What are tips and tricks? Tips and tricks are techniques that the average guy is not aware of. Generally, they are recorded by those heavy users who have found short cuts to implement something or to skirt around difficulties. Many tips and tricks are very useful if properly used. Firstly, I will cover the hosting features that will help you, as a novice, to get things done. They are not true tips and tricks but it will make you aware of what you are getting into.
Control Panel
We are using Hepsia Web Hosting Control Panel instead of cPanel - this is the first of our tips and tricks. Having used both control panels, I found Hepsia Control panel to be less complicated and much easier to use as it a point and click control panel. This is especially excellent for beginners who have never had a website before or managed a website one. It was so user friendly that I didn't even read the user manual or watch the video.
Upgrade your website hosting needs as you grow
The second of our tips and tricks is use a web hosting provider that will allow you to grow. All our website hosting plans can be upgraded as your needs grow. They can be upgraded to the next plan or just upgrade individual items like, number of hosted domains, dedicated IP addresses, memory, bandwith, ...etc and you can even migrate to a dedicated server.
There are many website hosting plans on the market and some are very cheap. Do take the time to compare our performance with theirs. Another of our tips and tricks is to do a Google Search for the host you are checking up on. For example Google for "Problems xyzhost" where xyzhost is the host your are checking up on. Checkout our page loading speed by clearing your browser cache and reloading this siteor refreshing this page ... would your readers wait 8 or more seconds for pages to load in their browser before abandoning your page and visiting another site? The information coming from the SEO developers is that page download speed is a criteria for good Google Search Engine position of your website. Does it take a 30 seconds to back up your site or an hour to backup your site?
We provide, through our principal, LiquidNet Ltd. UK, 24/7 support. It can be day time or night or even the wee hours of the morning in your country, and you will still have round the clock support Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. From my experience, their response times have been between 3 minutes and 22 minutes which is extremely good. This is the third of our tips and tricks, that is have access to good and prompt technical support.
Simple Tips and Tricks
Simple tips and tricks to boost your website performance with any of the web hosting plans.
1. If you are blogging install a cache. There are many caches, as plugins, for WordPress.
2. If you are operating a forum or have huge amount of visitor traffic then go for a dedicated server.
3. Our principal, LiquidNet Ltd., UK, has many data centers around the world, USA, UK and Australia, hence your visitors experience very fast page views of your site.
4. Use WordPress SEO optimisation. We have been using SEOPressor to have our Wordpress blog optimised to rank highly in Google Search Engine. This is another of our recommended tips and tricks....Click Here!.... We used SEOpressor to improve our ranking. It is very effective. SEOpressor was developd by Daniel Tan. He covers many tips and tricks for inline SEO and offline SEO. I learned many of the tips and tricks I am using from his software, newsletters and books.
5. Limit the number of WordPress plugins to less than 10 plugins. If you have more then we suggest you deactivate the plugins you rarely use. Only activate them when you need them.
6. Upload your videos to YouTube and embed the links into your site.
7. If you have many domains to be hosted, have them hosted over several accounts - this is the most important of our tips and tricks. I had all my domains on one host account (a multiple domain and multiple sub domains account) and when my site was hacked, the hackers took down all the sites on that account. That meant I had to restore all my sites. By splitting them over several accounts, hackers have a limited access to those domains in the account they are hacking. Hackers attack your site through the software package on your site and not through the host account. Once they penetrate your site, all sites on that account are accessible to them. Worst still your Google page rank will drop if you do not restore your site quickly. I have moved all my sites to this hosting services as after the hacking my old host has ceased operations.
Simplicity rules! It makes a websites look sleek, reduce nagivation confusion and it helps achieving desired goals and results (I.e., more signups, subscribers and sales). But too often it seems elusive to simplify your website design. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make your work look like Apple’s. So what does a website designer really needs to do? Fret not, for there are 5 starting points to simplify your website design.
A simple website design shouldn’t be a daunting all-or-nothing ordeal – you can simplify your design by taking small steps. Simple tasks like putting the focus only on the essential elements of your website, getting rid of the unnecessary, reducing the number of pages your site has, getting more content above the fold, and limiting the number of colors you use. You can always fine-tune and improve your simple design, but the important thing here is to get started. Ready to start simplifying your website design? Awesome. Without further ado, here are 5 starting points to simplify your website design.
1. Focus Only On Essential Elements
This first step probably seems forehead-slapping obvious: of courseI should put the focus on the essential elements in my site, what am I, an idiot?But a surprising number of websites fail to achieve this and the result is a big mess of important and unimportant elements spewed onto a page. I’m as guilty of doing this in the past as anybody. It’s hard to be objective and prioritize what’s important or not, because everything seems essential. If you want your website design to be simpler, identify what needs to be focus, just like with any good visual design or piece of art. And that means putting the focus only on the essential elements.
Use the 80-20 rule
What 20% of what’s on a page gives 80% of the value and content that people go there for? It could be the copy, some social proof (review snippets, testimonials, media badges), and a signup form or call-to-action button, for example. That’s the 20% right there. On your website, as well as on each individual page, focus on displaying only the 20% of site elements that are delivering 80% of that usefulness. This isn’t a technical step but a principle that you can use as your guide to simplify your website design constantly. The 80-20 rule will help simplify your website design by pushing you to trim your site elements down to the essentials. What’s really cool is that the 80-20 rule can also help increase your desired results that you hope to achieve on your website. For example, an increased conversion rate in visitors subscribing, signing up, or buying. How? You’re making it so there are less distractions and things for visitors to click on to leave the page. As we all know, we’re always looking for an excuse not to purchase something at the final step, and any reason to navigate away is a good one. Reduce those reasons and click-away options with the 80-20 rule.
2. Get Rid of All Unnecessary Elements
We’re continuing with the 80-20 rule here. Now that you’ve identified the 20% of website elements that will get you 80% of your desired results, it’s time to get rid of all unnecessary elements. In other words, the 80% of website elements that will get you only 20% of results. It could be social media sharing widgets, sidebar elements, blog post meta details (date, time, author, number of comments, etc), or links in the footer (this is especially a huge culprit a lot of the times, particularly when the visitor is looking for the aforementioned excuse to navigate away from the page).
3. Reduce the Number of Pages
A large part of simplifying your website design is to simply have fewer places to explore and click around. You can do that by trimming the page count.Either get rid of unnecessary pages that deep down inside you know aren’t needed, or at the very least, fuse multiple pages into one. I mean, you don’t really need to separate "about the site" and "about me" pages. Firstly, get in the mindset of the visitor – if you were to arrive on your website, what are the key things would you want to do? For instance find out what your stuff is about? Or contact you? Next, make sure that your pages facilitate what is necessary and nothing more. Don’t keep unnecessary pages on your website because you think you need to, or because other websites have them. When you reduce the number of pages on your website, not only it is easier for your visitors to focus on your content because there’s less places to click around, but your navigation menu is simpler too. We’ve all been on websites with too many nav menu items. We don’t know where to start navigating because we get overwhelmed by the choices. And when we get overwhelmed by being presented with too many choices, we go with choosing nothing. By having as few nav menu items as possible, you make your website not only simpler but more inviting and friendlier to visitors.
4. Get More Content Above the Fold
Studies have shown that a majority of people spend most of their time above the fold on web pages (what shows up on the screen without scrolling down). So if you want to increase the effectiveness of your website, have the main content and call-to-action elements above the fold. You can do something as simple as shortening the header height if you have a logo and a navigation menu at the top of your website. This involves nothing more than changing the header’s "height" value in your stylesheet (typically style.css or stylesheet.css). Also, see if a sign-up form or button is below the fold. Move that element higher up in the page so it’s the first thing a visitor sees. After all, that is your desired call-to-action of the visitor, so decrease the work needed to get to it (ie. scrolling).
5. Limit Your Color Scheme
It’s easy to get carried away with colors. Why settle on 2 or 3 colors when you can have 12 or 13? But in order to simplify your website design visually, you need to limit your color scheme. When in doubt, use fewer colors. It’ll vary based on your design of course, but try sticking with no more than 2 or 3 colors to start off. If you need more subtlety and texture to your visual design, use shades of the same color – light blue for the background and darker blue for header and menu items. I’m as guilty as anyone with getting wild with colors in the past. I’ll add this color, then another, and another – and before I know it, it looks like a rainbow diarrhea all over my website. You can have your website constructively simplified, but if the colors distract the eyes when you look at it rather than complimenting the content, then all that effort was for naught. So use fewer colors with your website design instead.
Targeting your audience with your design is not only possible, but also recommended. Some might not think it’s important, but I am sure all of you have some favourite websites that you visit from time to time, but because of their good design, you simply can’t stay away from them for long. Those kind of sites are what we are going to talk about today. Why? Because you can have one too if you really want to – all you need is a bit of marketing knowledge, a good strategy and some design skills and you’re pretty much there. Today we will talk about how to spot your real target audience. This is the first major step in your strategy and the most important. If you fail at this, nothing else will fall into place. Today’s article will also be about usability and web interfaces, but we will get into details further down the road.
Who is your audience?
There is no way you’ll be able to fine tune your design in order to better fit your visitors if you have no idea who those visitors are. Understanding users is not easy, but it gets easier when you use tools such as Google Analytics to see their behaviour. This is a key tool to be used in order to spot things they are not pleased with or things they enjoy. Finding out what your visitors look for on your webpage can also be done by looking at the keyword search in your analytics dashboard. You can see in this panel exactly what they’re searching for, and using this information you can find out what kind of people they are. Image by Spiderpops
You can also get into your readers’ minds by asking them questions. If you have a blog, then interacting with them should already be a part of your daily routine. There is a lot of valuable information you can get and this is really the best place to start. Ask questions, get their feedback, get their opinions about different things. This way you might not only find out who they are, but also find out ways to solve issues you have on your blog or website that you were unaware of. Question them about what exactly it is they like about your site and why do they come back and don’t forget to ask about improvements they might approve of. And if you really are into this “get to know your audience better,” but don’t know how to do it, then allow a company or a freelancer to do it. There are people out there who do this for a living and for a modest fee you can get somebody to do it for you.
The layout
Now we get to the more interesting things. The layout is the first thing that pops into my mind when I look at different unsuccessful blogs. And the ads. The ads kill me. How many columns you have or the image slider you use or whether you don’t even include a footer does not matter too much – if you know that is the style that fits you. But the mix of content, images and ads are an instant killer for many in the web industry, but also for the simple readers, who do not understand how a website is runs. Yes, you need some money to run your blog and generating revenues through ads is not easy, so the logic move would be to insert as many ads as you can and place them in key positions. No! The logical solution would be to leave them out. For $4 per month or even less (or whatever minimal fee you get) it is not worth annoying your loyal readers. Compromising the design with poor ad placement is a mistake many rookies out there do and this will never bring them huge revenue nor an increased number of readers. In case you really want to get some ad revenues, then track the ones that work best for you and leave the others out. Less ads will also mean visitors will not be distracted so much, so now they can focus on what is really important: your content. That’s what they came there for, give it to them! Another annoying thing is to try tricking your readers into clicking your ads. You can see above a huge Romanian tabloid which does that. Above the fold you can not see any of the content (just the navigation) – the rest is advertising. If for one second I feel they try to push me into clicking their ads (which they do, and which I feel), I will never return (which I don’t). It is as simple as that. And yes, here’s only me thinking like that. But out there must be some other tens of thousands who think like me. But if a huge tabloid can afford losing so many readers, the questions still remains: can your website afford it too?
Typography
I wrote an article few months ago mentioning that although people could read long before we had computers, typography was overseen until 5-6 years ago, when it became a trend to work on it. If you ignore it now, it can damage you and your website. The reason behind Amazon’s Kindle products being so popular is the fact that they focus a lot on the reading experience – fonts, size, line height, spacing, light and so on. When you get the Kindle, you can’t wait to start reading a book just because it is indeed a pleasure to do it while using the tremendous device. If you think the web is much more different than reading a book, you are mistaken. Typography is as important on the web nowadays at it is in print. Actually, it is much more important. If you bought a book with bad typography, you might end up reading it anyway because you spent money on it or because you really are interested in the subject. If a website has bad typography, you will just exit off it and find the same information somewhere else – this is the internet of 2012, anything can be found out there. Updating your fonts and general look of the text is so much easier to do now than 10 years ago, with the bunch load of software support we have at our disposal, such as CSS3 or the capability of embedding fonts. Don’t overlook typography, it is a huge setback. You have no idea how much line spacing can mean, even for the most basic font out there. Try it, go now on your website and increase the line-spacing to 1.5 of the font size. You will be amazed how a three-second tweak will make your website look like. And then imagine, if you did that with a basic font, how much can you do actually with a beautiful typeface? You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on typefaces just to see they don’t fit your website. Adjust the one that you have now. Play with line height, spacing (both between words and letters) and font size. These things are so basic and can do so much – it is incredible how many people choose to ignore them. If you are tired of your default font, you don’t necessarily need to spend money on a premium one. Google Fonts offers lots of beautiful typefaces which can be incorporated with a CSS property called @font-face. All the fonts offered by Google’s web app are free, so there is no excuse for not playing with them for a while. You might also want to check Adobe Web Fonts. HierarchyThis is another big one and has to do a lot with typography and font sizes. If you quickly scan this article, you will notice how fast you can get an overview of what I wrote about. You don’t need to read it. In less than 10 seconds you can already spot the main topic and what I covered, then you can decide if the article is worth reading or not. This has a lot to do with hierarchy and how we, at 1stwebdesigner, work with the headings. Offtopic: Working with the headings the right way will also help your website rank better in search engines, because the keywords in the headlines are very important and help search engines find out about the content of the article (just like it helps you). If headings are not normally something you use, get in the habit of doing it. Simply using the <h1> to <h6> tags will do a lot both for your content and readers.
The first impression
You know the saying: “There’s no second chance to make a first impression”. True in dating, true on the web, although in dating you might get a shot at a second date. On the web you will not get clicked on a second time if the first impression is bad. Let me ask you something. From the 10-15 totally new websites you visited today, in a matter of two seconds, how many of them can you remember? Most surely no more than 2. From the approximate 500 ads you saw today on the web, street, in the bus and in the shops, how many of them you remember? Most definitely not more than 5. This is because only few manage to create powerful emotions into you at the first glance.
Designs creating a powerful emotion are always easier to remember.
Your page should make it easy for visitors to find what they want. It should combine both usability and good interaction. Not more of one than the other. A book has a table of contents. IKEA has a map of the shop. A website has the home page, which is a top-level overview of the website and its content. Don’t make them scroll too much to find information, always keep in mind the “three click rule“. It is very easy to find out how good your home page works by checking the statistics in Google Analytics. If the exit or bounce rate is too high, then you must be doing something wrong. You need to be better at guiding your users to the right content.
Interacting
If you have a blog or a website, it is very likely for people to want to comment there. People have opinions and they do not love anything more than sharing them. But you still need to check on those from time to time, so they will not turn into a distraction. First you have the spammers, then you have the haters. Deal with spammers the way all of us do: no pity. Use plugins and moderation to fight it and do not allow it, as it will distract your readers. Adding a Captcha is something most of us do and it works just fine.
Graphics
If you wish to “break the silence” and make your content more appealing by including graphics, this is OK. You should probably have at least an image per each post, depending on how long it is. An image can set the tone for the article and take the focus out of the black and white chunk of text. Only use images that are free and do not use a lot of time to customize them. They are not SO important. If you can, break the content every 4 to 6 paragraphs with an image (in case the article is longer). It will allow people to rest their eyes. Offtopic: we get back to SEO for a moment here. Always add meta descriptions to your images, as it helps search engines very much.
Good example of how we break large chunks of text here at 1WD.
Social Media
By embedding social media into your website you can shoot two rabbits with the same bullet. You can make your content easier to read and you can make it easier to share. Allowing comments on different social media platforms will improve the way you interact with your readers. It is much easier to engage them on Facebook than it is to do it on your own blog. In regards with sharing the content, there are lots of plugins out there for WordPress and other platforms which make it easy for your readers to share your articles. There’s no prize for guessing how that could help you…
Make it responsive
I can’t stress enough about how important it is to have a responsive layout. People read on the go now, they are not always in front of their computer. I read books in the bus, using the Kindle app for the iPhone. Imagine how hard it would be if the layout wouldn’t fit my small device. You can see in Google Analytics how many people visit your blog or website from a mobile device. Make amends if you need to, take action! Create a responsive layout, so that I can read your blog whenever I am waiting for the bus.
Conclusion
To work on the design and usability of your website takes time – or at least improving these two takes time. But you simply need to be willing to do it, because there are others out there who do it constantly – and you like it or not, they are the ones getting the readers that maybe you deserve. So if you feel like you want to get a grip of them, at least now you know where to start from. Go out there and improve your website by making these few tweaks and you will see that your readers will be happier and will return more often.
