Best practices in building a website

Building a website is fairly easy, but there we have a standard and best practice to build a best-practice website. Website trends we expect in 2017 is way different from the past year, from web designing, format, responsiveness, and many more. In this article, we will discuss the best practice and the right way to build a website.

1. Fixed width layout

Every computer has different screen resolution, some old computers have low resolution, others are high resolution. Setting your width into 100% is not recommended in website especially if you have widescreen monitor. Design a website that fits resolution of 1024×768.

2. Color combination

This is one of the common errors in building a website. Make sure that the color and text is readable. A red font in blue background (or vice versa) is a big mistake, in fact this is one of the worst color combination because it is hard or impossible to read.

3. “Not so many” font style

To be honest, too many font style in a website is utterly garbage design. How many is many? Let say adding 10 different font style, it is complete chaos. We recommend 1-3 different font style.

4. Informative Meta description

The purpose of meta description is to show the short description in search engine. Nonsense meta description can be penalized. A result is lower rank in search engine. Before you index your website, make sure the meta description is informative and constructive.

5. Informative Meta Title

Meta title also appears in top left of the browser that specifies the title of certain page. Wrong meta title is destructive especially if you want to index your website. Meta title is the first thing to see and we make sure we are in right format.

6. Limit javascript

Too many javascript slow down your website page loading. Keep in mind that most visitors are impatient. Example, page load times is 15 seconds, do you have patience to wait 15 seconds?

7. Useful Javascript

Quite often we see this in website, lot of javascript but no purpose at all. Every seconds count in loading a website, adding javascript for nothing will add the burden not only for the hosting server but also the visitors. It will only clutter your code-behind of your website.

8. External CSS

External CSS is best practice in building a website. It decreases page load times and easy to edit the CSS. Keep in the mind that you should limit or remove inline CSS. Inline CSS increase loading and adding a burden when you want to style the website.

9. Minifying CSS

Minifying your CSS is also recommended before you publish the website “live”. It will decrease your wait time in loading a website. To minify CSS, there’s a lot of website that offers minifying CSS, head to google and search CSS minify. If you want to unminify, search unminify.

10. Never put users’ email address in text format

Adding uses’ email address in website in plain text is not a best practice. They will get spammed. Some practices are adding email in image format or adding a contact form to your website, adding a captcha or recaptcha is recommended.

11. Multiple browser friendly

Test your website in multiple browsers like Chrome, IE, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and etc. Make sure your website works across all major browser.

12. Mobile-friendly

Make sure when building a website also compatible in mobile. Mobile-friendly website is very important. More and more people are now surfing in their mobile website.

13. Secured Website

You need to secure your website. Unsecured website is harmful to your business website because they can harm your website, leading to a frustration for visitors and potential sales.

14. Use SSL/HTTPS

Recommended when your website have login where sensitive data is entered like Credit Card. HTTPS website increase the trust from visitors.

15. Keep your plugins and system updated

This will mitigate the hackers. Updated plugins (wordpress) will give you some additional perk and added security.

16. Optimize images

Optimized image will decrease the load times of your website. Take a look of this, image with a 5mb in your website will decrease the performance of your website. Visitors will leave your website before the load complete.

17. Use Search Engine Friendly URL

Make your URL search engine friendly and human eye friendly. Use website.com/my-article instead of website.com/index.php?page=99.

18. Don’t use links like “Click me”

This type of link is not a good practice. You are wasting SEO points and make people harder for them because they don’t have any idea where it will land your link.

19. Single <H1> tag

This is the rule of a website, use only single <h1> tag per page. Multiple <h1> tag might confuse visitor and hurt your ranking in search engine.

20. Navigation across the top

This is the best practice trend in 2017. This will likely easy to navigate across the website and easy to implement responsive design.

We cover the building a website the right way. These are the list of recommendation, best practices, and trending. Keep in the mind that following these steps helps you in a long run.