If you have ever been instrumental in starting up a website, you may have worked out a few facts about web design: for example, the fact that a website appears differently depending on the browser, the platform and the device you are viewing it on. This becomes very apparent when each website owner is viewing it from the comfort of their own office on their own choice of tablet, laptop or mobile phone. And yet there are a few things you may not have worked out.
Templates
Life Hack points out a few interesting facts that you may not have been aware of. One of particular interest is the restrictive nature of templates. It is to your credit if you are designing your own website because it is a complicated process, particularly for someone without programming knowledge and experience.
And the best way of creating a website yourself is, of course, to use a template that will guide you along the way. But sadly a template will never be designed with you, your website or your requirements in mind. It will use code that can be unnecessary and bulky. This can cause problems for your SEO and can also compromise the usability of your website.
If you use a company that provides Web design in Northampton like Easiserv, you will find that they will build the site from scratch to your own requirements rather than fitting it around a template.
Mobile Optimisation
In 2014, the number of people accessing the internet from mobile devices overtook the number who accessed it on desktop computers. This gives you an indication of how critical it is to optimise your site for mobile. Failing to do so could alienate over half of your potential customers. And yet, so many of us are getting this wrong.
The Small Business Trends website points out some of the mistakes that people are making with their mobile optimisation. Possibly the most annoying for users is when videos on your mobile site don’t play. This may be due to the use of Adobe. Aside from being annoying to anybody trying to view it, this will also alter your SEO reach. Google is fully aware of content that is inaccessible and will penalise you for it. The use of a responsive web design will prevent this, as well as allow you to check for errors using webmaster tools.
Another issue that people don’t necessarily consider when catering for mobile devices is the speed of loading. With the increasing availability of 4G, this is going to become less and less of a problem. But at the moment, most of us are stuck with 3G or slower most of the time. This means that a perfectly responsive desktop site can load incredibly slowly on a mobile device. This is not only annoying, but is also likely to stop people from visiting your site at all, so it is definitely to be avoided.