Web design moves quickly these days. Whether you’re a blogger, business person, or online hobbyist, there’s always something you can do to your website to make it more visually appealing, more responsive, quicker, and fresher. In today’s world of DIY web design, anyone can vastly alter their online setup with a few simple steps. Here are three simple ways to do just this:
Develop an editorial output
Bill Gates has been proven right since his 1996 prediction that “content is king”. If you want to stand out as a brand on the internet, you need to produce content in a range of formats across an array of communications media: from Instagram videos to online blog posts. The best content is that which offers long-term user value. You’ll sometimes hear this referred to as evergreen content.
Listicles, how-to guides, product reviews, free software, videos, proprietary research: having any one of these on your website targeting long-tail keywords can draw long-term traffic to your website. A pro-tip to help you take your content to the next level is to develop an editorial schedule and optimise post sharing on social media. If you can regularly publish high-quality content and learn how to generate big hits on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, then you could see an impressive boost to your SEO score in a matter of months.
Enhance your server capacity
When it comes to user experience, there’s nothing better than improving how quickly your site performs. We’ve long known that users are impatient and most online shoppers will wait no more than three seconds for a new page to load. Nowadays that magic number is nearing ever closer to two, as Google Executive Maile Oyhe points out: “2 seconds is the threshold for eCommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under half a second.” The quicker it loads, the better.
Of course, Google itself often makes it harder to get the quick speeds you crave with security updates that slow performance. It can be a constant struggle but assuming you’re doing the basics right (browser caching, HTML compression, CSS and JavaScript aggregation), the only upper constraint on a growing website will be server capacity. In the age of cloud computing, your best bet is purchasing a managed hosting plan like Krystal, offering you a scalable server solution with automated daily backups, 24/7 support, and adding powerful security features into the bargain.
Ditch templates
Nowadays, 30% of the internet is powered by WordPress, and this statistic is probably even higher in the blogosphere. The continued rise of WordPress means that there are literally millions of websites using the same platform. It’s never been easier to download WordPress and get your business online with a simple template and minimal hassle. However, templates don’t allow you to let your personal brand really shine out.
Worse still, some templates have outdated coding with security vulnerabilities and faulty functionalities. By ditching templates and focusing on what goes on behind the curtains of the main show (back-end development) you’ll be able to separate yourself out from competitor brands and create a singular site.