5 Ways To Ensure That Your Website Is Future-Proof!

In today's online world, it can seem almost impossible to ensure that your website and web design actually offers any kind of longevity. The industry standard for practically everything seems to change on a weekly basis. The best digital marketing and social media strategies from last year are now completely out of date, a responsive website design has gone from a luxury to an absolute necessity and the way that customers interact online is completely different from the standards of just a few short years ago.

Good designers and developers all recognise that the job of great web design is an ongoing one. There will never be one final standard for the very best website for businesses, and your online presence will constantly need to be in a state of evolution.

In order to keep up to date, and become truly future-proof, all web design must be flexible and adjust to new devices, technologies and standards. Technology will change, and it will continue to change, but you need to ask yourself whether it's worth having an online presence that will need to be completely re-imagined every time technology changes.

Why Does Your Website Design Need To Be Proofed Against The Future?

There is a range of reasons why your online presence needs to be effectively proofed against the potential risks that new technology might prove to your online solution.

• Return On Investment – If you are constantly undertaking complete overhauls of your online presence, the cost will quickly accumulate. If you do so every time a new piece of technology comes out which might affect your website, you're definitely going to go hugely over budget and possibly even bankrupt yourself. Creating a great website can fairly expensive to do multiple times a year, or even yearly.
  With a future-proofed, responsive web design, you needn't completely overhaul your online presence all the time – instead, you can slowly evolve your website to ensure that it keeps up with the best standards for user-friendly design.
  
  
• User Experience – If you constantly change your website design, then user experience is definitely going to suffer. Your customers and visitors will become used to a certain layout and grow comfortable with your design – taking that design away can alienate your customers and sever any connection that they might have had.
  
  
• Brand Identity And Familiarity – Changing your online presence regularly can cause long-lasting damage to your brand identity. It suggests that your business isn't really certain about itself, and can damage your brand identity and cohesion. Your customers will grow familiar with your business and constantly changing your design, layout and more is never a good decision.

How Can You Ensure That Your Online Solution Is Future-Proof?

1. Select The Fright Framework – There are several different frameworks in use today, and they each offer different ways of website development. The majority of developers will tend to use the same system, because it is the easiest and the most effective, and it is usually the developers themselves who decide which becomes the industry standard.

By basing your online presence on the most popular framework, you are greatly increasing the likelihood that your system will continue to be relevant well into the future.

o Twitter Bootstrap – The Bootstrap framework is the latest innovation in the website design world, and it can make the creation of all kinds of websites much easier, faster and better overall.

Perhaps one of its biggest advantages is that Bootstrap is responsive and can e used to create sites which will quickly and easily transfer to suit the requirements of a particular device.

o LESS CSS – LESS has exploded in popularity within development circles in the past few years. Thanks to its recent additions to the larger Bootstrap platform, developers can easily use LESS mixins and CSS manipulations to customise the built-in grid.

2. Use The Best Basic Platform – A wholly platform-enabled website is a great idea, simply because it allows new functionality to be integrated as part of an external application programming interface (API). It is absolutely essential that the platform itself includes integration points, which are places within the platform where new functionality can be easily plugged in.

Fortunately, here at Advansys; we can offer websites using a range of different platforms with their own unique advantages. Most basic web designers will rely on Wordpress to work as the centre of their online presence, but there are many issues with this common system. For example, there are many harmful, badly-designed plugins as well as multiple security risks within the CMS itself.

o Razor – A completely bespoke platform designed and developed by Advansys. Razor is capable of creating the best websites out there, and is a comprehensive eCommerce solution. As a further advantage, it is designed to allow easy SEO strategies to be implemented, and features the very latest in modern technology. Razor is our unique CMS, which is easily able to evolve your online presence as newer technology and trends begin to develop.

3. The Right Hosting Help! – It's a great idea to have a host provider that allows you to stage your website whilst you test plugins and designs. This way, you can test any updates and changes to allow your website to grow as required, though without risking any potential losses during the transition period.

If your host provider doesn't offer this service, then you need to find one. Staging a website is a great way to help when it comes to future proofing a website.

Remember that hosting is a hugely important part of utilising your online platform correctly. If your host is cheap, but unreliable, then a lot of the work that you've put into the design itself will be quickly undone.

o What Should You Look For In A Host? – There are a range of different features you should look for in a host provider, including:

§ Managed Upgrades;

§ Regular Backups;

§ Restore-Points;

§ Enterprise Site Architecture;

§ No Caching Plugins;

§ A Firewall And Malware Scanning;

§ An Integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN);

4. Editable Website Options – Creating a website with a range of future proof options is extremely time consuming, but it really will help to save you money in the long run. Flexibility in terms of modern websites is extremely important, and you need to be able to make the most of a simple CMS in order to allow you to quickly and easily make changes yourself. Long gone are the days when any and all changes needed to be made by developers.

You need to choose a website development platform which will allow you to make changes, to pages and content and a range of other aspects, to ensure that you can truly enjoy the very best in terms of a future proofed website.

5. Is Your Website Device Ready? – Although there are still many mobile websites hanging around, for the best results you want to ensure that your website is completely responsive. As a relatively new feature, responsive design is still in the process of catching steam and is a major need for most businesses.

o What Is A Responsive Website? – A responsive eCommerce solution is designed to adapt to the specifics of a particular device. For example, this can mean adjusting the layout and size of content, including text, images and video, to fit in with the screen size of a mobile device. Some of the many benefits of a responsive design include:

§ Mobile-Friendly – Now that mobile device usage is taking the online world by storm, no business can afford to offer a sub-standard mobile solution. Any website that can't remain connected with its customers through their mobile device is giving up a major advantage in the eCommerce competition.

§ Increased Usability – Since the site actively adjusts itself to the user's favourite gadget, the UX of the entire interaction will increase dramatically. Viewers won't get irritated by pages that don't load correctly or require annoying left-right scrolling. Primarily, responsive website design works to ensure that visitors remain on your web page.

§ More Relevant – Mobile users, as a rule, tend to look for quick interactions and information. They don't need or want to have to hunt through lots of information in order to find what they're looking for. Responsive design automatically abbreviates a site down to its most basic information. Therefore, it's ideal for optimising an eCommerce solution for a mobile user.

§ SEO-Friendly – Instead of having to undertake several different optimisation efforts, responsive designs allow you to concentrate all of your SEO efforts on a single location. This means that your content and links all lead to the one domain, with no site-slowing, customer-annoying side effects. Aside from this, Google and other search engines all love websites which can offer a great service on all devices.

Simple Tips To Keep Your Site's SEO Proofed For The Future

Now, we know that was pretty information heavy, but here are four simple tips which can help you to ensure that your website is protected against the future of digital marketing, website design and eCommerce solutions.

• Remember To Keep Things Simple – At all times, try to keep your CMS as simple and manageable as possible. It can be much easier to evolve and make alterations when you're working with a simple eCommerce solution.
  
  
• Make Sure That Everything Works – Always make sure that everything works as smooth as possible. Make sure that all your links are heading where they should do and that you know where and when you can add pages and content to your website.
  
  
• Keep An Eye On Your Links – As well as making sure that all your internal links work, remember to keep your site clear of 'spammy' links which will only bring your website trouble in the long run. Accept all links from good, relevant, authority websites and try to avoid low-quality links from bad websites.
  
  
• Create Quality Content – Great content is the centre point of all well-performing websites. If you want your website to do well and stand the test of time, then all of your content has to be extremely high-quality.

Future Proofing Your Website's Security

With the way that cyber threats and security are constantly evolving, it can be practically impossible to truly optimise your website to ensure that it is protected against threats in the future. The only real way to ensure that your site is protected is to work alongside a team of website professionals. At Advansys, we are fully PCI compliant and can provide the highest levels of cyber security to your online business.

Evolution: The Only Real Way To Ensure That Your Website Is Proofed Against The Future

Here at Advansys, we understand that technology and user expectations will continue to evolve. The only way you are ever going to be able to enjoy an online presence which is fully protected against the future is to ensure that you are never left behind. Your online presence will need to constantly grow and develop to keep your customers happy.

Get In Touch With Advansys' Professional Team Today

If you're looking for a reliable eCommerce solution, which is fully PCI compliant, get in touch with our team of specialist website developers today. We are able to provide the very best online platforms for a diverse range of businesses, including B2C, B2B and service-based companies.

For more information, please don't hesitate to contact our team today on 0845 838 2700, Alternatively, you can email any questions or concerns that you might have to sales@advansys.com.