Web Design that Really Gets the Job Done

The design of your website is very important if you want to build your brand and get people to your site: it is what helps you make the best impression. Even though there are many different factors that contribute to your website's success, the first factor that makes a user stick around is your site's design. So what should you do to make sure that your web design is perfect? Try to remember these things as you work.

Turning 404 Pages in Your Favor: A 404 Page comes up when someone types in an incorrect url when trying to reach your site, indicating that the page doesn't exist. Many website owners don't realize the connection between 404 pages and smart web design. The point you have to realize is that anybody who lands on your 404 page and leaves is a potential prospect/customer lost. The way to solve this problem is to build a 404 page that gives the prospect a path back to an active page on your site. A certain number of people will always end up on this page, so if you don't customize it, you're bound to miss out on valuable traffic. There's no one right way to custom design your 404 page; just make it a direct path to your site and you can't go wrong.

RSS Auto-Discovery: Every webmaster who offers an RSS feed for their websites (which should be every person reading this article) needs to include the code for auto-discovery in their header. This makes it easier for the different browsers and RSS readers to automatically find your feed and let people know that they can use it. RSS feeds are a wonderful way to alert readers and tell them about any changes that you make on your site; this one little feature can make a major difference in how things run for you.

Use Alternate Domains: In order to protect your brand and ensure that your website is found by your target audience, you should register alternate domain names or multiple versions of your domain name with various extensions. This is a step that just prevents others from using the available (similar) domain names for themselves. Although not directly related to your website's design, this step is to ensure that you don't lose any valuable visitors. All you do then is re-direct all of your domain names to the main site--an act that is often done by bigger companies who want to protect their brand and raise awareness for their sites. For example, don't just limit yourself to the .com--you need the .org and .net as well so that you're covered in the three most popular extensions. This can also help you make sure that there isn't any domain extension competition in the search engines.

Overall, your site's design will improve with time and will become more effective as you make improvements. The thing is that you need to begin with basic web design elements so that your site won't lack anything. Web design isn't a complicated subject, but people make it so. You need to focus on your foundation first when you want people to respond well to your site, buy your stuff and help you find wild success.