Contents
If you are a lover of gaming, you may be considering using your time on lockdown to create your own gaming blog or website. Perhaps you already have a website and you’re looking for ways to improve it? From game review websites to online gaming platforms; we have put together a collection of tips to give you a helping hand.
Add Some Interesting Content To Your Gaming Website
There is only one place to begin when it comes to your gaming website, and this is with content! After all, content is what is going to draw people in. Master it, and it is also going to be what keeps people coming back. You can show yourself as an expert and build loyal and meaningful connections with people by having the right content.
If you are in lockdown at the moment, there is no better time for you to start adding some interesting content to your website. Whether you want to refresh your homepage content or focus on your blog, make the most of this opportunity.
Adding some useful blog content is highly recommended. If you do not have a gaming blog, now is the perfect time to start one. You will be able to connect with other people while also improving your search engine optimization strategy at the same time.
Is Your Gaming Website Responsive Yet?
Web design and development is something every organization needs, whether they operate locally or across the world. If you’re looking to either redesign an existing gaming website or build a new one, you may have heard the term ‘responsive website design’ (RWD). But what exactly does this mean and would it be beneficial to your business?
The answer is, in all likelihood, yes. Responsive design websites are a favorite of Google. This tech giant’s search algorithms (the maths that work out what search results appear to users) are more likely to feature websites that are responsive over websites that are not. Therefore, professional responsive websites are very important.
This is especially important in the gaming industry. After all, a lot of people play games on their mobile phones today. Cross-platform gaming is one of the most important trends in the industry, and so if you don’t have a responsive website to go with it, you’re going to be doing yourself a monumental injustice.
As for what a responsive website is; then simply put, this ensures a website is designed with all screen sizes in mind. A responsive site will either scale up the website to fit onto a desktop browser page or will shrink down to fit comfortably on a Galaxy 10 screen. The user doesn’t need to select between a mobile or desktop version of your site. Instead, the development tech behind the website is smart enough to provide a version of the site that suits each visitor’s browsing device.
This doesn’t just help your website receive a better chance of appearing higher on Google rankings, it also means that you’re spending less money on developing separate mobile and desktop websites. There are even website builders for creating responsive sites today.
Responsive Web Design Is A Requirement
Responsive web design has steadily grown to become essential for organizations. Responsive web design is a must for any business that wants to have any sort of meaningful online presence. If Google wants it, you need to deliver it, and Google wants your website to be responsive!
Responsive sites have been recommended by Google, and this high profile technological expert even states that they are vital to achieving high rankings in search results. To put it simply, Google rewards sites that have been optimized to work on mobile screens; and that’s because the company understands the importance of mobile usage in today’s world.
People now spend twice as long online with their smartphones than they even do with their laptops and personal computers. This is not just to do with increased smartphone availability, but the access provided by widespread internet coverage thanks to 4G technology.
While many businesses have created mobile versions of their websites over the years, these websites often lack functionality and have a poor design. It also means two websites require maintenance instead of one. For all of these reasons, it should be clear to see why you need a web design company to help build a responsive website.
Consider Using This Time To Make Your Website Global
Multilingual web design is one of the most important aspects of designing and building your new website. This builds on the web’s core principle, usefulness, and growth. You will increase your web sites adaptivity and responsivity by working with multiple languages, thus increasing the number of users who can interact with your content.
The best way to enact this is to work with a content-out approach which is device-agnostic (i.e one which is not focused on or native to a single platform). Here are some ways to add a multilingual responsive design…
Firstly don’t confuse different scripts, languages, and countries. Whilst you should endeavor to contextualize what you are doing to local markets rather than countries. Many countries are bi or multilingual, as such, there isn’t always a correlation between language and country. If your audience is global rather than a specific local region, country or language, you should not associate content translation with individual language. An example of this would be not having users click on a UK flag for English translation when they may be coming from the USA, Canada or New Zealand. Scripts are the written interpretation of a language, though languages can be represented in more than one script or a single script can be used for multiple languages. As these can have political and cultural overtones the script you use should depend on the target market.
Consider your main market, are you localizing for each market or offering translations? Label your language options in neutral ways and make sure to consider cultural implications when determining scripts for each language.
You also need to test your website across borders. This is where a VPN helps. You will be able to mask your IP address, connecting to an IP address in another location. You can then use this to view what others are viewing in those countries. For example, if you are based in the US, you could use a VPN to change to an Australian address, so you can see how anyone in Australia can view your website. This allows you to see what your site is going to look like across borders, testing your website effectively and making sure there are not any issues.
Work On Your Social Media Presence
Last but not least, your website is a part of your overall online presence. Make sure you are firing on all fronts in this regard. If you have not had time to build up a strong presence on social media, now is the time to do so. Firstly, you need to figure out where your gaming community lies. What social media platforms are they using? This will depend on the sort of games you’re interested in and the market you are appealing to. You then need to build your online presence, ensuring your personality shines through. Posting continually is critical, and there are solutions to help with this.
So there you have it: some of the things you can do to edit or create an effective gaming website while on lockdown. We hope that you have found this blog post helpful!