Keep content fresh

May 12, 2010 by Ray

Maintain the site on a regular basis to keep it fresh and give visitors a reason to return.

Outdated information gives the impression that you’re unreliable. Your Webmaster or designer can make it easy for you to make your own timely changes to parts of the site. In minutes, you can change a “weekly specials” page, add new products, update pricing information or edit a “customer news” page. One method to do this is to install a database.

Log in to a database with a simple username and password to edit a specific page of your site. You might add a new testimonial, note some special recognition your company has received or include a profile of an employee. Anything that brings life to the site.

If you have a Content Management System (CMS), you have more flexibility to change every page. You’re paying for it, so you might as well use it! References to new projects or the inclusion of recent dates proves that your company is in business and staying active.

10 Steps Toward a Successful Website

April 6, 2010 by Ray

Establish a concise list of objectives.
What do we want to accomplish?
Understand the target audience.
What information do they need, and how fast? Will graphics help?
Provide quality content and keep it concise.
It must immediately convey it’s purpose, or visitors will leave.
Develop a site map based on a logical sequence to display information.
The navigation flow from page to page should be logical and consistent.
Utilize multimedia features if they aid communication.
Mouse rollovers, animated images, sound, etc. can reinforce the text.
Make it Search Engine friendly. Appropriate title, SEO keywords and META tags are essential to generating traffic.
Maintain the site on a regular basis to keep it fresh and give visitors a reason to return.
Integrate the site with other components of your marketing plan.
Work with a professional developer who has an understanding of both technological and marketing aspects.

Inbound Links: Ask for them!

February 6, 2010 by Ray

Especially for Google, link popularity is a major component of your ranking, so ask other websites to post a link to yours. You receive more credit if the other site’s theme is related to yours and if the other site has a high ranking.

Cross-browser compatibility and screen resolution concerns

January 28, 2010 by Ray

Are you sure that all of your website visitors see the same thing when coming to your URL? There are many different viewing possibilities such as browser, screen resolution and individual PC color and contrast settings. View your site in various combinations to be sure that everyone receives the same experience.

Strive for cross-browser compatibility
The same web page can appear differently when viewed in different browsers. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, and others each display code differently, so you must be careful to view pages in each before going live.

Usually, you can find common ground by utilizing code (stylesheets/CSS) that all of the major browsers recognize, but there may be cases that you should create distinct versions of the same page(s). Issues that may arise are the use of features such as image maps, frames, javascript, java applets, or operating system-specific controls. Test in as many environments as possible!

Layout and design for multiple screen resolutions
As mentioned earlier, another challenge is to make your pages attractive at various screen resolutions. The vast majority of PCs display 1024 x 768 pixels while most laptops are set to 1280 x 1024. There are still a number of surfers using 800 x 600. Setting pages to show a set page width of 800 pixels will display the same on each of these, and if centered, will simply have larger left and right margins to those with greater resolution.

Be careful with the code

Validate your HTML code
After designing pages, it’s a good habit to get into using HTML Validator software to reduce errors that could cause display problems in some browsers and penalize you in some search engines.