shorter texts, then blend them with pictures to create quickly scrollable content that will also be informative and useful.
To sum up
Thoroughly plan how to go about the development process of your web page. There are countless factors that can impact not only the final outcome of your work but the process itself as well. As Murphy?s Law says ?If anything can go wrong, it will?, so prepare for everything. It is wise to make your own checklist of Do?s and Don?ts upfront and keep them around as a reminder. The best way to stay on track is to create your typical user profile and tailor the design to them. In this way, you ensure that whatever choice is made, it is in the user?s best interest.
