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Fix_Your_Website_Or_Say_Goodbye_To_Sales
| Fix Your Website Or Say Goodbye To Sales
Your website tells a lot about you and your product so if your
website is poorly design you are sure to loose your entire
investment as you will be loosing sales by the minute. In this
article I have outlined some of the common problems common to
website.
In the age we are today, things change fast in the Internet and
so if you are to keep up with your customers and to make
maximise profits as a webmaster, you must be able to design and
re-design your website to reflect the message you pass to your
customers.
Sometimes waiting for your website designers take ages to
effect this changes which you could have been able to do quietly
from your home or office without having to pay lots of money to
web designers and wait on the queue to get to your turn before
the change can be effect. These delays result in loss of sales
most of the time.
There is no way I will ever buy anything from a web site that
has missing images or broken links. I mean, if this webmaster
doesn't care about his web site, he probably could care less
about his customers.
Getting your web site to look good can sometimes be a
hair-pulling experience. Even for me, and I have been making web
sites for over 5 years. I can only imagine how frustrated many
newbies can get.
Let me share with you some of the common problems in designing a
well-functioning web site. If you haven't made these mistakes
yet - trust me: you will! Keep this troubleshooting guide handy
for when you need it (and save some of your hair, too!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1. MISSING IMAGES ON THE
PAGE 2. IMAGE LOADS VERY SLOWLY 3. IMAGE LOOKS DISTORTED 4.
BROKEN LINKS 5. TEXT IS MISSING ON THE PAGE 6. VISITORS CAN'T
SEE YOUR FANCY FONTS 7. TOO MUCH HORIZONTAL SCROLLING REQUIRED
8. THE TABLE IS WIDER THAN SPECIFIED 9. WEB PAGE DISPLAYS OLD
LINKS AND IMAGES 10. BACKGROUND DOESN'T SHOW 11. CAN'T ACCESS
YOUR HOME PAGE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PROBLEM 1:
MISSING IMAGES ON THE PAGE
SOLUTION: There are three things that might cause this problem.
You have either forgotten to upload the image to your web
server, didn't link to it correctly, or the graphic is in
invalid format.
1) Remember, you need to upload all the graphics that you are
using on your web page, just like any other file. So if you have
a "services.html" page that contains "staff.jpg" graphic, you
need to upload both "services.html" and "staff.jpg" to your web
server.
2) You also need to reference that image correctly. For this,
you need to understand a little bit about files, folders, and
directories. Basically, a file is a document. A folder (or a
directory) is a collection of files.
You might have a directory on your web site called "images".
Inside it you might have the "staff.jpg", "logo.jpg", and other
files. Now, here is the trick: if your HTML file is located in
the same folder with the graphic it contains, then here is how
you refer to that image:
So far, simple, right? But let's say that your HTML file is
located in the main directory, while the graphic file is located
in the sub-directory. For example, "services.html" is located in
the root directory of your web site so that if you type
www.yoursite.com/services.html in your browser location bar, you
will see it.
And let's say that you placed a graphic used on that page into a
sub-directory called "images", so that when you type
www.yoursite.com/images/graphic.jpg into your browser location
bar, you will see that image. So how do you refer to that
graphic from your "services.html" page? Here is how:
All I did was put the sub-directory (or folder) name followed by
a forward slash before the graphic name.
Finally, what if you put an HTML page into a sub- directory, but
leave the image in the main (root) directory? For example, your
"services.html" is located in a sub-directory called "pages".
And the graphic used on it, "staff.jpg", is placed in the main
directory, so that when you type this address into your browser
location bar, you will see it: www.yoursite.com/staff.jpg How do
you refer to this graphic on your "services.html" page? You use
the "previous directory" notation like this: The browser will then know, that in order to
find that graphic it needs to look in one directory below. If
you are having trouble understanding the above notation, use
absolute image references. For example:
Make sure you know where you placed your graphic (which folder)
and refer to it as if you were accessing it from your web
browser. That's it!
3) And finally, if you are not using graphics with the "JPG" or
"GIF" extension, they will not appear on your web page. Use
PaintShop Pro or any other graphic editor download.com) to
convert your graphic from any format to "JPG" or "GIF". Broken
images may also happen even if they don't have the right
extension. That's because they have been created in a
not-for-web format. When a graphic artist designs your logo,
remind her to save it as "RGB" (which stands for
"red-green-blue") or "Indexed Color" and not any other color
mode (such as "CMYK"). For more information, see "Choosing the
right format for your images" at http:/
ech.irt.org/articles/js206/index.htm PROBLEM 2: IMAGE LOADS VERY
SLOWLY
SOLUTION: You must do your best to reduce the graphic to its
minimum good-looking format. Use GIFBot to do this:
http://www.netmechanic.com/GIFBot/optimize-graphic.htm Some new
webmasters use a large graphic and specify a smaller size in the
HTML code. That is absolutely unnecessary and will slow down
your web page three times or more! For example, if you have a
graphic that is 200x200 in size (pixels), and insert it into
your web page like this: ...you are actually doing yourself disservice. Why
not reduce the graphic in your image editor first, then place it
on your web site? Doing this will speed up your site and will
not distort your graphic. PROBLEM 3: IMAGE LOOKS DISTORTED
SOLUTION: You probably specified incorrect size of this graphic
on your web page. To find out the correct size of a graphic,
right-click on it and choose "Properties" from the menu. You
should see the image size (something like 110 x 200) then put
the same numbers in the IMG tag: PROBLEM 4: BROKEN LINK SOLUTION: You must
fix your link so it takes your visitors to a page that exists.
Links can be relative or absolute. Here is an example of a
relative link (remember, I am omitting the tag brackets so you
could see the actual code):
This link refers to a page that is located on YOUR web site, and
not someone else's. Now, here is an example of an absolute link:
Notice that this link will take you to the exact same page that
the first one will. This is just a different way to build your
links. You can also link to someone else's web site using
absolute links: Can you use
relative links to refer to an outside web site? No. Only
absolute links can do that. And don't forget to use the
"http://" in each absolute link tag. PROBLEM 5: TEXT IS MISSING
ON THE PAGE SOLUTION: This can happen for different reasons, but
all of them have to do with closing tags:
1) When a closing table tag is missing, the entire table content
might be missing, too. So don't forget to close all your TABLE,
TR and TD tags.
2) You forgot to close a comment and the browser "thinks" that
the rest of the text has also been commented out. Make sure you
close every comment that you open.
3) You forgot to close a quotation mark in a tag. For example,
if you use quotes in a IMG SRC or A HREF tags, you must close
them:
The above code will cause the page to display incorrectly. Fix
it by adding a closing quotation after the graphic name.
4) If you using in forms, make sure you close it with
a tag. PROBLEM 6: VISITORS CAN'T SEE YOUR FANCY
FONTS SOLUTION: Do not use your fancy fonts. There are only a
handful of fonts that every computer user has installed. They
are: Verdana, Arial, Courier, & Times New Roman. If you try to
use some other font such as Impact or FreeStyle Script, and your
visitors don't have them installed, they will see your text in
whatever font their browser is set to.
If you REALLY want your visitors to see your handsome fonts,
then turn some of your text into graphics. Your graphics will be
displayed the same on every computer, and your visitors will be
able to see the fonts you meant for them to see. PROBLEM 7: TOO
MUCH HORIZONTAL SCROLLING REQUIRED SOLUTION: Put your text into
a table and make it no more than 85% in width and centered. This
way, regardless of how large or small their monitors are, your
visitors will always see your text centered with no horizontal
scrolling necessary. PROBLEM 8: THE TABLE IS WIDER THAN
SPECIFIED SOLUTION: Sometimes even you specify table width as
500 pixels, it might still stretch to all 700. There are two
reasons for that.
1) You have a graphic in that table that is wider than the table
itself. Reduce its size and the table will shrink as well.
2) You are using a long URL somewhere in the table text. Shorten
it or remove it and you will see the table shrink to its
specified size. PROBLEM 9: WEB PAGE DISPLAYS OLD LINKS AND
IMAGES SOLUTION: Refresh (or reload) the page by clicking the
button on the toolbar of your browser. Sometimes the graphics
are still not being refreshed in which case you need to do this:
right-click on the graphic choose "view image" or "open image"
click "Refresh" when the graphic is displayed by itself
Now come back to your web page and press "refresh" button one
more time. You should now see the updated images. Also, if you
are using an FTP program to upload your files, don't forget to
click "Refresh" in the FTP window before uploading new files.
Otherwise, you will simply upload the old versions. PROBLEM 10:
BACKGROUND DOESN'T SHOW SOLUTION: Make sure to upload your
background image along with the other files. Also, make sure you
upload it into the right directory (see "missing image on the
page" above for more information) PROBLEM 11: CAN'T ACCESS YOUR
HOME PAGE SOLUTION: if you get an "access denied" error or a
list of files when you are trying to access your web site, make
sure you named your home page correctly. Every hosting company
has it set up so that the very first page of your site must be
named "index.html". Sometimes, though, they will require your
first file to be called "welcome.html", "default.html",
"home.html", or "default.htm".
There is only one way to find out: ask them! Or visit their web
site to see if they specify the default file name in their tech
support section. Notice that "default.html" and "default.htm"
are two different files. You can name your files either way, but
only one of them will be accepted as a default one.
About the author:
Jeffrey Benson is the CEO of Self Help Solutions Centre, a full
time Internet Marketers and the vendor of the acclaimed website
design book “65 Instant Web Design Answers”. He has just
published a new book entitled “The Opportunity Book: How To
Create Opportunity Out Of Thin Air. A self help book to guide
you into greatness. http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R52480_Article1
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