Online Reputation Management - Web Design Best Practices
In general, a website is the most formal and static portion of your online reputation and internet marketing efforts. It is important to ensure that you are correctly perceived by your target audience and have a concrete business goal being communicated. Every time someone views your website, that person should walk away with a clear understanding of what your organization does and how it can help him or her solve his or her problem at hand. Because your website is static, for the most part, you can see how even the slightest communication can have a negative or damaging effect on your reputation that snowballs with time.
You should update the information on your website regularly in order to ensure that everything is correct. Do not change your email without updating your website contact information and without informing your contacts. Make sure and update your website bio and photo often, as you will want people to recognize you when they meet you for the first time. If your bio is out of date by more than three months, you may run the risk of misrepresenting yourself. Your website will constantly be communicating with the world about you so make sure that you are diligent about what you are saying to them.
You should also follow a set of web design best practices. Here is a checklist of things you need to be doing. If you choose to ignore this set of best practices, you run the risk of presenting yourself to your target audience in a way that damages your online reputation.
Page Layout Best Practices
- Make sure you have researched your target audience and make the layout appealing to your target audience
- Pay attention to little details like making the site header/logo consistent
- Make sure your navigation area is the same for all pages
- Include a very informative page title that includes the company name, organization name, and site name
- Supply a page footer area that details copyright, last update, contact e-mail address
- Ensure your page displays without horizontal scrolling at 800x600 and higher resolutions
- Try to use an equal balance of text, graphics and white space on every page
- Use black fonts on white backgrounds to ensure good contrast between text and background
- It is very important that your home page is full of compelling, interesting information above the fold (before scrolling down) at 1024x768
- People leave if they do not get what they want immediately so make sure your home page downloads within 10 seconds on a slow speed connection
Browser Compatibility
- Site displays on current versions of Internet Explorer (6+)
- Site displays on current versions of Firefox (2+)
- Site displays on current versions of Opera (9+)
- Site display on current versions of Safari (both Mac and Windows)
Navigation
- The site’s main navigation links labeled clearly and consistently
- The site’s navigation is easy to use for target audience
- If you use images for navigation menus, Flash, or DHTML is the main navigation, provide users with clear text links in the footer section of the page
- The site provides navigation aids, such as site map, skip navigation link, or breadcrumbs are used
- Ensure that all site navigation hyperlinks work properly and are not broken
Color and Graphics
- Use of different colors in page backgrounds/text is limited to a maximum of two to three colors
- Color is used consistently throughout the site
- Color has good contrast with associated text
- Site color is not used alone to convey meaning
- Use of color and graphics enhances information presented rather than distracts from the site
- Site graphics are optimized and do not significantly slow download
- Each graphic used serves a clear purpose in relationship to the site and your content
- Image tags use the alt attribute to configure alternate text to display
- Animated images on the site do not distract from the site and do not repeat or only repeat a few times
Multimedia
- Each audio, video or Flash file used serves a clear purpose and compliments the site and its content
- Captions provided for each audio or video file on the site
- Download times for audio or video files indicated close to the content
- Download prompts and links to downloads for media plug-ins are provided on the site
Content Presentation
- Common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman used on the site
- Try to use headings, bullet points and short sentences in short paragraphs along with the best use of white space on the site.
- Fonts, font sizes, and font colors are consistent throughout the site
- Content provides meaningful and useful information to your target audience
- Content is organized and logically presented
- Key information is easy to find with only minimal clicks to get there
- The date of the last revision and copyright date should be accurate
- Content should not include outdated material or old data
- All of the content on the site is free of typographical and grammatical errors
- Content provides links to other useful sites and resources to provide the target audience with a choice of information sources
- Avoid the use of the term "Click here" when hyper linking
- Use standard colors for hyperlinks
Functionality
- All internal hyperlinks work on the site
- All external hyperlinks work on the site
- All forms function as expected on the site
- No JavaScript errors generated at site loading or during execution of commands while on the site
Accessibility
- Captions provided for each audio or video file used on the site
- Use attributes designed to improve site accessibility such as title and summary when appropriate
- Use the id and headers attributes to improve the accessibility of table data
- If the site uses frames, use frame titles and place meaningful content in the noframes area
- To assist screen readers configure the html element's lang and xml:lang attribute to indicate the spoken language of the page.
Written by: David C Skul - CEOBack to Articles | Next Article | Relativity | Watch Video Part 1 | Watch Video Part 2 | Watch Video Part 3 | Watch Video Part 4
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