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Let_Your_Little_Website_Shine_Part_1
| Let Your Little Website Shine, Part 1
One of the great things about the World Wide Web is that even
the "little guy" can be big. Your website can give the
appearance of a large organization, even when it's just you and
the family dog, sitting in your kitchen in your underwear (not
the dog, you in your underwear!). It's all about presence and
appearance. This article discusses how to make your website look
large, even when what is behind it is just getting started. The
World Wide Web is making more millionaires faster than any other
phenomenon in history.
Elements of a Winning Site The elements that make a website a
"winner" are the following: 1. Loads Fast 2. Looks Great 3. It's
links actually work 4. Quick response when people request
information, report trouble 5. Is Useful 6. Is Interesting 7.
Serves a great need 8. Is Fun 9. Offers lots of free stuff 10.
Presents an appearance in keeping with whatever you are selling
11. Sells in a very subtle way 12. Is not like everyone else's
13. Does not use email addresses retrieved from its contents to
"Spam" people 14. Has some kind of newsletter that allows
visitors to keep in touch on an ongoing basis 15. Has clear
navigation
Now we'll discuss these elements, one at a time. Miss any of
these crucial elements, and your website traffic will suffer.
Ignore none of them, if you want people to "show up". Just like
a boring preacher has a hard time getting people to come to
church, just providing good choir music is not going to make up
for it. Your website may look good, but if it serves no purpose
whatsoever or is not clear in its message, it'll flop like one
of those movies that doesn't make it in the box office because
the first group of people to see it keep the rest of them from
showing up.
The first thing you have to make sure of is that going to your
website is not frustrating: 1. Loads Fast: If your website loads
so slow that people get bored waiting for it, your business will
never get out of the starting gate. Large graphics, lots of
those great java scripts, lots of background bitmaps, and a slow
server to run on are some of the causes of this. No one will
ever stay long enough to find out what you're selling if your
pages are slow. The best way to test your site is to get on an
average connection and time it with a stopwatch. You may be
operating on a DSL or cable modem connection, so it's best if
you can visit a friend who has a dialup and see how your website
loads for him/her. Make sure your web hosting provider gives you
enough bandwidth and a fast connection. We experienced this
problem (among others) while stuck in a 2 year contract with a
hosting provider. We've since switched to another provider and
don't have this problem anymore. See Web Hosting to find out
where we went for better bandwidth. No matter what we did to
make our Website load fast, our foundation was not good enough
to make people want to come back. More than a few seconds to get
to your website, and your site goes down in history as not being
seen, along with all the websites hosted at places where
websites are free. (You probably know who they are) If you have
huge graphics and all kinds of whirlygigs and java scripts that
would make a grown man cry, your site is in trouble again. Try
to make all your graphics small and in a .jpg (jpeg) format. If
you must use moving gifs or other animated stuff, make it
something useful that replaces text information. It must have
some use on your page - not just to look good. And try to make
it only one per page, if you can. If you love java, be aware of
a couple of issues with fancy java scripts: Not everyone can see
them if they don't have the right browser or the latest version
of some browsers, not everyone is going to appreciate that their
mouse leaves "trails" across the screen, or that everything on
your site is what they call a mouseover (where an image changes
into something else when you run your mouse over it). Leave this
stuff to your "other" site - you know, the one you wrote for
fun. Try to keep this stuff to a minimum on a business website.
A plain white background is always better than some fancy,
bandwidth-eating background bitmap image. If you must have a
background image, make it a very small watermark-style image.
Better to leave it plain. Makes it easier to read for many
people who don't have the greatest video card or the best pair
of eyes. One side note: It's always good to test your website's
pages in another screen resolution. If you like to keep your
resolution (right-click on the desktop in Windows, go to
settings, change the slide bar) at 1024x768, test your site
using 800x600 and possibly 640x480. You can also put some java
scripts that test the user's screen resolution and adjust
accordingly, or you can put a disclaimer on your main page that
says: "Best when viewed in 800x600 resolution". You decide how
easy to make it for your visitors. Remember that things that may
look great on your machine might look like crap to someone with
their screen resolution set differently. The next thing to make
sure of after they actually get to your site is whether or not
it looks good. When I return, I'll discuss how to make your
website credible with a great look.
About the author:
Lynne Schlumpf is the CEO of Route 66 Cyber Cafe, Inc.,
http://www.r66cci.com, a Web hosting and design company
specializing in promoting websites for new owners, building
affordable e-commerce sites, and providing reliable web hosting
solutions as an affiliate of Virtualis Incorporated.
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