What instructions should be given to web designers to start web development of a new website?

DESIGN BRIEF

If you are not using Web Designer Perth (PWD) following are some instructions I recommend you share with your web designer after a $44 keyword research brainstorming session with me.

Why is a good web development design brief important?

A good web development design brief is important for developing a new website to ensure future success in search engines, brand marketing and engagement with site visitors.

  • A good site structure that makes it easy and logical to move from one area to sub-sections and to other areas.
  • Good web development planning includes a website built with SEO in mind for the future. Eg selection of
    • a LIGHTWEIGHT WordPress theme because the page load speed is an important search engine ranking signal. I recommend to my SEO clients that they do not pay the balance of their web development project until pages have at least an 80% page load speed score according to Google’s PageSpeed Insights analysis too.
    • minimal number of the best plugins.

If you don’t recommend the following to your web designer, it’s like going down the wrong rabbit hole, coming out and starting all over again. Believe me, the hours you and your web developer put in plus the blame game is something you won’t want to go over again.

Web development design brief Perth Australia.

Good Web Design Brief Ideas

  1. Please familiarise yourself with keywords that Ben shares with you and your web designer on the Google Drive folder for your business. 
  2. All pages must be indexable.
  3. Use the lightweight Sydney WordPress theme
  4. Keep the site elegant, professional and simple.
    1. Minimal use of js and css
  5. Page URLs must have keywords in them.  That includes:
    1. Image file name.
    2. No stop words like: the, in, at, of.  No dirty URL.
  6. If you don’t have a logo, ask your web designer to design a logo and add it to the top LHS of web pages.
  7. Links (hypertext) MUST have descriptive text. No to bad examples “READ MORE” or “MORE INFORMATION”
  8. Please read image optimisation
    1. Optimise all images before uploading.
    2. Use .webp next generation images.
    3. Keywords in all image file names. No “dirty URL” including image file names eg no numbers or special characters.
    4. Correct image formats: png for simple colour images like logos, jpg or better still .webp next-generation images.
    5. Hero (header images can be 1920 x 1080) others should be in the ratios:
      1. 16:9 eg 1920x1080px for hero images
      2. 4:3  eg 800x600px  or  600x400px  or  400x300px
      3. 1:1  eg  512x512px
  9. Create and add a favicon.
  10. Page titles need to be a mix of upper and lower case. Eg the home page, Web Development Perth.
  11. Only install a minimum number of plugins necessary and only install FREE plugins:
    1. Elementor page builder plugin.
    2. Yoast SEO.
    3. EWWW Image optimiser
    4. Litespeed cache management
    5. Akismet
    6. delete the “Hello Dolly” plugin
  12. On the server
    1. File compression “On”
    2. The latest or second latest version of PHP. (In WordPress check site health to see if there are any things needed in PHP)
    3. Enable Lightspeed
    4. Redirect http and www to httpS
  13. Ensure there are no site updates needed at the time of finishing web development.
  14. Disable comments
  15. Ask your web developer to create a dofollow link to your new site from their web development website from your portfolio page.
  16. Text:
    • Minimum size of 14px or 1.2 rem.
    • All text must be left justified except headings (H tags) which I like centred) and image captions.
    • Footer text:  © 2024 Your Brand. Marketing by SEO Perth
    • Must have sufficient contrast to meet Google’s font contrast standards. That includes hover font colour change colour.
    • Line height spacing should be sufficient to keep clickable links on consecutive lines far enough apart to avoid fat fingers tapping the wrong target.
    • Options: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Roboto or Poppins fonts,
  17. CLS (layer shift) errors must be avoided. Don’t you hate it when you go to click a link and all of a sudden an image load pushes your target link out of the way and you click the wrong link? Google hates it too.
  18. Please make Ben ben@4sitepromotion.biz an admin user
  19. Make the site owner a user of the website.
  20. Please check site for broken links using siteliner.com. Ensure no broken links.
  21. Keep page load speed performance above 80%. Installing EWWW, configuration to convert images to .webp before uploading images will help with page load speed.

What are the selection criteria for choosing the best web hosting service provider?

  1. Reliability is most important. Ask, before you sign up what has been your hosting reliability percentage in the past year. You need a truthful response of at least 99.7%. Unfortunately, some front companies or agents for web hosting service providers are not honest.
    • Has the host’s data centre got:
      • Standby generators for their uninterrupted power supplies (UPS)?
      • Well-trained staff to protect against hackers?
      • Good data centre perimeter security? Eg cameras, guard dogs, patrols, bomb-proof walls, etc.
  2. Level of support. When you have a technical issue with support, you’ll need a response that is
    • Quick. Most use a ticket and/or chat system to communicate. Some like Hostaway in Perth offer a good, fast phone response. When you phone Hostaway, a human answers the phone. I love that.
    • Capable, professional
    • Helpful, problem solvers
  3. Use a local host. If your target market is local you don’t need a CDN for a local web hosting service provider. If you choose a host far from Perth make sure they have a CDN near Perth.
  4. The need for speed is a selection criterion.
    • Page load speed is a search engine ranking signal. Ask if they use solid-state hard drives in their data centre.
    • Does the web host have a LiteSpeed server?
  5. Ask about co-location (how many other websites share the same hard drive that your site is on) or ask about the more expensive option of a dedicated server for your websites.
  6. If you own multiple websites, from a management point of view it is easier to have them hosted with one web host however from an SEO point of view, the benefit of your sites cross-linking to each other from different servers is worth consideration.
  7. The least important consideration is the price. Even if it was $356 per day excluding tax, that works out at only $1 per day. If your business for example earns you on average $100 per day and your site is down for a week, you’ve lost $700 – $7 = $693.
    I don’t want to make a profit on reselling web hosting. It’s not my core business, so I recommend you deal directly with good Perth web hosting service providers. I also:
    • resell good, reliable web hosting @ $44 per year including GST but at that near-cost price, only for my digital marketing clients and SEO clients, otherwise it’s $200 per year inc GST for non-customers. ie Good professional web hosting @ a price in Perth of 55 cents per day inc GST.

Author: Ben Grummels, Perth SEO Expert and Perth influencer.

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