50 Simple Tips for Improving Your Website
This checklist provides 50 simple ways for you to make your website even better!
1. Use .htaccess to redirect the non-www version of your website to the www version.
2. Extend the registration of your domain for at least five years.
3. Make sure that when a visitor clicks your website’s logo, they are taken back to the homepage.
4. If you think your font is too small, make it bigger!
5. Remove widgets that aren’t directly enhancing your website.
6. Include an easy to find contact link, e-mail address or phone number on every page of your website.
7. Use a CSS stylesheet to make your website printer friendly.
8. Fix or remove broken links (external and internal).
9. Add ALT tags to all of your images.
10. If your website is using frames, get rid of them!
11. If you don’t have a robots.txt file, create one.
12. Provide the same basic navigation menu on every page of your website.
13. Use the same color for links throughout your website.
14. Spell check your content.
15. Format your content so that it is easy to scan.
16. Add at least one picture to every page of your website.
17. If you don’t have an About page, create one.
18. Use your About page to show your brand’s personality.
19. Include at least three pictures on your About page.
20. If your website has pop-up windows, get rid of them!
21. Link to relevant social media profiles from your About page.
22. Add a search box near the top of your website’s layout.
23. Create a privacy policy page.
24. Place a link to your privacy policy at the bottom of every page.
25. Use dashes in filenames instead of underscores.
26. Add a link to Google Maps on your Contact page.
27. Add internal links from one piece of content to another.
28. Write a unique META description for all of your main pages.
29. Validate your source code and correct any errors.
30. If you have a link exchange page, get rid of it!
31. Add a site search box to your 404 page.
32. Create a sitemap for your website.
33. Add a link to your sitemap at the bottom of every page of your website.
34. Add a copyright notification to the bottom of every page of your website.
35. Underline your links throughout your website.
36. Turn off music that automatically plays.
37. Get rid of any flashing GIF animations.
38. Include your website logo at the top of every page.
39. Register the .net and .org versions of your domain and redirect them to your website.
40. If you don’t have a help or support section, create one!
41. When you answer a question via e-mail, add the answer to the help/support section.
42. Look at your contact forms and see if there is any information you don’t have to request from your visitors.
43. Add your analytics code to every page of your website.
44. Get rid of any pages that automatically resize visitors’ browser window.
45. Create a favicon for your website.
46. Only use email address that include @yourdomain.
47. Label each box of any forms on your website.
48. Show a confirmation any time a visitor completes a significant action on your website.
49. Create one new piece of quality content for your website every week.
50. Leave a comment with your suggestion for the fiftieth tip!
September 30th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Many good things can be done without flash.. so try to reduce it and make the site more user-friendly.
Try to reduce or limit the number of ads on your website.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Print this list out. Hang it on a Clip Board and DO these 49 things!
September 30th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Nice tip Rich!
September 30th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Chetan:
Both great tips! Even though Google is getting better at handling Flash, I still don’t think it provides that great of a user experience (for example, I can’t view Flash content on my iPhone).
And in regards to ads, I couldn’t agree more. People want to plaster ads all over their blogs and websites, but they don’t realize that if they’re using a program like AdSense, they could actually be more profitable by using less ad units.
September 30th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Sweeet
50th tip : Check source code for any unused script and remove it
September 30th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
50. Invest time on creating a one of a kind layout.
September 30th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
@Sandeep: Very true; doing this periodically can also help you ensure the security of your site.
@JONxBLAZE: That’s a great way to set yourself apart from your competitors!
September 30th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Pretty nice list. I ran 100 tips like this a few months ago.
http://www.thesportsdollar.com/2008/03/100-fluffs-to-building-better-sports.html
September 30th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
@kellex: Nice list, you’ve got a lot of great tips on it!
October 1st, 2008 at 10:15 am
Great suggestions, although with Point 1, htaccess is Apache only, so for Windows hosted sites, it would not apply, although you can use similar set ups in IIS, for those with shared hosting this is usually not available.
On the point about small text, I am afraid I had to increase Firefox’s font size to see the Titles next to each field in the form, as well as the comments being left. ;o)
October 1st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I think #4 should be done on this site.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Forgive the newbness, but why is “www.” so important?
October 1st, 2008 at 5:37 pm
@Carl Grint and Alisha: Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll forward it to the person who is in charge of the SEOHosting design.
October 1st, 2008 at 5:42 pm
@Vadim: Great question. The reason that it’s important is because not redirecting the non-www version of your site to the www can cause duplicate content issues. I think the link below will explain everything for you, but if you have any additional questions, don’t hesitate to leave another comment!
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 am
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October 3rd, 2008 at 4:37 am
Nice tips here. I’ve found that a bunch of them can be coverd via various wordpress plugins, thereby taking the stress out of ‘am I doing this right’? A quick search turned up a number of plugins that address many of these issues.
October 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am
@gWallet: This is exactly why I like WordPress so much! In addition to the plugins you found, you should also start using these (I’ve found them to all be invaluable):
http://www.seohosting.com/blog/articles/wordpress-great-but-not-perfect/
October 3rd, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Concerning item 19 you should insert the following pictures
- One picture of the office building
- One picture of the office itself
- One picture of the team
October 3rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
@Cid Vegas: Agreed, that would be the perfect combination of pictures to give your customers a complete look at your company.
October 5th, 2008 at 1:19 am
50. Encourage comments and try to reply all of them…
October 5th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
@Tamal Anwar: As you may have noticed from this comment thread, this is definitely a strategy I like to use! I think getting the chance to have discussions with your readers is one of the best parts of writing a blog.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:38 am
Thanks a lot! I am on the way of these tips
October 6th, 2008 at 11:58 am
@Yasin: You’re welcome, I’m glad these tips are helping you out!
October 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
simply fabulous tips
October 7th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
@Shameer: Glad you think so, I hope they help you improve your website!
October 7th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
This gets a Stumble up from me.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
@Ryan G: Thanks for that, I really appreciate your support!
October 8th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Hi Nice post. Keep it up.
Just to let your readers know they are having difficulty in find a good hosting company then I guess the belwo mentioned post can help you out
http://webcritics.peepsreview.com/?p=27
October 8th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
@Sunny Kapoor: Glad to see that you use Host Gator (in case you didn’t know, we’re a specialized division of Host Gator)!
October 9th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
@Tyler Banfield: I see. In my case though it seems the www version already redirects to the non-www version (mudlet.org is the site in question), so I guess that’s why I was confused. But I’ll keep the tip for the future to stick to either www or no-www, thanks
October 9th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
@Vadim P: Yup, you’re fine redirecting to the non-www, the key is picking one or the other
I can’t find an example right now, but I’ve seen sites that haven’t implemented this, and when you do a site:theurl.com search in Google, you will see the exact same pages indexed twice (for example, once as www .theurl.com/services and once as theurl.com/services)
October 10th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
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October 13th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
51. Don’t use ugly unprofessional looking clipart. It’s up there with animated gifs.
Other than that pretty good list.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
@Aidan: Ouch, point taken
October 15th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Create great copy for your website, even if it is just a little blurb on each page. Good schtuff in this article, thanks. Art
October 16th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
was curious if you would mind me republishing this list in an ebook about websites - with acknowledgement and link of course!
Please feel free to email me. Terri@tlcservicesonline.com
October 17th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
@Terri: Sounds great, I’ll get in touch with you via email.
October 18th, 2008 at 6:22 am
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October 21st, 2008 at 7:07 pm
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November 11th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Nice list. Printed it for easy reminder. Thanks
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:10 am
I have one to add to the list. If you website doesn’t have a blog add one.
November 24th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
use the stumble is cool