Website best practices are essential in web design because they ensure that a site is user-friendly, accessible, and optimized for performance. Following these guidelines helps create a consistent and intuitive experience for visitors, which increases engagement and reduces frustration. For example, our responsive design ensures that websites look and function well across different devices and screen sizes, while proper navigation structures make it easy for users to find information quickly. These practices also contribute to better accessibility, allowing individuals with disabilities to interact with the site effectively, which is not only ethical but a legal requirement.
In addition to improving user experience, website best practices play a critical role in search engine optimization (SEO) and overall site performance. Clean coding standards, fast loading times, and mobile optimization are all factors that search engines consider when ranking websites. By adhering to best practices, we can improve our visibility online and attract more organic traffic.
Follow OSU Branding Guidelines
Our website theme provides you with the OSU Brand fonts and colors. Using the predefined color scheme leads to a feel of consistency between our pages.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Keywords are relevant search terms that you want your page to appear for, and strategically adding them to your content can help you rank higher.
Use Alt tags on your images
Structured Data and Schema Markup — Utilizing structured data and schema markup helps search engines understand the content and context of a website, enhancing visibility in search results through rich snippets.
Digital Accessibility Requirements
Effective April 24, 2026, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the federal government requires the university to meet new digital accessibility technical standards for materials on websites and mobile apps.
OSU Digital Accessibility website
Images
Images must have text alternatives that describe the information or function represented by them. This ensures that images can be used by people with various disabilities. This will also improve the SEO for the page.
Alt text should Describe the Content and Function:
- Be concise: Alt text should be short and to the point, aiming for a few words or a short phrase.
- Focus on relevance: Describe what the image communicates and how it relates to the surrounding text.
- Avoid redundancy: Don't repeat information already present in the surrounding text or image captions.
- Use natural language: Write in a way that sounds natural and easy to understand.
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Credit the image source: This helps with legal compliance issues with copyright infringement.
- Photo: Adobe Stock
- Credit: Lynn Ketchum, OSU
- Source: Jay Pscheidt/OSU Extension Service
- (Photo by Jonny Armstrong, courtesy of Oregon State University.)
*ADA, SEO, Copyright
Use the Heading tags for page structure.
Heading tags in HTML are important for both ADA compliance and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They communicate the organization of content on the page and help users navigate. Proper use of heading tags can reduce the risk of legal complaints and make websites accessible to users of assistive technologies.
The <h1> to <h6> tags are used to define HTML headings. Nest headings by their rank (or level). The most important heading has the rank 1 (<h1>), the least important heading rank 6 (<h6>).
Our theme uses the <h1> and <h2> tags as part of the page heading, so the content section of your page will start with an <h3> tag.
Headings with an equal or higher rank start a new section, headings with a lower rank start new subsections that are part of the higher ranked section.
Skipping heading ranks can be confusing and should be avoided where possible: Make sure that a <h3> is not followed directly by an <h5>, for example. It is ok to skip ranks when closing subsections, for instance, a <h3> beginning a new section, can follow an <h5> as it closes the previous section.
*ADA, SEO
Simplify your navigation
Navigation is one of the most important design elements on a website. It impacts whether visitors arrive on your homepage and browse or click the “Back” button. That’s why it’s important to keep it as simple as possible. We recommend 5 to 6 items in your top menu bar.
Planning out intuitive navigation helps visitors find what they're looking for.
Ideally, a visitor should land on your site and not have to think extensively about where to click next. Moving from point A to point B should be as frictionless as possible.
Optimize for mobile
Our themes are designed to be responsive.
That might mean altering or removing some elements that would clutter smaller screen sizes or negatively impact load time.
A fast-loading website and mobile optimization are non-negotiable in 2025. With most searches occurring on mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly website is essential for maintaining high search rankings.
Our visitor profile: 61% Desktop, 37% smart phone
Make your Call To Actions (CTA) stand out
CTAs are elements on a web page, advertisement, or another piece of content that encourages the audience to do something. The call to action could be to sign up, subscribe, apply, or learn more, among many others.
You want your CTAs to pop in your website design. To make that happen, consider how you’re using color as well as other elements like background color, surrounding images, and surrounding text.