There are many things that need to be taken into consideration when designing a website for yourself or your company. More often than not, it’s not enough to have an aesthetically pleasing website. It should also provide enough functionality, both for its users, and for yourself or your webmaster.

Let’s see some important questions and answers that you should have in mind before publishing your website. Of course, these solutions will also be helpful if your website is already live.

Is My Website Crawler-friendly?

Crawling is an automated process handled by bots that indexes the websites that are published on the world wide web. Every large search engine, and most of the smaller ones, have their own proprietary web crawlers.

To increase your website’s friendliness towards web crawlers, have the following in mind:

• Web crawlers can’t index links that are written in Flash, Ajax, or Java. Some current crawlers have the ability to index these links, but their number is extremely low,

• Web crawlers cannot complete forms. If navigation on your website is done through forms, crawlers will not index any subsequent pages,

• Your website needs authoritative links. These are links to and from other websites. Once you start building these links, your website will rise in search rankings,

• Create a site map in HTML or XML. If you build your sitemap links correctly, the majority of web crawlers will be able to index every listed page.

Am I Using Google Analytics?

If you don’t already know it, Google Analytics is simply the most powerful software that you can use to analyze everything related to your website. You can opt for the free version or the Premium version, and it even has a mobile version, for when you’re on the move. The most important features of Google Analytics are:

• User-Friendly - every single website statistic can be accessed through the main dashboard. Each graph, table, list, and so on, is made easy to read and understand. Using Google Analytics on a regular basis can help improve your website’s search rankings through its impressive delivery of information,

• Seamless Integration with AdWords - understanding the conversion rate of your users is essential in order to maximize profits. The AdWords integration offers an easy view of every aspect of your advertising campaigns, landing page leads, amount of conversions, and so on,

• Website Optimizer - is a tool that was once offered as a separate software solution. Now, it’s fully integrated into Google Analytics, providing the webmaster with valuable information regarding website performance, content, and even conversions.

How Is My Content Delivery?

Content delivery is one of the most crucial aspects that can hinder or boost your website’s overall performance while also increasing your user's experience. The easier it is for your users to navigate through your content, the higher your conversion rates. There are three main rules that you need to follow in order to make sure that your website is highly functional and your content delivery is spot-on:

• Make It Quick and Simple - your visitors will get bored really quick. If you don’t lead them fast towards a purchase, they might stop using your website mid-through. Remove all unnecessary media files, flashy content, and boring forms. Moreover, make sure that your media files are always compressed. Faster responding websites are always better,

• View Your Website Through Your User’s Perspective - your visitors and customers are the ones that drive your company forward and your profits upward. Understanding how they use your website can help you redesign certain pages in order to make them easier to access, understand, and use,

• Provide Easy User Assistance - providing even a simple function, such as live chat, can help your business flourish. Whenever users feel disgruntled, they’re more likely to leave your website. Offering easy support can work wonders. Moreover, creating explicit error messages can also help improve user experience and increase conversion rates. Next time one of your users encounters an error while using your website, make sure the error message also provides a useful solution.