As a blogger, you may not be interested in the nuts and bolts of web design and development, but you should understand the basics. Here are a few web design and development terms that you should know.
User Experience
The user experience refers to how your readers interpret and interact with your site. It includes everything from navigation, scrolling, link sequences, sidebar placement, and site mapping. You want to make life easy for your users so that they don’t feel stressed or confused when they visit and search through your site. Therefore, a lot of planning goes into developing an incredible user experience to ensure repeat visitors.
- Also read: Simple Mobile Website Design Tips To Help You Gain The Attention Of The Visitors
Responsive Design
Responsive design refers to a website that looks good on all viewing devices. Though users can view websites from laptops and desktops, they increasingly navigate the web on smartphones and tablets. Since smartphones and tablets have much smaller viewing screens, it’s important that your website resizes its content to fit any size screen. It’s helpful to design your website based on small mobile devices first, then add responsive behavior for larger devices such as desktops.
Call to Action
A call to action, or CTA, is a button, link, or pop-up that asks or encourages your users to do something such as sign up for your email list or visit another page on your site. However, just because you have a CTA doesn’t mean your users are going to click the or perform the action. You must strategically design your CTA so that you attract as many users as possible.
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Tags
Tags are extra pieces of information used to place and rank your website on search engines. There are tags for article titles, meta information, and alternate text for images. Meta tags include information such as the author’s name, date of publication, article category, and the number of comments. Alternate text tags, or ALT tags, display text instead of images in case your images don’t load on your users’ screen. ALT tags are also beneficial for search engine optimization and overall website ranking.
HTML and CSS
HTML is the programming language that creates the structure of your website. CSS is a separate programming language that creates the style for your website. CSS defines elements such as the color, size, font family, and text effects. Think of HTML as the foundation, frame, roof, and floors of a home and CSS as the interior design. You don’t have to know much about HTML or CSS, but it does help to have underlying knowledge in case things go wrong. If you aren’t that tech savvy, talk to a professional website builder for help with HTML and CSS issues.
Make a List of New Terms
This list is certainly not exhaustive. As you read more about website design and development, keep a running list of terms you don’t know. Spend a few minutes here and there researching the fundamentals so that you get a better understanding how your site works. If anything, you’ll be able to communicate more effectively with designers and technical support staff when your site needs updates.