Layout and Design
There are many different factors to making an effective website like content, design, usability, and layout.
Why is a layout important?
Layout plays a huge role in your website’s page. Without it, your website would a wall of text and links and no one would care to read through. Layout is important because it influences many different things like:
- It improves user experience
A good layout improves user experience by creating a better, well, experience. Without a layout users can become frustrated when there’s too much content on the screen making it overwhelming and stressful, resulting in someone just leaving the website.
- It makes content more readable
When you put your content into a layout (instead of just making a giant wall of text) it makes it much more readable. For most pages (unlike blog posts) content isn’t too text-dense making it able to be in a layout accompanied by images and other visual elements.
- It creates smoother flowing pages
With a good layout, the content of a website flows a lot more smoothly creating a gradual informative experience. When your website flows better it creates a better reading experience for the user, promoting them to read your content a lot more.
- Creates predictability and expectations
Think about the layout of this page that you’re on right now – based on the layout, when you first landed on this page it gave you the expectation that it’s a blog post. And that’s because it is! The layout of a page can be used as a tool to almost tell users what to expect and what they’re in for.
- Better ease of use
A good layout just makes websites easier to use. A better user experience, content readability, flow, predictability all work together to providing easier and smoother experiences for users.
- It improves the design of your pages
To put it simply, pages look better with content in a layout rather than just spitting it out on the page. In blog posts it makes sense to not have much of a layout at all, but more top-level important pages should have some sort of layout to make them stand out and make a good first impression.
- It gives weight and importance to content
With layout you can make sections of a page visually more important and less important on a page. Adding this visual weight to sections allow you to control what users give their attention to.
- It helps with user retention
With a layout there’s more visual interest on the page keeping users on the page. A good layout is interesting enough to keep someone’s attention but isn’t too unfamiliar enough that the content becomes hard to consume and take in.
Functionality
- Intuitive Navigation Is a Key Part of Website Functionality
The success of both your business and your website depends on creating an excellent user experience, which involves careful user interface design. One way to do that right away is to make sure your customers don’t get lost on your website. Creating a straightforward, logical web structure with an easy, prominent navigation bar will keep customers coming back to your site.
- Create a Site Map for Better SEO
Customers aren’t the only ones who don’t want to get lost on your website. Search engines, too, need to be readily able to crawl your site and understand what it’s about. One way to do this is by creating a site map, or a structured list of every page in a hierarchical format.
- Fast Load Times for Pages and Content
This is huge. Customers have come to rely on receiving information in the timeliest fashion possible, and they’re not going to wait around for your web page to load. This means no fancy flash, no music, no unruly images, and no obnoxious entry-point videos. It’s good design and marketing practice not to do this stuff, anyway; nobody really enjoys it.
- Simple Page Design = Functional Design
Page design goes hand in hand with site navigation because the two are often present together and operate in coordination. The top of the screen might show the navigation bar, while the particular webpage shows below that.
- HTML and CSS Are Basic Parts of Making a Website Functional
Webpages implement the use of both HTML (for content) and CSS (for design). These two types of code perform very different functions yet are equally crucial in building a great website. For best results, you’ll either want to work with a website developer or spend the time to learn how coding works.
Mobile Friendly
The point of responsive web design is to make sure your website looks good and works well on any device. A responsive website automatically adapts to fit the platform and screen size of the user. Having a mobile-friendly site these days is very important, so using a responsive design is recommended.
To improve the user experience and increase the visibility of your website on Google, you can use a responsive website builder when designing your website. You can read more on WebSwiggy. This will ensure that your website looks great and works properly for all visitors on all devices.
- Makes Your Site Highly Accessible
The major website traffic comes from individual website searches. When your website is easily accessible to all the devices and the users can conveniently search everything, you will enjoy lead generation, lead conversions, and many other benefits. In other words, the responsiveness of web design enhances the user-friendliness of the website and can make it easy for people to purchase from different devices.
This is particularly helpful for E-Commerce businesses that can witness a boost in sales after opting for responsive website design.
- Allows updating the website quickly
If you do not make changes to the single version of your website, you may lose a lot of chances to get ranked. With a responsive website design, your website will not only update quickly but you will also be able to do any number of changes in a single version of the site.
It is a time-saving and cost-effective option for businesses who want to get sales through a single platform. Moreover, it also saves small businesses from using different websites for mobile users and PC users.
- Improves online user experience
If your website does not have a responsive design, the users will not be able to get their desired information. Useless popups, irrelevant images, and baseless textual information can distract the users but when you have a responsive site, the users will get all the information in a straightforward manner.
Responsive website design also takes care of the navigation of the website, making it easy for the users of all the devices to browse conveniently.
SEO
An SEO analysis sheds light on all the opportunities on your site that you can address to improve your ranking potential in search engine results pages (SERPs). It involves auditing your site and identifying where you can optimize for search engine bots.
The insights you gain from an SEO analysis give you direction on where you can improve your site's content and technical aspects to deliver a better experience for visitors and to show search engines context and relationships between your content and the search query visitors are using.
- Check Your Visibility on Google.
How does your website rank on Google? What's is average position in the SERP?
When beginning your SEO analysis, it's important to start at a bird's eye view. Identify how many of your website pages are ranked in the search engine, and get a better understanding of your overall website visibility on Google.
- Check URLs and Meta Descriptions.
URLs should be shortened down to about four to five words that describe the content that's on the page. For example, our article "How to Use Google Site Search to Crawl Your Entire Website" has a simple URL of "how-to-use-google-site-search."
If your URLs are long or irrelevant, you can choose to optimize and edit them so search engine bots better understand what's on the page. But, be warned, this can affect the link juice of the old URL.
- Analyze Titles and Headings.
Titles should be attention-grabbing and encourage users to click on them. In both your titles and headings, ensure that you are using the proper SEO keywords for your page.
Keep in mind that high search volume keywords can be difficult to rank for, so try to find a long-tail keyword that is a little less competitive and will improve your chances of showing up on the first page of a SERP.
- Investigate For Broken Links.
Broken links affect user experience and can negatively impact SEO, so be on the lookout for any broken links on your site.
To fix broken links, you can correct them by ensuring proper spelling, or you can complete a 301 redirect to a different yet relevant URL.
- Check Your Page Speed.
Your page speed actually can influence your website's SEO and overall user experience, so you should be keen on consistently analyzing your load speed to ensure your website is running quickly and efficiently.
For a quick page load speed test, you can use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool.
Maintenance
There’s a lot of work that goes into managing a safe, secure, and fast website. If you want to keep things running smoothly, it’s important to be consistent with your WordPress website maintenance.
Maintaining your site can also help improve the experience for your visitors, as you spot issues and correct them before they become major problems.
Tips for conducting WordPress website maintenance
- Keep your files updated
A key part of website maintenance is keeping your site up to date. This means making sure all of your plugins and themes are using the latest available versions (along with WordPress itself). Keeping all aspects of your website updated can help prevent security vulnerabilities that make it easier for hackers to infiltrate your site.
- Consistently back up your site
In the event that something happens to your site, you’ll want to have a recent version of your files to restore. This is why we highly recommend consistently backing up your website as part of your maintenance routine.
- Regularly update your passwords
One of the easiest ways for hackers to gain access to your site is by “guessing” your password. Therefore, it’s important to not only choose complex passwords, but to regularly update them as well.
- Conduct performance checks
One of the best ways to determine where maintenance is needed most is to run a performance test. There are a handful of tools you can use for this. One popular option is Pingdom.
After analysing and scoring your site, this tool will provide a list of recommendations for how you can improve its performance. You can also install a WordPress plugin such as Jetpack for all-around optimisation.
- Delete spam comments
Spam comments from bots and bad actors can hurt your reputation and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). They can also contain malicious links.
This is why checking for and deleting spam comments should be part of your ongoing maintenance routine. To keep spam comments under control and filter them from your site, you can use a plugin such as Akismet:
