My Website

[Zac Altman]

Im in the process of creating my website for my laser business, it will (hopefully) be up in about 12 hours or so as a "beta".

So far (until i put it up) I want to get your opinion on what pages I will have:

Pages off main menu:
Home
Order (information on how to order)
Store (buy gift cards and some other little things)
Gallery (picture gallery of things i have done)
About
- Intro (basic blurb)
- Where? (location, etc)
- The Process (A couple videos on what is happening to their items)
Contact

At the very bottom of the page:
Privacy Policy
FAQ

Anything I need to add?

I knwo it may sound kind of confusing right now, but when I put the site up tomorrow, it should be easier to understand.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Shipping choices
rush jobs
return policy (Like there are no returns. Shipping damages and defective items are replaced with EXACT duplicates of the original order - keeps down the "As long as you're replacing it for this tiny nick, could I correct the spelling? problems")
Payment options
Bulk orders

KISS is the rule, pictures are worth 1,000 words in all of the text that nobody reads anymore.

[Bill Morrison]

Don't load your home page with a lot of graphics. People will not wait for a page to load if it is slow, if there are images, center them on the page if possible. That's the first place people look and then along the sides. If they don't see something that pertains to what they are looking for the move on. If possible put an image of something you have created on the home page with text explaining that is what you do. Get their attention on a fast loading home page and then put the links to more of what you do. Otherwise they will move on.

Bill

[Jack Harper]

Remember you have two audiences you are trying to impress. The first is your potential customer, photos work great here. The second and very critical, is the search bot sent out by search engine sites to find and rank your site. These do not see photos at all and can only see you through text. So while some may feel people don't read all the text, bots do, so the more the better. Oh, and don't forget to be very repetitive in your key words.

[Dan Hintz]

A few site suggestions:
1) There should be some visible (i.e., not just an image tag) text describing almost every image on the page. Search engines can only search on text, but humans view images more quickly than reading text, so providing both is essential. Do not go overboard on either... a good balance is a must.

2) Whatever images you add, ensure the HTML tags for image size are included on the page. While this seems superfluous in the age of high-speed connections, a surprising number of people are still using dial-up. This tag will allow the page text to take shape almost immediately and not constantly shift as each image loads.

3) Choose your colors wisely. Reading text should be comfortable on the eyes.

4) Stay away from flash unless it truly adds value to the site... adding it in simply because you know how to do it is poor design. It may look "gee whiz", but unless you're a quality site designer it will end up just annoying your potential customers.

5) As a continuation to 4), only animate necessary elements, not every element on the page (such as an animated image of an LED-lit award, one pic lit, one pic unlit). Make animations as GIFs so the user can stop the animation, when it becomes too anoying, by pressing the <esc> key. The worst offenders are often "page separators" with a lot of blinking.

6) Stay consistent in your design from page to page.

7) Keep a menu on every page, which should include all options and remain consistent from page to page. Users should not have to back up several pages to take a new path.



<pshew> Shouldn't we be making FAQs out of this stuff? Like the "Is this a scam" thread... needs to be in an FAQ.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Don't forget.... EVERY page is potentially an entrance page. Google searches will index every page and Google links will plop visitors just about anywhere, so keep all of the navigation available on all pages so visitors can get around just as if they entered on the home (default) page.

[Darren Null]

What everybody said plus:

IMAGES.
The way to get good-looking images is to work on them large, and as the last thing you do, resize them to web size. It's a common mistake to resize them firse, and you tend to end up with blurrier, lower-quality images. Also, if you have photoshop, use the 'export to web and devices' dialogue- it really is good and gives you high-quality images at a low filesize.
Stick to JPG for photos and GIF for things like logos where you only have a few colours. PNG is a lovely format, but tends to be a bigger file than a comparative JPG. Also, there are still some browsers about that can't handle the alpha channel properly.

On the subject of moving gifs- I'd avoid them unless absolutely necessary. Even if you have a backlit sign, I would suggest that a mouseover or side-by-side comparison pics would possibly be better. After being blasted with adverts all over the net people associate moving gifs with spam, and also the filesize can be very heavy if you're not careful. And if you do have to use them, avoid transitions between frames. Not only do most of them have much the same effect as tattooing 'AMATEUR' on your forehead, the effect on filesize can be pretty alarming.
Now having said that, *IF* you have a genuine reason for using them and *IF* you do it properly (animated GIFs can save filesize by just saving the DIFFERENCE between frames, so small is good) then it can be an asset to your website. I've seen animated GIFs used well on sites by ropelight and disco lighting equipment manufacturers, for example. I'm just guessing here, but I would say that 80% of the moving GIFs on the web are an expensive waste of space.

FLASH.
Oh dear, oh dear. For me, "LOADING...1%...2%" equals an instant 'kill the window' reaction. I'm on the web for fast access to whatever I'm looking for at the time. I want the information and I want it yesterday. If you're trying to sell people stuff, you need to be serving them relevant information in well under 20 seconds or you can forget it. That was when I was on broadband; and now I'm on 'web over mobile network' my intolerance has grown.
That's for whole Flash sites. There really is no excuse. Plus Flash is a nightmare to write and update, and a REAL nightmare to get it talking to a database.
You can use Flash as a component in a site validly- for example, if you were doing a night/day backlit item that you were thinking of using an animated GIF for, you might be well advised to go for Flash instead. The Flash format incorporates morphs and transitions for almost no filesize overhead and the end result will almost certainly look more professional than an animated GIF.
http://www.uxcell.com/ uses Flash quite well- a 3-4-5-frame mini-movie about the selling points of whatever product you're looking at and the filesize isn't too bad. It's still quite irritating; but some of the descriptions have had me going "Mmmmm...nyum....nyum" and reaching for my (sadly departed) credit card. Which is the point. With regard to that particular site, I shall have to point out that I have had variable quality issues there; but they were all sorted. Caveat emptor. I haven't shopped there for over a year though. I am just pointing out the site as a 'ways Flash can assist you' example. Disclaimer. I was on a different continent at the time and have witnesses, yer Honour etc.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISTION
Look up SEO and SEF on google. There are ways of writing pages that make it easy for various search engines to index your site and add you to their database. You want this. You want it a lot.
Go here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35769
...and treat everything on that page as the direct word from (insert deity of choice). Google is the one you really want to impress ATM, but you might want to have a look at yahoo; answers.com, askjeeves, etc to see what their requirements/advice is.
*DON'T* use an automated search engine submission service/software. It runs the risk of getting you banned from search engines you need to be indexed on. At best, you'll be spammed into oblivion for the rest of your natural life. Just don't. Do it once, do it well, and do it manually.

METATAGS
Not so important these days, but worth considering anyway. And you can add it into your header. Here's a rundown of the vaguely relevant ones:

<title>My Page</title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Hard work and lager">
<meta NAME="description" CONTENT="My lovely page, containing lots of lovely things">
<meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="web,browser,http,www,world wide web,">
<meta NAME="author" CONTENT="Me">
<meta NAME="copyright" CONTENT="Copyright © 1995-2008 My Company">

WHAT THEY ALL ARE:
------------------
TITLE: This is (obviously) the title of the page. This bit is shown in the blue stripe in the top of the browser. Some search engines list alphabetically, so it is worth trying to start this with 'a'

GENERATOR: It doesn't really matter what you put in here, as your web editor will probably change it as you publish

DESCRIPTION: This is the summary of your page that the search engine will display if your site comes up in a search. Try to make the description accurate and enticing, but not spammy! Try to keep the description to under 15 words, and certainly under 30

KEYWORDS: In the format "word,word,'phrase like this',word", this is arguably the most important metatag. When people use search engines to search for a word or phrase, this is often what is referred to. Here's the rules:
1. Put the most important words first.
2. Use words that are as unique as possible. Words like 'web' and 'browser' and 'warez' have been flogged to death, so your page would end up 5,000,000th in the queue. Specialize. Also, try to have the keywords for a page reflect what's on that page in particular. You can copy and paste the rest of the metatags, but ideally you want to do the keywords on a page-by-page basis.
3. Essential for business etc. sites is try to include your town, and country (after your unique specialized words, but preferably in the first 10 words. Many people, if searching for a particular product or service include some geographic reference, to stop the search engine chucking up global references.
4. Some search engines give you extra points for repetition, some penalize you. I usually repeat the most important word once, somewhere later in the keywords. It seems to be working so far.
5. Put in as many keywords as you want.
6. Keep it accurate and honest. Some of the more advanced search engines now compare keywords with the text of the page in question (and some ignore the keywords totally, and just spider the text). Plus, if the visitor doesn't find what s/he expects to find, they'll be off...
7. Think about the words. Don't make them up online. Sit down with a beer and spend some time with a dictionary. When you have your list, rearrange them in order of importance/relevance
8. At the end of your keywords, put some misspellings and common keyboard error versions of your keywords. What have you got to lose. (note: it works for http://www.microsfot.com )

AUTHOR: That's you, that is. Put in your name/current alibi...

COPYRIGHT: The page is automatically copyrighted in most countries, as soon as you type it. But hang the expense; put it in anyway. And there are some quite good reasons for displaying a visible copyright message at the foot of every page too.

THE FRONTPAGE
...should ideally come in in it's entirety in under 20 seconds; should fit in one screen without the user having to scroll; should look good; and should contain a distillation of everything the rest of the site contains. If you are going to have any spelling mistakes or errors, don't have them here.
This is the make or break page. From what's on here, surfers will make the decision to stay and click, or leave.
It must be simple and effective. It must convey -in the top half and absorbable(?) in under 5 seconds- exactly why a surfer should spend more time here.

[Craig Hogarth]

I've been focusing a lot of attention to my website over the past 6 weeks and have gotten several google page one rankings for local searches.

The majority of my website is photos, since that's what sells, but as everyone says, text is what gives you rankings. I focus my attention on 3 pages; the about us page, the holiday specials page and my tesimonials page. They're rich in text and links and easy to navigate away from.

But that's only working good on google. Yahoo is a different story and I'm stil researching how their bots work.

[Mitchell Andrus]

What everybody said plus:

........ edited.....

All of it Darren, very nicely done.

[Zac Altman]

This is the site:
http://www.etchit.com.au/

Some notes:
- Only the home page
- Images from slideshow are NOT mine (just there to display something) + they are not the right size so it has to resize them, when i put my own images up, i will have resized them myself, so there wont bee the bad quality jagged edge stuff)
- Does note work properly in any version of IE (use any other browser - firefox, opera, safari, etc)
- UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!

Flash: yes I used flash, but it was the best option (well, one of the best )
GIF: i never use gifs
SEO: build a site properly and you dont need to worry about making it Search Engine friendly

1) There should be some visible (i.e., not just an image tag) text describing almost every image on the page. Search engines can only search on text, but humans view images more quickly than reading text, so providing both is essential. Do not go overboard on either... a good balance is a must.

Alt tags (<img src="#" alt="describe image" />) - they do exactly this, they describe the image so that search engines as well as screen readers know what the image is.

Page rundown:
home - as you see it
orders - shipping info, how to order, pricing +link to services
store - buy gift cards and a select few items
gallery - images of what i have done
about - services, how it is done, location, short blurb
contact - contact form, contact info

FAQ - given
Sitemap - given
Privacy policy - our privacy policy (wont turn anything on, etc.)
Return Policy - our return policy (no returns, no refunds )

[Dan Hintz]

Alt tags (<img src="#" alt="describe image" />) - they do exactly this, they describe the image so that search engines as well as screen readers know what the image is.

This only works for the viewer if they hover over the image with their cursor. I would not want to hover over each picture to see what it is. The 'alt' tag is designed for users who have turned off image loading, are using a text-only browser, or for blind readers using a text-to-speech browser.

[Zac Altman]

This only works for the viewer if they hover over the image with their cursor. I would not want to hover over each picture to see what it is. The 'alt' tag is designed for users who have turned off image loading, are using a text-only browser, or for blind readers using a text-to-speech browser.

True, i misread your other post, i thought you were saying that images cant be "read" by SE. But yeah, i agree.

[Doug Griffith]

Looks good. I've walked in similar shoes. (MacSkinz)

Why use the super fat and error ridden flickrshow script. I see nothing on your site that would require it. This is will cause incompatability issues.

Alt tags do not carry much SEO weight.

re: SEO: build a site properly and you dont need to worry about making it Search Engine friendly - I disagree. "Properly" is too subjective.

Your Flash embedding should also include the "object element" tag and alternative content.

There is nothing wrong with using GIFs. They have their uses.

Your site uses pure css for layout. Nothing wrong with this but older browsers (and most importantly, potential customers) will have problems. For such a simple layout, I'd go oldschool and use tables.

Cheers

[Dee Gallo]

Hey Zac, your site looks great so far! I use Safari, FYI. Best of luck with it!

cheers, dee

[Darren Null]

I'm looking with opera 9.26 All I can see is the make it yours.. tagline; the flash picture thing and the menu on the right. There seems to be a lot of wasted space top & bottom. I'm having to scroll, which isn't a good thing for a frontpage, and when I do there's nothing there.

Clean look & nice restrained colours apart from that.