"How do you keep your website looking great?"
We get asked this all the time so we have prepared a number of tips to help you get the best from your site.
- Personalise your site: Add your practice logo and images of the practice. The support team can help you customise the slideshow on your site (if your style has one).
- Less is more! Use your home page for introductory text and attention grabbing headlines with links to the bulk of your text. Including a lot of text on your home page, like your news, tends to make the homepage very lengthy and items are easily missed by viewers. Keep the text as short and relevant as possible as search engines will also use the home page headers and text when cataloguing your website.
- Avoid using a lot of different colour texts: It looks messy and can be difficult for visually impaired people. If you need to emphasise something, simply make it bold.
- Use header styles only for titles and headlines. Use paragraph style for the bulk of your text. This helps to keep the page tidy and is better for visually impaired users who may be using screen readers. It is also better for search engines as they will think your website is spamming them if you use headers for the bulk of your text.
- Remove formatting from Word (or other websites): If you are copying and pasting content from another source, such as another website or a Word document, paste the text into Notepad first, then recopy and paste it into the website editor. This removes any formatting code and you can then use the proper editor tools to correctly format your content for the website.
- Ask us to change the font throughout: If you would like the font or text size changed throughout the website please contact us as we can change this very simply throughout the website. Bear in mind though that you should use a font that is standard and web safe for greater accessibility.
- Don’t copy tables into the website from Excel! This adversely affects the formatting of your website and may appear very differently in different viewers’ browsers. It is also bad for accessibility, particularly screen readers. We would also advise against uploading Excel files as these require the appropriate software for viewers to open them. If you wish to add information from an Excel file please print the file to PDF before uploading it. This will enable viewers to open it in their internet browser.
- Use the noticeboard for KEY announcements only. Put your latest news on the latest news page. If you use a catchy headline set as a heading this will appear on the homepage with a link to the main news feature.
- Don't copy images from Google and insert them into your website. These may look good but images placed on your website must be licensed for your use or be your own images. If they are not you may find yourself in receipt of a fine or legal proceedings (this has happened to several practices already with fines of £750 upwards)
- When adding a link set the text in the link to be something descriptive (eg. “download the form”, “see our map” rather than the file name. This looks better and also makes your website much easier for visually impaired users to navigate.
- Crop and resize your images before uploading them to your website. This helps with managing the image on the page and also helps with page loading time. When adding staff photos try to keep all the photos to the same dimensions to prevent your page looking muddled. (Pixlr Express is a really simple and easy to use online photo editor). You can also do this in Paint which is included with Windows as standard.
- Keep in mind dimensions! When sending replacement photos for the homepage slideshow please bear in mind the dimensions and orientation of your slideshow (eg. portrait, landscape, panoramic). The image needs to be of a similar size and orientation, or capable of being cropped to such dimensions, to fit correctly and look good.