5 Do’s And Don’ts Of Effective Web Development!

Developing a website is a lot like building a new house. If the foundation isn’t built properly, the entire thing will eventually start to sink into the ground or collapse entirely.

While bad web development practices certainly won’t kill or injure anyone as a poorly-constructed house would, they can still cause significant monetary losses as you lose customers and your business begins to suffer.

Do’s And Don’ts Of Effective Web Development

To prevent this from happening, here are 5 important do’s and don’ts of effective web development, every modern developer needs to follow if they want a clean-looking structure that works well and facilitates user experience.

DO's

1.     Choose Your Domain Name Carefully

Your domain name, or URL as a whole, will play a huge role in attracting customers to your business and building a loyal customer base.

As a general rule, web development experts in Australia recommend that you try and register a domain that is identical or near-identical to your company’s original trade name. This helps customers find the website easily and increases the brand’s exposure.

If a domain you want is already taken and you don’t have the funds to purchase it from the original owner, make sure the new domain relates directly to your brand and is short, catchy, and easy-to-remember. Stuffing a domain name with keywords and hyphens is a sure-shot way of scaring away potential customers.

Another important thing to consider is the URL structure. www.xyz.com/shoes looks a lot more professional than www.xyz.com/sagfafaf=1

2.     Plan Ahead

Every good web developer will tell you that the most important thing before writing your code is to plan in advance for effective web development. Sketch out an entire sitemap on paper using a pen and go through the different pages as if you were a first time user. If you’ve been involved in the process too long, ask a friend to judge the site sketch for you.

It’s essential to keep the latest web development trends and user experience in mind, especially with the recent changes to Google’s page ranking algorithms. Nowadays, users are the be-all and end-all for every search engine on the internet, and any website that doesn’t optimise for its visitors gets punished heavily by the search engine.

Identify your target audience early on and keep their needs in mind when you’re putting the website together. It’ll save you a lot of hassle down the line.

3.     Optimise For Search-Engine Friendliness

Website optimization falls into two major categories, both of which are very closely linked:

• Textual and visual content optimization – for your users
• Code and structure optimization – for search engines

The latter practice refers to making it easier for search engine crawlers to go through your content and index your website.

This is effectively done by keeping the on-page content as structured as possible using headings, titles, images, etc. (which neatly takes care of user needs as well), and then following the same practice when writing HTML code.

Professional web developers in Australia also recommend targeting your keywords in the titles, section headers, and links. Just make sure the content has been written with your users in mind and not Google or Bing, or you could get penalized.

DON’Ts

1.     Use Large Images Or Graphics

Avoid using large images (>100KB) as much as possible. Ideally, you want your website to load up within a few seconds, and large images or graphics slow down the loading speeds.

This is important for two interconnected reasons:

• Modern users are extremely impatient when it comes to new websites. If the content doesn’t show up within the first few seconds of their visit, they’re likely to go frustrated and leave.
• As Google works towards improving the overall search experience for its users, algorithm updates are penalizing websites that load too slowly and have high bounce rates.

Make sure you optimise your images for quick loading by compressing them before they’re uploaded. In most cases, users won’t notice the difference in quality.

2.     Forget Mobile Users

In 2017, internet traffic over mobile devices surpassed desktop computer usage for the first time in tech history, officially marking the dominance of mobile phones. According to most text experts, this dominance will only grow in the coming years as more and more users shift over to smartphones and tables for all their internet browsing needs.

Keeping this trend in mind, responsive design has been essential for effective web development in the modern world. Any website which ignores mobile users will eventually get ignored by these users themselves and, considering they’re now in the majority, that means missing out on millions of potential customers.

The great thing about making your design responsive is that you don’t need to create a separate webpage for mobile users. The elements on the existing site are simply compressed and rearranged for easy scrolling on the smaller screens.