The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Webmasters

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by William Nabaza

A highly effective website will always reflect its highly effective webmaster. Throughout the years of doing a number of websites, I've seen quite a few effective webmasters all over the web and I would like to share to you their successes by exploring on this topic: "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Webmasters."

Be Consistent.
Consistency simply means using a common style, design or theme throughout your site. It will also mean optimizing your website because all the elements are already in memory so the next time another page loads, it will be faster. Common elements consists of font usage; logos and icons; headers; footers and backgrounds; and the like.

Keep Your Site Fresh.
Fresh and new content welcomes and attracts new visitors so work hard on your website.

Structure Your Site For Clarity and Efficiency.
Consider the following, when you structure your site:

1) If you sell products/services, always have a link to a single structure of product or service descriptions from the home page.

2) Always have a button or navigation toolbar that allows visitors to at least return to your home page.

3) Most websites benefit from a starting page consisting of a simple logo or banner, and then a set of links to more specific pages. This type of page loads quickly and doesn't make any assumptions about what the user wants to see.

4) Include a toolbar of links to major subjects on your site, such as your starting page, products, customer support and organizational information.

Work Efficiently with automated content tools.
There are lots of web authoring tools out there that automatically create banners, headers, menus, footers, and even categorize a website into themes. It will save you a lot of trouble (not to mention headaches) if you use these tools.

Optimize Content.
Try to view your website using a slow modem, a low resolution monitor and an older version of different browsers. In this way, you can cater to different types of visitors and this one is usually called "graceful degradation." You might as well provide text-only pages for simpler or lower-speed browsers.

Post changes in batches so your website remains consistent.
I may not be able to change theme of my site as a whole frequently but I can do it in groups. In this way your website will appear to be evolving into a better "creature."

It's a Web Wide World: Internationalize.
Here's how to do it:
1) Use graphically obvious buttons rather than words for links.

2) Provide pictures of products and operational diagrams along with descriptions.

3) Use technical language rather than "flowery" ad copy, since technical language is more universal.

4) Survey other members of your organization for language skills and seek their help.

5) When international users complain that you don't have a site in their language, enlist their support in translating it if they are bilingual.