Top Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress

Web design Santee requires that you keep advancing with the times. Long gone are the days you had to create your own content management system from scratch. Today, there are so many affordable and even free CMSs that you can use for your website. One of the best platforms to use is WordPress. This is a free platform that offers a great number of benefits. Here are the main reasons why you might want to use WordPress as a web designer.

Save money
The first reason is because WordPress will actually help you save money. Building your own CMS can be very expensive. This is because you have to hire the right team to help with the work. This is not the case when using WordPress. Unlike other CMSs, WordPress is available for free. Yes you will incur some money if you wish to use premium plugins and themes but it is possible to build a professional website with just the free package. What is more is that using this platform will save you time that would otherwise have been used building your own CMS.

Unlimited accessibility
The beauty of using WordPress is that it is available worldwide. This means you can make changes to your website from anywhere in the world. All that you will need is your admin details and Internet access. You can open the admin area from any browser. You don’t need any additional software to make changes to your website. With the unlimited accessibility, you will be able to refine your website from anywhere and anytime.

Improve communication
When your web designer Santee is working on your website using WordPress, you never have to keep contacting him for screenshots of his progress. You can actually view his progress in real-time. All you have to do is log in to check on the progress of your designer. You can also give some of your audiences’ access so that they can give you speedy response on the look of your website.

Design consistency
The challenge that new designers face is that of maintaining consistency when working on a new website. WordPress has themes that you can download and install to build your website. It is also possible to create your own custom theme. The best thing about using WordPress is that it gives you the ability to maintain design consistency. At the end of the development, your website will feel and look the same regardless of the number of pages you add to your site.

There are many more benefits that come with the use of WordPress in web design Santee. Other benefits worth mentioning is the fact that you will get a website that is mobile friendly and one that is social network friendly. The huge WordPress community will further help you hone your skills on the go.

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SEO Tips You Need to Use as a Web Designer

Web design Santee requires that you keep up with the trends. Failure to do so will see you lagging behind. In addition to that, you must ensure that your website ranks well in search engine results. There are so many techniques that you can use to boost your rankings. The problem is that most of the available options don’t work as effectively. If you plan on making your website rank better, here are the top things you should consider doing.

Content is king
When it comes to search engine optimization, the important rule to remember is that content is simply the best optimization. Yes link building is also as important but if your website doesn’t have the best content, you will easily lose new customers and never get repeat visitors. Visitors are coming to your website because they feel you offer what they are looking for. If you don’t do that, you will register a high bounce rate. In addition to that, it is only with great content that you will convince search engines that yours is a high quality website. Search engines don’t just focus on the keywords anymore. Focus is on the quality of content. As a web designer Santee, you must make the point of creating quality content for your website and keep the content updated.

Get to the point
You might not understand how this will impact your search engine ranking but it will. When you keep beating about the bush instead of getting to the point, you will bore your visitors. Bored visitors will click away and might never come back to your site. The problem with this is that it is registered as a bounce. The more visitors click away from your website the higher the bounce rate will be. A high bounce rate is perceived as a sign of poor quality by search engines and your ranking will go down. Don’t bore your visitors with useless intros or content. Give them quality content and in a concise way.

Fill the Meta description
This is the snippet that will appear below your website’s URL in search engine results. Most people read this snippet before deciding to open a link. The snippet should entice visitors to open your link. It must also contain your main keyword.

These are the simple things you can do to boost your ranking. Still on web design Santee, you must make sure that your website is mobile friendly. Having a mobile ready website will help your website rank better.

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Web Design Santee – What Should Your Focus be in Web Design Santee

A great web design Santee takes time to perfect. There are so many things that the web designer has to account for in order to create a website that is nothing short of remarkable. In this article, we shall be taking a quick look at the things that you need to focus on in web development.

SEO friendly
To find information online, Internet users rely on search engines. What this means is that if your website is not well ranked in search engine results, you will not get the visitors that you need. To achieve high ranking, you have to invest in search engine optimized content. You also need to use the right keywords in order to attract the right visitors. Every experienced web designer Santee knows that having the best web layout is not enough. How well optimized your web pages are determine the success of the website.

Mobile friendly
The second most important thing you have to focus on is mobile friendliness. Mobile devices have gotten better and cheaper. As a result, more people rely on their mobile devices to access information online. This can be through their tablet, iPads, smart watches, and smartphones and so on. The problem with these devices is that they process information differently from desktop computers. This is because they have smaller display screens. To accommodate mobile users, you have to ensure that your website is mobile friendly. Today, you don’t need two versions of your website to accommodate desktop and mobile users. You just need a responsive web design Santee. This is a design that adjusts itself to fit any screen it is being viewed on.

Superior content
The content on your website will determine whether visitors come back for more or not. If your website has poor content, you will register high bounce rates. Needless to say, high bounce rates will impact your search engine ranking negatively. Your website needs to have superior content. The content you use should be backed by solid data, should be grammatically correct, should be helpful to the user and must also get right to the point.

Fast loading
How fast your websites loads will also determine its success. Not many people are willing to wait more than 10 seconds for a page to load. If your website is bloated, you will lose customers. You can fix this issue by using a reliable hosting company, optimizing the media on your website and refining your code.

Intuitive
Last but not least, you have to make sure that your website is intuitive in every way. This means visitors should not need to guess where certain elements are. They should be able to find everything without struggling.

These are important considerations you need to make when working on a website. Never be in a hurry to get the work done. You need to make calculated decisions.

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Web Design Santee – How to Create a Great Web Design Santee

Web design Santee has come a long way. In the past, all you need was to rely solely on HTML and CSS to create a website. Today, you have to account for plugins, search engine optimization, images, videos and a lot more. This can be overwhelming especially if you are working on your first website. The good news is that there are steps you can follow to smooth the process.

Make a list of goals
To create a great website, you need to start by identifying your goals. Why do you want to create the website? Do you need a personal blog or a company website? Knowing what you need as a web designer Santee is the key to avoiding the distractions that come with inspiration overload. Take some time to compile a list of all the things the idea website should do and have. With the list of objectives in hand, you will be able to focus on what really matters.

Keep an eye on the trends
Now that you are clear on your goals, the next step is to look at what other designers are doing. Web development trends keep on changing. The problem is you cannot embrace all of them. Some will be ideal for your website while most will not. Look at what your competitors are doing. What layouts are they using? Which elements are the most common? The prevailing trends will give you inspiration.

Sketch it out
The next step should be sketching out your desired website. Before you start coding, you need to sketch the layout of your target website on paper. With a wireframe, you will be able to know which element goes where and if the selected layout makes sense. Once you are satisfied with the layout, you can go ahead and start coding.

Make revisions
It is obvious that you cannot get everything right the first time. As a web designer Santee, you have to invest time in revisions. What you may think is a masterpiece might be impractical to most people. Therefore, you need to run your new website by your friends to know what they think about it. Use the criticism of your friends to fine-tune your website. You also need to focus on fixing the bugs. For example, if your website takes long to load up or if it is not cross-browser compatible, you must fix that issue immediately.

Optimize for search
The final step is to optimize your website for search. You don’t want to create the best web design Santee only for it not to be viewed by anyone, do you? This happens when you don’t take the time to optimize for search. Search engine optimization is inevitable. You also need to spend more time in social media marketing.

These simple steps will guide you as you create a website for personal use or for your business. However, if you ever feel overwhelmed, never hesitate to outsource the work to the experts.

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Top Web Design Trends You Need to Be Using to Achieve More Success in 2018

Web design Santee calls for more than the necessary technical skills and experience. An important key to success is keeping up with the latest web design trends from the realm of online publishing and beyond. Even if you prefer walking your own path rather than following the herd, it is imperative that you keep abreast with the latest trends and tips in web design. In this post, we shall be taking a look at the crucial tips you need to be using when building a website in 2018.

Start the design off-screen
As a web designer Santee, you may have the habit of creating your code and design on the screen rapidly without worrying about how things will turn out. To achieve better results and avoid time wastage, you should consider starting the design work off-screen. This means using a pencil and paper to sketch the design you want to create. You need to plan your website layout off-screen first. There are also wire-framing and prototyping tools you can use to sketch your website. When you can see what you need to create, you will spend less time re-editing your code and layout. Do it like the architects do; using floor plans to plot out doors, windows and rooms.

Use large fonts
Big typography has been in use for years as an aspect of design. This is still a great practice you should follow in 2018. Big fonts grab the attention of readers and places focus on the content. All in all, you should not make your font too large. The font just needs to be big enough to grab attention. It must also be readable.

Leave more white spaces
If you have been keen on the top trends in web design Santee, then you know that white spaces are your best friend. The lack of white spaces causes a web page to look cluttered and this ends up distracting the readers. White spaces enable readers to focus on the important parts of your website. It also offers you the chance to build a better web design. White space needs to be included between and around elements to help guide the readers.

Responsive design is no longer optional
More people are browsing the Internet using mobile devices. If your website doesn’t have a responsive design, it will end up locking mobile users out. As a web designer Santee, you have to invest in a mobile friendly design. This will not only help you accommodate more visitors but also help your website rank better in search engine results.

These are crucial tips you should use when working on a website. There are many more tips that you can use. The rule of thumb, however, is to ensure that you are using the trends that are practical to what you are trying to achieve.

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Professional Web Design Tips for a Faster Website

An experienced web designer Santee knows that people no longer have minutes to spare when searching for information online. They want information on their fingertips and if a website takes longer than 10 seconds to load, they will abandon it. As a webmaster, you need to note that any abandonment is registered as a bounce and a high bounce rate will impact your overall search engine ranking. Focus has to be on making your website faster. In this post, we will be taking a quick look at the things you ought to do to create a faster website.

Compress the images
High quality images are usually of a big size. They will significantly affect the overall size of your website. This is more so if you are using several images in your web design Santee. Your website cannot run without images. The workaround here is to compress your images. All the images you upload to your website need to be compressed. It is possible to shrink/reduce a .JPEG or GIF image by half its size without affecting the resolution. Specifying the height and weight of the image in the HTML will further reduce the load time.

Keep your code clean
Keeping your code clean will do wonders in improving the load speed of your website. There are many things you can do to keep the code clean. You should start by revising your code by eliminating the unnecessary spaces, deleting unnecessary tags and making use of white spaces. When it comes to web design, you ought to remember that less is more. Use the defaults for tags or get rid of them whenever possible.

Make use of thumbnails
If you are working on an ecommerce website, you might want to use thumbnails. These offer customers small, fast loading images of the product they are considering. If they wish to view the image closely, they can click on the thumbnails and give the larger image time to load.

Switch to CSS
If you have been keeping up with the trends as a web designer Santee, you know that more web designers are using the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in place of the traditional table layout. CSS is a dual purpose styling language. It will save you time when creating a website and also save your visitors time by reducing the page size as well as the download time.

Reduce server requests
Any element of your website that loads from the server will cause speed problems. This is irrespective of whether the element is an audio clip, an image or a plugin. To load these elements, HTTP requests are made for each. Creating a website with fewer external content will help reduce the load time.

These are the crucial considerations you need to make when trying to make your website faster. In addition to that, you have to keep an eye on the page size. The ideal page size is 30KB. Target that size in all your pages. You also need to note that your hosting service provider might be the one affecting the load speed.

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What Should Your Website Have to be Successful

A web designer Santee knows that simply installing the right theme and plugins to build a website is not enough. There is a lot more that has to be done for a website to excel online. In this post, we will be taking a look at the crucial things you have to do to make sure that your website achieves success.

Easy to type and memorable domain name
The first thing you will need to do is to select a domain name that is easy to type and easy to remember. The domain name is the address your visitors will be typing into their browsers to get to your website. If it is hard to type or remember, you will lose valuable traffic. Therefore, before you start working on a web design Santee, you have to invest more time in research to find the perfect domain name. A good domain name is short, doesn’t include hard-to-type characters and contains a keyword. Try various keyword combinations before settling on a domain name.

Reliable hosting service
Second, you need to find a good hosting service. You can have an amazing website but your hosting service will cause problems. The last thing you want is to use a hosting company that doesn’t guarantee 99% uptime. If their servers are down at any one given time, so will your website. You want a hosting company that has been in business for years and one with a great reputation more so when it comes to their uptime. In addition to that, it is imperative that you pick the right hosting package. Shared hosting might work for a family website but it will not cut it for a business website that receives loads of traffic.

Mobile friendly
More than 60% of the traffic your website will be receiving will come from mobile users. Make it easy for these visitors to consume your content. This means using a responsive web design Santee. This is an intelligent design that will adjust to fit any screen it is being viewed on. That means you will be able to accommodate both mobile and desktop users. It is good to note that having a responsive web design will further boost your search engine ranking.

Great content that is optimized for search
The next most important step is to create remarkable web content. This is the soul of your website. It is what keeps visitors coming back for more. You have to cover interesting topics and create high quality content that your audiences cannot find anywhere else. You content must also be optimized for search using keywords.

Quality backlinks
Last but not least, you have to spend time in link building. These will help increase the worth of your website thus giving you better ranking results.

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Top Qualities of a Reliable Web Designer

The right web designer Santee will not only save you time in web development but also ensure you are up-to-date with the trends. The main problem, however, is that not every designer out there has what it takes to build you a remarkable website. Some are great with the web layout but terrible with online marketing. You want to work with a designer who can handle every aspect of your website. Here are some important considerations you need to make when hiring a designer.

Experience in your industry
The mistake most people make is that of simply hiring a web designer who is experienced in web development. What they fail to understand is that if a web designer has no experience creating web shops, his support will not be as reliable. With that in mind, you need to hire a designer who has experience in your industry. Ask for samples of his work and the contacts of recent clients. You need to take a look at the web design Santee that he worked on recently and see if it has what you are looking for.

Appropriate pricing
Working with a web designer is obviously not cheap. It costs money. It is your job as the client to find a competent designer who offers the most competitive prices. Take note that the cost of working with a designer varies from one designer to the next. The price is also determined by a number of factors which include the complexity of your project and the location of the web designer. Setting a budget is the key to finding the most reliable designer.

Expansive portfolio
While it is important to hire someone who has experience in your industry, you will get better results if you work with someone who has worked in various industries. This is because the more experience a web designer has the more reliable he will be in meeting your web development needs. The portfolio does not need to be flashy. They can be links to what the designer has done. The portfolio of a designer will tell you a lot about his competence.

Extent of their services
What you are interested in is web design Santee. This does not mean you hire someone who only offers that. To save time and money, you need a designer that offers an assortment of services. For example, he should be able to help you with SEO, online reputation management, graphic design and other things that can affect the success of your website.

These few points will help find and work with the most reliable web designer Santee. To avoid surprises, you need to make sure that you get into a reasonable contract and hire a designer who offers website maintenance services. Only hire someone you have confidence in.

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Web Design Santee – Trends to Keep an Eye on in 2018

Web design Santee does not remain the same. It keeps on evolving. As a matter of fact, some of the things you did five years ago in web development might not be applicable today. It is your duty as a web designer to keep up with the latest developments in web development and embrace the best trends. This is the only way you will remain ahead of the curve. In this post, we shall be taking a quick look at the no-nonsense web design trends that are dominating 2018.

The continued rise of video content
There is no doubt that video content is gaining more and more popularity. This can be attributed to the fact that we have better Internet connections and better apps that can play the videos. As a result of this, in addition to adding text, it is not uncommon for a web designer Santee to add a video to add more details. However, for video to work in your favor, you must avoid the use of auto-play videos. Let your visitors choose whether or not to play the video.

Subtle effects in scrolling
Parallax web design took the world by storm but is now gone. Its downfall can be attributed to the fact that web pages took longer to load because a lot more content needed to be loaded. However, this does not mean fancy effects cannot be added to a web page when scrolling. The use of attached background images is one of the many ways web designers are adding subtle scrolling effects. The background image doesn’t scroll with the page.

Sticky navigation
Having fixed or sticky navigation such as the header menus that follow you as you scroll is not something new. It is, however, very important when you need your visitors to take action. The sticky navigation can just be the ‘Contact Us’ button. Regardless of how much the user scroll, the contact button will be right there for them to click once they want to make contact. The sticky navigation can also be such buttons as ‘add to cart, book now, sign-up now and so on.

Round photo edges
A popular trend changing the way a web design looks has been the use of rounded edges instead of the square edges on images. This is a trend that has been inspired by the move taken by Twitter in 2017 to replace the square profile photos with round ones.

There are many more trends that are dominating the realm of web design. As a web designer Santee, you have to keep up with these changes. Failing to embrace the most relevant popular trends will cause you to lag behind. Don’t be unresponsive to change.

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Web Design Santee – How to Design a Website that Looks Amazing and Ranks High

Web design Santee has to be done with search engine optimization in mind. It makes no sense to create the perfect website that never gets seen by the target audience. Most designers make the mistake of creating remarkable websites without accounting for SEO. Don’t be one of them. Here are some of the main things you need to do when creating a web page that is search engine optimized.

Use SEO friendly URLs
Search engine optimization starts right from the purchase of domain names. The perfect domain name needs to be short and should include keywords that are relevant to your business. The URL should also be easy to type and remember. The best URL is the one that gives Internet users an idea of what the website is about.

Optimized images
As a web designer Santee, you need to make sure that all the images you use on your web page are optimized for search. Search engines are not able to understand images. They use the image caption to determine what an image is about. For a better rank in search results, you need to optimize the images using the text on your site. You must also refrain from using images that are too large as they will cause your website to load slowly. The image size should be between 30 and 100KBs with a 72 dpi resolution.

Responsive design
Google recommends the use of responsive web design. This is a design that allows your website to load optimally on multiple devices. Needless to say, Google made an algorithm update that favors websites with a responsive design over those that don’t. Having a responsive design also means fewer bounce rates. High bounce rates result from mobile users landing on a website that is designed for desktop computers. When a website has a high bounce rate, its online reputation goes down and so does its ranking.

Quick navigation
A great web design Santee is one that has a quick navigation. The navigation should give users an easier navigation when they get on your site. Finding what they are looking for must be easy. The navigation bar should be on top or along the left margin of your web page.

Fast loading pages
The load time of your pages will impact search engine ranking. Not many people will be willing to wait for a full minute for a page to load up. If they click away, that will be recorded as a bounce and it will impact your reputation. You can reduce the load time of your pages by enabling compression, using smaller images and leveraging on browser caching.

Relevant keywords
The most important thing you can do to boost SEO is to use the most relevant keywords. However, you should not overuse the keywords. The Google Keyword Planner will help find the most suitable keywords for your website.

These simple practices will help you optimize your website for search. Don’t be in a hurry as a web designer Santee to finish your work. Make calculated decisions.

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