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PSD Conversions – The Most Common Mistakes, Anticipate To Avoid

If you have been looking for the best service providers in the industry for your PSD conversion needs, you would have already come across many service providers. You would see every service provider claiming that they are the best in the industry. On the other hand, when you ask the customers for their rating, they will have endless list of issues to relate to with the PSD conversions. Some of the customers may not be technically sound to explain the problems that they are facing with the PSD conversions but they will just know that there is something wrong with the PSD conversions and the functionality of the pages delivered to them. Looking at some of the common mistakes made in the PSD markup handled will help one anticipate those mistakes and in the process avoid them effectively. Discussed below are the list of PSD conversion mistakes that are commonly made.
Before we list the common mistakes, it is important to understand why such mistakes or errors are prevalent to the extent we consider them or list them as common mistakes. Should not the PSD markups be totally free from these mistakes too which we call them common. Just because we call them as common mistakes, it does not mean that they should be allowed or tolerated.
Lack of experience – This is one of the most common reasons why PSD conversions end up with problem. If you happen to hire a service provider with limited experience for whatever reasons, then you should be prepared to receive sloppy work. There is nothing that could replace industry experience. Never compromise on this factor when you are hiring your PSD conversions company.
Use of automated conversion software – Another common problem is the use of automated software for the conversions. Software tools cannot really do 100% justice to your conversion needs. If you want accurate, pixel perfect conversions then it is ideal to go for manual conversions. You cannot expect the automated coding to be 100% compliant with W3C standards. With manual coding, there may be a few errors but complete mess up of the coding will not be there. You need to therefore look for companies that will provide you with 100% manual conversions.
Rushed work – Thirdly, you might have hired a company that offers 100% manual coding and the company that is also highly experienced. Despite these credentials, mistakes do happen in the conversions. If your service provider bites more than they could chew, take up more work than that they could possibly handle in any given time frame. This makes them work under great pressure, which make them produce poor quality work. In case your company happens to have a very high attrition rate, they will have tough time handling the orders in a smooth way. They will end up doing poor quality work. Choosing credible service provider with vast experience and with a reasonably large team size will help you get quality work done.
Let us get to our original agenda of listing some of the common mistakes that people make with PSD to HTML conversions:

Syntax related issues

This is one of the most frequently spotted issues. When it comes to the proper functioning of the codes, syntax is everything. Every piece of code has to adhere to a specific syntax. The toleration level here is zero. In other words, you are either correct or incorrect as far as the syntax is concerned. There is nothing like ‘partially correct’ because if the coding does no adhere to the expected syntax then that particular piece of code will not do what it is supposed to be doing. In other words, the page will run into series of issues. The functionality of the page will be affected.

Closing of tags

How frequently do we come across tags that are not closed correctly? Good majority of the problems will be solved if only those coding experts looked at this little piece of detail, most of the problems would not have emerged. Just by failing to close a tag or closing, it at the wrong notch could make the entire page inaccessible. Even though it is one of the silliest of all mistakes, it could go everything topsy-turvy. One of the challenges is that it is not that easy to spot this error. Identifying the error in this case proves to be a cumbersome task especially when you have to plough to hundreds of lines of codes in every page.

Wrong DOCTYPE Attribute

For the browsers to understand correct Doctype has to be declared. Wrong attributes here could lead to problem and the browser may not display the pages correctly. If you hire an experienced and reputed company for PSD conversions, they will run at least a basic quality control test. This will capture mistakes like these. When your service provider does not care about testing the pages, they will deliver your pages without testing them.

Extensive use of special characters

Those who come with SEO background will know what special characters could do to your ranking and the indexing of the pages. This may not reflect as a mistake but when you use special characters excessively, you will have problems with the search engines. When you take SEO efforts, you will notice that pages that use special characters excessively will not produce proportionate results. Experienced SEO experts when they review your pages will identify this issue and optimize the page. If you do not want your website to be in a disadvantageous position with regard to ranking and indexing then, this issue has to be addressed before any SEO effort is made.

Lack of discretion in using inline CSS

Inline css is dead and gone long back but many half-baked coders use inline css without any discretion. They do not understand how this will make the pages sluggish. Professional coding experts always avoid inline css. Loading your pages with hundreds of lines of inline styling codes will affect the performance of your pages badly. This will also result in your pages having problem with the search engine indexing. Search engines will fail to crawl your pages fully. Partially crawled pages is one of the reasons websites have poor ranking. If you do not want your pages to run into this issue then proper css coding style should be used. If you work with the experts, you will save yourself from this problem.

Not using proper ALT attribute for images

Improper or no alt attribute is an indication of lazy coding style. It is not just a mistake but a huge blunder not to take advantage the ALT attribute. Search engines do not understand images. Even though image recognition researches are underway full swing, top search engines including Google has not advanced to the level of correct interpretation of the images. This is not an area where the situation is likely to change. It takes human intellect to interpret images taking the context into account. Using ALT attribute effectively will get you that extra leverage that you are likely to miss out otherwise. This should not be mistaken for keyword density like many mediocre service providers without any SEO background do. If you think ALT attribute will improve your keyword density, then you are wrong because gone are the days whereby ranking was decided just based on the keyword density and back link power. Google has a far advanced algorithm now. Google looks into hundreds of factors before it considers your web pages to be ranked in the first ten results. Therefore, even the ALT attribute has to be used in an intelligent way to tap the potential appropriately.

Taking no cognizance of the SEO side

Today web professionals should know everything of everything. Web designer should be able to think from the perspective of the coding expert even if they do not know the technical intricacies of coding. Programmers should be able to look at the coding of the pages from the SEO perspective. Your coder cannot say that they are coding experts and they do not think SEO if that is the case then we cannot imagine the damage that they could possibly be causing to your website. Every aspect of the markup should be taking into account the search engine friendliness of the pages that they are converting.

Not optimizing the pages for good page speed score

Lately poor page speed score is killing many websites. Google has come down very strongly on page loading speed. This also includes responsiveness of the websites. The pages have to load equally fast in mobile browsers and in the desktop browsers. As opposed to what many people think regarding page speed score to a large extent it has to do with the way the pages are coded and not the design part. It is not just the large file sizes of the images that are used in the web pages that affect the page speed score. Make sure that your service provider gives importance to page speed score. Even if they do not commit to any specific page speed score, they should guarantee you fast loading pages.
These are some of the many coding issues that are commonly found in PSD to HTML or XHTML coding. Each one of them when considered individually may sound like a trivial and correctable issue. However, when you do not know that what is causing the issues when your pages are behaving in a funny way then it could be very challenging to identify the issues before it is rectified. Imagine, if all the issues that we have listed above should be present in the pages delivered to you then what will be the quality of your website. Do not think that it is an extreme situation to expect all the above issues to be present together in the markup given by your service provider. You will find not only these but many more issues present within a single page and you should not be surprised if you have not taken adequate time to screen and to review your service provider. There are hundreds of such sloppy sites and numerous such unscrupulous companies that continue to claim that they are the best.

Long-term damage

When we are discussing the issues pertaining to PSD conversions, it is important to understand that the impact of these issues do not disappear instantaneously. It just not the mistakes on your web pages but what the search engines have learnt about your website from those issues. In other words, the damages caused to your pages are long term. Until the next time the search engines crawl the pages and update their index, your pages will not see any boost in the search results if search engines have marked you for poor coding standards. The damages caused here are pretty serious.
Many a times there is a lack of awareness in this regard among the website owners. Without knowing the repercussions they simply limit themselves to the cost part when they are selecting their service providers for PSD to HTML conversions. Yes, it is important to find the most competitively priced service providers because, every penny counts. You need to spend your funds in a measured way. Given all that, if you make bad choices just to save a bit, then you need be mindful of the above damages that you could possibly be causing to your website and to your brand.
As you could understand easily, your PSD to HTML, XHTML, WordPress or Magento conversions company has an important role to play in making your website a success. At the same time, they also could ruin the show for you. It is your responsibility to find the best people to handle the coding for your website.

What should you be looking for when you are picking your PSD conversions company?

When you realize that what is involved and where it is likely to take you, then it is very normal that you feel apprehensive about hiring your PSD markup company. Here are few things that you could do to save yourself from the risks.
Do not wait until the last minute to pick your PSD conversions company. Waiting until the last moment will put you in a disadvantageous position whereby you will be forced to go with the first service provider that you come across. You would certainly not want to take such a huge risk.
Secondly, look into the credibility of the service provider. How do you know whether a service provider is a credible player or not? One of the ways of establishing that is by looking at the customer ratings. You need to ensure that these are not sponsored ratings but the actual customers who have used the services of the company.
Portfolio of the service provider will speak for itself. Take time to review the portfolio because that is you will get to assess the quality of the service. You will get to know the actual stuff your service provider is made of, because everyone can make great claims but the claims have to be validated by the quality of the work that they deliver. Do not mistake this for anything else.
Customer support is another key area that will help you establish the quality of your service provider. It is not just the pre-sales support but the post-sales and the post-conversion support that need to be taken into account. All the companies excel when it comes to pre-sales support because they are keen on signing you in and the same enthusiasm is not normally seen post-sales phases. If you can find such a service provider, who is committed and dedicated to customer satisfaction by providing exceptional customer support even after you have signed up with them then such service providers will stand out in the industry. Customers will certainly vouch for the exceptional services that they are offering. Companies that provide long term, on-going support ensure best value for your money. Have a keen eye to spot such service providers.

To conclude

Launching a website for your website is certainly a challenging responsibility. Behind every beautifully designed, fully functional website that ensures customer delight, there is a lot that goes on behind the scene. Your overall success will depend when you are aware of the factors that affect the quality of your website and factors that affect the performance of your website. Yes, of course, it is a challenge but it should not be allowed to demotivate you. Invest your time in understanding the dynamics involved. You need not become a coding expert yourself but understanding the basics is a must. The above information is adequate enough to guard you against most of the risks as long as you are going to make the right choices. Most importantly, ask the right questions to your service provider. You need be a well-informed customer and let your service providers know that you are one.