Useful Website Development Tips - 13 Tips From a Web Designer

There are certain aspects to web development that if you don't pay attention to could end up wasting your time or worse making your website unusable. One of the first things you should have when starting your website is a detailed plan before you even think of starting on the development process. The detailed planning should consist of a specific strategy and a goal-oriented approach of your web design. The following are some of the steps that should preferably be taken in your web development process:

1. Always use clean code for the web pages for any website design. Set validation standards and though a few HTML and browser errors may appear your site will be much better positioned.
2. Your website must be secured. Look at the language that you are using to develop your website, and it is preferable that you should use multiple security levels for your project which may save your website from hacking in the future, involving further cost and time.
3. Deploy the right framework. Your detailed planning should include the right framework considering your budget and the traffic that you would be expecting. Look into the latest technologies available which mostly offer higher traffic at the best prices. This provides an overall best outcome for your website.
4. Consider backups. Your website design should consider an error management system, and this system should back up your data in the event of any unexpected crash.
5. Keep it Simple. Your design should be kept as simple as possible at the beginning, as otherwise complex developments may give rise to complex problems which may complicate your project. Your project plan should be based on realistic deadlines with your project tasks completed in time, which saves you energy, time and money.
6. Always original. This may sound obvious but your website design should be using original content that provides the people visiting your website with clear information related to your services or products. The descriptions in your website should not be confusing to the visitors, and use of exaggerated descriptions may stop people from visiting your website.
7. Help them buy. While designing your website you must take into consideration the factors which involve making the site user friendly. This will help customers to locate the products they want to buy easily while at the same time you should focus on aspects of your customers to achieve their goals, return and buy from you again.
8. Avoid Flash. You should preferably avoid animations and sounds, both of which are distracting to the visitors when they try to concentrate on reading what's on your site. Blinking advertisements should definitely be avoided.
9. Avoid scrolling texts. Try not to use scrolling texts, which the reader may not be able to read at his own pace, or the reader might have to wait for the next line to slowly appear to be read.
10. Do not add pop-up windows. These may annoy visitors to your website. Annoying the visitors would mean that it is unlikely that they would be coming back again to your website for the second time.
11. Keep load times down. The website you have designed may look fantastic, but if it takes a long time to load, then few people will have the patience to wait till it loads. Your website design should consider this point seriously, and should not take more than 13 to 15 seconds to load.
12. Remember resolutions. Your design should take into account different resolutions. Most resolutions available in today's computers range from 640 x 480 to 1024 x 768 and go even higher. Your website should be designed for all screen resolutions.
13. Make it compatible. You must ensure browser compatibility in your web design. Your website should look good in Netscape as well as in Firefox or Internet Explorer.