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 lose 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. Time wise, 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: Doctor HTML.
3. Graphics
Do you hate it when your goto 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, 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 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
livelihood... 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.
About The Author
Jean Sutherland has successfully run her own ezine for over 5
years now and has a subscriber base of 35,000. Her ezine revolve
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/
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