If you are a talented web designer, the Internet is the perfect place for you to showcase your work. However, it does not matter how skilled you are if you do not take advantage of good website building that uses less resources on a web server.

It is with this in mind that we figured it was well about time that we wrote a little something about simple mistakes that people tend to make on their websites, as well as giving you a couple of tips. To begin with, many web designers usually choose either reseller web hosting or server hosting plans. The reason for this is that reseller hosting is great if you want to sell a complete package to your client – everything from the design to the hosting will be included. Server hosting is simply a good alternative as it is one of the strongest and most reliable hosting plans on the market today. Now, let us take a look at mistakes you should avoid.

Common mistakes

Poor navigation

It is crucial that your visitors are able to navigate smoothly on your website. When it comes to the web the phrase less is more should be somewhat of your guiding star. A website that is crammed with images, links and banners will annoy and confuse your visitors, and make them leave your site.

Overusing bandwidth

If you have your website on server hosting, also known as dedicated hosting, you most likely will not have to think about overusing your bandwidth but with shared hosting it is another story. Yes, shared hosting is also pretty solid but try to not push the bandwidth to its limit. Remember that you have to think about the people visiting your site as well – sites with heavy graphics can be quite a struggle for some that have a poor Internet connection.

Complex graphics

Try to avoid complex graphics as it might cause your site not to get indexed by the search engine spiders. Also, in using graphics such as Flash you might force your visitors to download a plugin – something that usually is not all that appreciated.

Tips & Tricks

Internal linking

Try to not only think about the search engines spiders when designing a website. Your visitors are just as, if not even more, important. Help your readers by linking, in a helpful and user-friendly way, within your content. Link to your most important articles or portfolio pieces and showcase them. Create a site map to show both the search engine and visitors where everything on the site is located.

Create pages with good content

To boost the authority of your website you need to create several pages on your website. This way more pages will get indexed by the search engines, but remember what we said above. Your visitors are the most important, so only create pages if they serve a purpose and are easy to navigate.

Remember, your web design portfolio and blog (if you choose to have one) is the virtual spirit of your creativity and ability to develop good, clean websites. If your site is entirely no-indexed, then no one on Google will find you. If your site has high-res graphics, you’ll suck up bandwidth and annoy visitors on low bandwidths. Just as you optimize your clients’ sites, do the same for yourself.

David loves to write about the latest news in the website hosting industry. Make sure to check out his blog at hosting nerds speakeasy. Indeed, he is nerdy.

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