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Web Design Information |
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Having A User Friendly Website
Let's look at what your user wants to see at your website. 1. No Flash For many who visit your website time is money for you and for them. The last thing people need to see is a slow loading flash front page. Unless your flash page is very unique and interesting enough that it will hold their attention I suggest you loose it. For people on dialup, and yes there are many around the world, a flash page is a download nightmare for them. 2. Page Load Time There is nothing worse than going to a website and waiting more than 15 seconds for that page to load. Many of your visitors don't have the time to wait for a web page to load and nor should they. Timewise, many people will go on to something else if your page is slow to load. Ten years ago 15 seconds and more might have been acceptable but in this day and age of high speed internet this is highly unacceptable. Check this free site for help with load time for your website. Dcotor HTML http://www.doctor-html.com 3. Graphics Do you hate it when your gonto a site for information and finding missing graphics. Worse than missing graphics are graphics that do not at least have an ALT tag which would at least give your visitor some idea of what the graphic was about. When you have ALT tags it also allows search engines to recognize all the content on your site. Make sure to use good keywords and use them often on your page, as it will help you rank higher in the search engines. Use the free link verification program at XENU http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html to ensure that all your graphics are loading. 4. Links Not Working One of my major pet peeves is visiting a site and clicking on a link and finding it does not work. This is one of the fastest ways to loose a potential customer. Broken links are something you should be checking on a daily basis. This is your bread and butter and you can not afford to loose even one potential customer. Again, XENU at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html is an excellent free program to help you keep your website in tip top shape. Also note, search engines do not like missing links and you risk your ranking with them if your site is not up to snuff. Xenu will give you a comprehensive report that shows all broken links and their corresponding pages. 5. Making Your Index Page As Small As Possible The old saying that time is money is never more true than when someone visits your first page. Getting it to load quickly is one of your main objectives. This mean you need to run your page through an HTML optimizer. Doctor HTML http://www.doctor-html.com, a free website, can be invaluable to you when it comes to shrinking your page. Your site will still look the same but will take less time to load. 6. HTML Validation Validating your HTML will help your visitors to have no problems while visiting your website. With valid HTML, browsers will function correctly at your site and with future browser updates people will have a smooth transition. Tidy GUI is a great free program for fixing errors and reducing the size of you page. It can be downloaded at http://www.emailpromotions.net/download/TidyGUI.exe 7. Reduce The Size Of Your Graphics The size of the graphics on your site, and these graphics not loading quickly, can be one of the major reasons for your page to load slowly and for your visitors to leave. Always shrink the size of your images and watch how much faster your website will load. Spinwave http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html is a free online cruncher that can offer a maximum compression of approximately 30%. 8. Your Visitors Browser Not everyone uses Internet Explorer and that leaves you with the problem of making sure that visitors to your site, using Netscape, Mozilla and others, all see the same thing. Unless you ensure compatibility then different browsers are going to display things differently than what you designed or what you see. With some browsers some people may not be able to see anything on your site. To check your website on different browsers visit Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer at http://www.delorie.com/web/wpbcv.html 9. Contacting You No website owner can afford to take its customers for granted. When they need to get in touch with you in order to ask questions, it is imperative that you have easy to find contact information. Nothing is more frustrating than having to search a site to find how to reach you. Your visitors are your livelyhood...keep it simple for your customers. It makes for a great relationship with your visitors. 10. Spell Check Last but not least, check your spelling. No one likes to read a page filled with spelling errors. Most HTML software offers this simple service and it should always be the last thing your check before you upload your page. Jean Sutherland has successfully run her own ezine for over 5 years and has a subscriber base of 35,000. Her ezine revolves around people doing business online and beside offering free software, it also provides traffic & marketing tips, informative business articles, free ebooks and computer tips for those trying to work online. http://www.emailpromotions.net MORE RESOURCES: Tapping Into The Visual Stimulus Of Your Web Site Visitors "Oh, my eyes, my eyes! What an eye sore. Quick, click away! Click away!"Suddenly I wake up in a cold sweat. How To Shop for a Web Design Firm? While few companies can boast as we do that our first ten clients are still with us today, many companies often change Web design firms to get a new perspective on how their Web presence could look and perform. The following paragraphs serve as a Buyer's Guide to use when shopping for a new Web design company. Website Advertising: 10 Dynamic Tactics To Super-Charge Your Sales Here are 10 dynamic website advertising tactics to super-charge your sales, starting now:1. Test different web site color themes to see which combination will sell your product better. What Content to Publish on Your Website Many businesses want a simple website where they tell people what their business is about, some information on the products they offer and a means of contacting them.However, content is vital in the growth of your Internet presence. How Not To Get Web Design Work I get the occasional web design lead from my website. I wanted to find a company I could pass these onto. Website Conversion Secrets Revealed In my last article entitled, Maximizing The True Value Of Your Traffic (found at http://tinyurl.com/2cf84), you discovered the importance of generating positive responses from all your visitors. 10 Things All Webmasters Should Know Geared Up with a website and lots of energy to make a mark online? Spare some time and go through this. You'll be glad you did. Website Design: Color Me Blue Chris, a new consulting client, asked me to help him increase sales on his affiliate marketing site.As he was describing his site and the problem, I thought, "This is going to be a quick fix. Three Things You Must Do When Designing and Building Your Small Business Website If you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function - and that's to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner. How to Find Inexpensive Web Design Web design is a very competitive area and there is no longer any reason why people should pay large amounts for website design services.This article describes and explains where to find very very cheap website design services. Through The Looking Glass My mother used to take me along when she visited an old lady down a cobbled lane who had a crystal ball on her dining room table and a pack of playing cards. My mother was superstitious and really believed a lot of what she was told by the old lady. What Drives Repeat Visitors To Your Site? There can be zillions of reasons why your visitors return to your web site. One might be very interested in seeing your animated photo on your main page, but kidding aside I've gathered 12 elements that invites your visitors to repeat their visits. TEN Answers That Turn Your Visitors Into Your Customers You know.. Why is a Logo so Important to Your Business? Well, a logo for your business. Why is it important? Does it matter what it looks like? Is Yours Professional?These are some good questions to ask when you are considering to get a logo design or already have a logo for your business. Dos and Donts in Web Design - part 1 (design) Do use a consistent look and feel Your site should stand out as a whole. Use the same look and feel for all the pages at your site. Design With Purpose If your website is falling through the cracks, the chances are that the site has no message, no central core to build traffic or a core readership. Websites that try to do everything usually fail. The Secrets of The Shriekers I am constantly bombarded with all sorts of advertisements, single-page sites, and sites offering very little real content but some wonderful new "product" or "service" for sale that purports to make its customers wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.For the purposes of this article, let's refer to Amazing Formula (http://www. Web Designing Tips Easy That's how you'd like life to be, right? Especially when you're creating a website on your own. But that doesn't mean you want the site to look severe and just functional. The Top 8 Website Sins Part One They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Your website then is the window to your business. Designing Your Websites Directory Structure Any kid, and their grandmother too, can make a webpage. There are many "wysiwyg" webpage design applications that let you create a webpage as easy as typing text. Your IP is: ... and you are in ... |
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