The Internet is the most widely-used medium for communication in the world. When you decide it’s time to showcase your business or yourself with a web presence, you’ll want to turn to professionals in web design.Below is 10 Tips to a Professional-Grade Website.

1. Custom Design – Custom website’s layout & themes to match your type of business and organization.  Most important of all, position your website’s graphics & contents on the landing-page strategically so, within the first 60 seconds, the viewers should be able to understand the products/services that you are providing; it is similar to the well-known “Elevator’s Speech”. In addition, thoughtfully custom your site’s navigation menu to make it easy for the viewers to navigate around your website.
2. Easy to Contact:  Always leave contact information on your website, especially on the Contact Us or About Us page.  It can be a phone number, an email address, and/or an office address.  If you are a business that provides services, you may want to place your direct contact information in a highly visible location(s), without it being too interruptive. You want to make it very easy for the customers to get in touch you.
3. Clean Coding – Use clean-coding approach to develop your website for friendly access by search engines.
4. Browser Compatibility – In the web development process, make sure the website is compatible with the five main internet browsers:  Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari.  This would help present your website consistently on different web browsers.
5. Comprehensive Site Optimization – Optimize the website’s images, pictures, and codes to make sure the website is loading fast on the web browsers.
6. Search Engines Submissions – Register your website’s domain(s) with search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo, for better indexing.
7. Website Updates – Once your website is setup and launched, it is very important to maintain your website on a regular basis.  Your website’s contents/images should say what you intended them to say.  In other words, stay current with your website information.
8. Dedicated email address -- This kind of email address is unique in a way that it carries your domain name to help the recipient(s) know that it is coming from your organization.  For example: If your name is John Thomas and your website’s domain is www.MyWebsite.com, then your dedicated email would be JohnT@MyWebsite.com.  Dedicated email helps make your contact information appears professionally online and on paper as well.
9. Google Analytic – Set up a Google Analytic account and then use its analytic-code to embed onto your site.  This tool enables you to generate comprehensive report on your web traffic.  It is most useful when you are running a certain marketing campaign.
10. Website Database Backup – Back up your website’s database weekly or monthly (depend on the kind of website you have), so in case your website is hacked or crashed for some reasons, you can use your most-recent-backup-files to reconfigure the website quickly and bring it back online.

About the Author

Phong T. Nguyen – Strategic Online Marketer & Web Designer - http://www.ProWeb365.com.