Valeo Marketing

Web Development Tips – Part 1

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  • Embed CAPTCHA images in all your online forms to ensure that only humans are filling your forms. This  will not only help you avoid spam but will also keep your database clean.
  • Using a font on your website is not as simple as it may sound to some. If you use a font that is not present on the user’s system, then your webpage will look completely different from what you intend it to be. So you should use most common typefaces already installed in all computers. The most common serif typefaces are Times and Times New Roman. The most common sans serif typefaces are Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana.
  • You should avoid using heavy graphics, animation and flash on e-Commerce websites to improve site download speed. Animated banners and images are a big distraction for a buyer who is ready to make a purchase on your site and is trying to focus on the transaction.
  • How to minimize exposing your email ID to spammers:
    • Instead of using common email IDs like [email protected] or [email protected], you could use non-intuitive email addresses like [email protected] or [email protected]. This will prevent spammers from guessing your email IDs.
    • Don’t make the life of spammers  easy by activating a ‘catchall’ email account, which allows emails  sent to [email protected] delivered to your inbox. Keep it de-activated.
    • Embed CAPTCHA images in your online forms to ensure only humans are filling them.
    • Encrypt your email address listed online using JavaScript as encrypted email addresses are harder for the spammers to scrape.
    • Display your email address as an image on your website so that only humans can see it and type them in their email client.
  • The patience of online visitors is measured in milliseconds, and also, not everyone has an access to a hi-speed Internet connection. So, try to keep page sizes within reasonable limit to make sure that they download quickly. Re-size  your graphics and avoid an image unless it adds some value to the user experience.
  • Take good care while using 302 redirects on your website as 302 redirect signifies that the file  has been found but is temporarily located at some other URL. The  best way to go about it is to avoid using it as much as possible  because most engines struggle handling them and by using 302 redirects, you are giving way to black hat webmasters to hijack your  listing too.
  • Test, test and test. Give high attention to the quality of your website by performing thorough black box and white box testing throughout the entire project. It is  very important to make the testing process and quality goals as measurable as possible. Also, the QA process should be flexible, as testing requirements for each website may vary according to its  Industry genre.
  • Do the design elements of your website cross each other too much? If you make a change in one  ‘div’, do the adjacent ones collapse? Keep all the design elements separated from each other (as much as possible). As a matter of fact, the designs with the elements related to each other are easy to build but at the same time are very hard to maintain.
  • Be aware that as much as 50% of American internet surfers still do not have access to cable and DSL connections. So you are inviting trouble if you are developing your website only for broadband users. You may want to look into improving your website’s loading time.
  • Along with the Web 2.0 features, you may also want to give a shot to RIA features. In simple words RIA is just where desktop applications meet web applications. Think about the difference between the old way of viewing online maps and now how Google has transformed that with Google Maps, allowing users to drag, zoom, and change overlays in real-time.