What are the most important factors to consider when designing (or redesigning) a website? Where should you start? How can you ensure that your site works well on mobile devices as well as conventional browsers? Which tools can help make your efforts more productive and effective?Get the answers to these questions and more in the pieces below, some of the best articles and blog posts from the past year.
The 4 Essential Elements of Web Design by Spinfield
Designer Jason Nester offers highly practical advice (i.e. Flash, widgets and Web 2.0 colors need not apply) about the most critical factors in site design. It's heartening that he refers to SEO as "probably THE most essential element of Web design."
Why Web Design Matters by SEO Book
SEO expert Peter Da Vanzo serves up his take on the 10 most important factors, beginning with "Purpose—Know Your Audience," which should be the starting point for ANY marketing activity. Clarity, branding and speed are also among the elements on this excellent pre-site redesign list.
10 Great Web Sites by BtoB magazineA group of industry experts including Hoa Loranger from the Nielsen Norman Group, Alan Webber of Forrester Research and Dana Todd from Newsforce tell you what they like, and don't like, about 10 popular websites. Among their picks for great sites are the U.S. Postal Service, Adobe and Formway Furniture.
10 killer websites worth watching by iMedia Connection
In the same manner as the post above, here editor Nanette Marcus asks five experts including Ryan Buchanan from eROI, Doug Schumacher of Basement and David Friedman of Razorfish each to describe what's unique and what could be improved about two websites they think stand out from the crowd.
Custom 404 page and SEO: 10 things a Good 404 Error Page Should Contain by SeoblogR
Polish blogger Pawel Szulencki may not have absolutely perfect English ("No ads - they just stand in the way to deliver the right message to the user"), but he does have an outstanding list of items here to include on custom 404 error pages including a search box, links to the most important pages of your site, a link to the sitemap, and "a short message explaining why a user is seeing this web page...You should also apology for any inconveniences that caused. Dont blame the user for visiting your error page."
Is your website ready for a handheld world? by iMedia Connection
Consultant and author Robert Moskowitz asked Will Park from IntoMobile, Chris Spiek of Awecomm Technologies and Marty Dickinson from HereNextYear.com about designing websites for mobile devices. What are the most critical design factors to keep in mind? Do you need a .mobi domain? This article answers those questions and more.
16 Web Based Handy Web Designer Tools by Online Marketing Blog
Blogger Thomson Chemmanoor shares some of his favorite website design and development tools for tasks such as analyzing page load time, validating CSS files, finding broken links, generating rounded corner and gradients, and more.
Previous posts in this series:
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Website Design, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Link Building
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 3
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 2
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Contact Mike Bannan : mike@digitalrdm.com
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