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The Puzzle of Home Page Design

The Puzzle of Home Page Design

Home page design is not almost headers, content, and footers. It’s about asking the proper questions and ensuring those questions apply to your website visitors. It’s about finding solutions to problems and then bringing it together within a cohesive design.

Have You Ever Wondered?

  • How do I make my website memorable?
  • How do I confirm sure people stick when they hit my home page?
  • How do I confirm website visitors probe my content and explore my products or service offering?
  • How do I confirm website visitors take a flash to succeed in bent us by email, phone, or inquiry form?

Define Your Website Personas and make a Roadmap for Every

We now got to work further and dig deeper. Our next step is to obviously identify and document who involves your website. If we will group these visitors into segments, we’ll be ready to better market to them. We call these groupings website personas.

Here are two examples of personas:

  • University – Future students, parents of students, existing students, or future faculty members
  • Shoe Store – Men, women, boys, girls

Dig out a bit of paper and make website personas by segmenting your target market into individual groups. For each group, identify the subsequent key elements:

  • Persona name
  • Demographics
  • Pain points and/or needs
  • The offering that meets their unique needs
  • Path to persona-based content
  • Call to action for converting into lead, sale, etc.
Creating the Ideal Home Page

Creating the Ideal Home Page

A WordPress theme is not the starting point. A theme is just a way by which you’ll reach your final destination.

First Impressions are Critical

Your home page creates the first impression

It immediately begins to inform your story and allows you to attach with visitors. Make sure your home page is welcoming, professional-looking, answers questions, builds trust and provides clear direction.

You can’t just jump to style without first thinking through your story, the answers you would like to supply, your ability to create trust, and therefore the manner during which you need to provide direction.

Defining and designing your home page is the most vital thing you’ll neutralize in website development.

Don’t jump during and rush ahead during a hurry to execute. It will fail to supply what you would like and it’ll create a negative first impression that you simply cannot eliminate.

What Should You Consider in Your Website Refresh?

There are lots of elements that go into the core design of a website, referring to the main design elements, the home page, header and footer.

Below is a list of some website design elements we review, discuss, and plan for in the early stages of our projects:

Elements of a Website Header:

  • Logo
  • Tagline
  • Social media icons and/or references
  • Search box
  • Primary navigation menu (core destinations)
  • Secondary navigation menu (secondary destinations such as account or login)

Elements of the Core Home Page:

  • Rotator or static image
  • Video
  • Site introduction or overview
  • Featured content
  • Directions for movement
  • Call to actions
  • Promotions and/or deals
  • Recent blog posts
  • Upcoming events

Elements of Website Footer:

  • Widgets for lists to core content
  • Contact information
  • Site navigation to sitemap, policies, terms and conditions
  • Disclaimers or legal notices
  • Copyright
Setting Up 301 Redirects

Setting Up 301 Redirects

There are multiple ways to line up 301 redirects. Some are geared towards developers, while others are more users friendly and excellent for end users. There are three methods we tend to use and recommend:

.htaccess File

To implement a 301 redirect for websites that are hosted on servers running Apache, you will need access to your server’s .htaccess file. For non-programmers, this will be a touch scary.

htaccess file 301 redirect example

Redirection Plugin for WordPress

If you’re using WordPress, you’ll also use a plugin like Redirection to line up 301 redirects right from within your dashboard. This plugin is extremely intuitive and is straightforward enough for any website owner or blogger to use.

Redirection 301 Redirect Example

WP Engine Dashboard

If you’re using WP Engine hosting, you’ll also use this to line up 301 redirects right within your WP Engine dashboard. The hosting company offers a fast tutorial about the 301 process to help in these efforts.

WP Engine 301 Redirect Example

Upgrading Your Website? Don’t Forget 301 Redirects or You’ll Be Sorry

301 redirects help protect the website during an upgrade, redesign or move. While they’re very easy to implement, many website owners and developers ditch them and within the process, this derails SEO efforts and may completely wipe off ranking in search.

What is a 301 Redirect?

If you would like to vary the URL of a page because it is shown in program results, Google recommends that you simply use a server-side 301 redirect. This is the simplest thanks to making sure that users and search engines are directed to the right page.

A 301 redirect is a status code that instructs search engines that a page/post has permanently moved to a replacement location. It asks the search engines to transfer prior SEO history to the new piece of content and at an equivalent time, it pushes website traffic to the present new location.

When to Use a 301 Redirect

  • You have moved your site to a replacement domain and you would like to form sure both traffic and SEO history is routed to the new destination.
  • You have changed a URL (page, post, product, category, etc.) and you would like your existing PageRank to transfer to the new URL.
  • You have changed a URL and you want your traffic to the old URL rerouted to the new URL.
  • You are merging two websites and need to form sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the right pages.

What is a Website Builder?

Whether you’re just starting a business or want to move your existing brick-and-mortar business online, you’ll get to locate an internet site builder to you and your brand online.

Website builders accompany a spread of options, so it’s important to seek out one that matches you and your website.

So what is a website builder exactly?

A website builder is a software that permits you to make an internet site online. The software will reside on an internet server at a hosting company or be a part of a hosted SaaS (software as a service) platform.

Or in other words, you are not using your local computer (desktop or laptop) to carry software that will build the website. Instead, you’ll build the website online via software designed specifically for website creation.

Top small business website builders are:

  • WordPress
  • Wix
  • SquareSpace
  • Weebly

Constant arrays using define()

Constant arrays using define()

Array constants can now be defined with define(). In PHP 5.6, they could only be defined with const.

<?php
define('ANIMALS', [    'dog',
'cat',
'bird']);
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Spaceship operator

Spaceship operator

The spaceship operator is used for comparing two expressions. It returns -1, 0 or 1 when $a is respectively less than, equal to, or greater than $b. Comparisons are performed according to PHP’s usual type comparison rules.

<?php
// Integers
echo 1 <=> 1; // 0
echo 1 <=> 2; // -1
echo 2 <=> 1; // 1
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