5 Ways To Keep Your Website Beautiful
So, you’ve got a beautifully designed website - it’s gone live and looks fantastic. You know you need to keep it updated to keep your potential clients engaged, but what do you need to avoid doing to make sure your website stays looking as good in the future as when it was first designed?
One of the great things about a content management system (CMS) is the ability to edit your website content on an ongoing basis, however you also need to make sure that you do not end up ruining the look of your beautiful new site!
Here are a list of things to consider when editing your website:
1. Be careful with colour
Do not add clashing colours. In the vast majority of cases, sticking to the existing colour palette will give better, more consistent results.
If you want to add additional colours, do so with caution, making sure that your website stays consistent with the rest of your branding.
2. Don’t publish unfinished pages
Avoid setting a page live before it’s finished – hide the page until you have finished editing it.
Nothing looks worse than finding a page with ‘Please come back later’, ‘Work in Progress’, or lorem et ipsum placeholder text on it.
Visitors stumbling across such a page will think it looks unprofessional and that you could not be bothered to finish it – and may well assume this attitude pervades the rest of your business.
3. Use high quality images
It’s great to changes images on a regular basis to keep them up to date, but avoid using low quality images that look blurred or pixelated.
In technical terms you should be looking for an image that is at least 1000 pixels wide, but if you are less technical, just do not use images that are fuzzy or out of focus!
However, do be careful where you source your images from – you cannot just “borrow” images from Google, you need to have the right to use them.
This means either using your own images, or possibly sourcing them from a free image website such as:
• unsplash.com
• pixabay.com
• pexels.com
• freeimages.com
4. AVOID SHOUTING AND !!!!!!!!!!!
There are ways to emphasise text other than using lots of capital letters or overdoing the punctuation! It draws attention to your website for all the wrong reasons.
There is no reason you should not capitalise, make bold, or enlarge key phrases — just avoid the incorrect use of grammar for a dramatic effect.
5. Don’t remove your SEO metadata
On a website, pages contain metadata to help search engines index your site, allowing your business to be found in Google’s search results.
Once you appear in search results, the metadata will also show a description of your page which will help visitors decide whether to visit that page or not.
Avoid removing any of the following from your website:
• Headings
• Alt tags on photos
• Page names and descriptions
• Keywords in the body text that could help your ranking
So, it’s worth making sure that you have a website you can edit to keep it updated, but also that you choose a web design company who are able to help and support you make those changes, ensuring that your website remains looking as good as it did on the day it was set live.
If you are looking for web design help in Bristol, please contact us on 07837 003937 or leave us a message here.
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