Website Best Practices in 2017
Every year technology increases and with the increase in technology comes new trends and best practices. Along with what the latest and greatest web trends are, we are constantly looking at what works best to quickly convey your message and covert web traffic into contacts. With this in mind we have put together our: Top 5 Must Haves For An Effective Website In 2017!
Responsive
These days it just isn’t enough to have a mobile website. You need to have a website that can adapt and change to any screen size without changing the overall look and feel of the site. Your website needs to easily transition from 6 different cell phone screen sizes, to vertical and horizontal tablets, to 15′ netbooks and 50″ desktop screens. If three people on three different devices with three different screen sizes can’t all get the exact same information and overall experience, you are not up to date in 2017!
Speed
Large high resolution images headers are beautiful and all but if you are going to use them they have to be compressed! Along with many other back end loading issues like multiple and unnecessary style sheets, java scripts, etc. you might as well just cache your entire website and set the appropriate duration for a refresh. In most cases this won’t be more often than 1 month. Just keep in mind that anything longer than a 10 second load time and most users will bounce to your competitions faster loading website.
Video
Videos capture attention quickly and engage users. Videos add a nice personal approach to your content without having your user read a novel. Honestly who has time to read anything theses days? I’m surprised you made it this far down this blog. I probably should have just made a video and let you watch me explain. Oh well there is always 2018… j/k. Get a video up now!
Navigation
In 2017 you absolutely need to have a navigation menu that is easy to navigate and also responsive (see above). Visitors need to be able to find out where they are on your site and where they need to go quickly and easily. This means all major pages should be linked from the main menu with sub pages as sub menus. You can still hide your sales and specials pages but we recommend using an easy to use navigation to get off of these pages.
Contact
Don’t overlook the obvious and forget to incorporate your contact information or another form of call to action in an easy to find location on every page. Yes, I said EVERY single page on your website needs your contact info. Save the mailing address and contact form for the contact page but at least offer an email address and or phone number for that user just looking to reach out. You would be surprised the amount of business you may be losing by not having easy access to your contacts.
Need help updating your website and keeping up with the latest best practices? 1 Internet Marketing would love to help. You can request a quote here or call now and schedule your free consultation!
