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10 Tips to Improve Your Website

Here are some light-hearted commentary on our suggested do's and don'ts for the World Wide Web. If you can think of issues you would like to cover in future top tips, let us know!

Design

• 1. 'Flash' Intros and splash pages

  In a word - avoid. Web users know that you have a great product / service but they are not going to be heavily swayed in any final purchasing decision by seeing the words such as "you - need - this - product - now!" flying in from various angles on the screen. And no, adding a "skip" button does not make it acceptable - How many times have you gone straight to the skip button yourself?

  There is also a serious marketing problem with intros as Search Engines find them almost impossible to follow the links to the main site. This applies particularly to a technology called "Flash" which search engines are completely blind to. The simple answer is to use the "home" page to explain, in brief, who you are and what you do.

• 2. Images

  • • DO use original photography if you can, this can save the headache and cost of copyright laws.
  • • DON'T use clip art or copied images from the web unless you really have to: the quality may not be of the best standard, you are a professional.
  • • DO compress your photos to JPEGs and your other images (i.e. non-photos) to GIFs, this reduces the file sizes and minimises the distortion if saved in the right format.
  • • DON'T convert the text in your page into one large image because it "looks better", the search engines cannot read the content of images and it may also take a while to download.
  • • DO keep photos reasonably small - they tell a thousand words but they don't have to take up the same space!
  • • DON'T be tempted to add bucket loads of animations to every page - please!

3. Navigation

There are a few simple rules with navigation and menus, which should keep you on the straight and narrow. Firstly, keep the number of items in any one list to a maximum of 7 (wherever possible). This number isn't plucked out of thin air, psychologically, we humans can only deal with 7 options at once. Any more than this and we either ignore further options or, by trying to remember a new one, "lose" a previous option.

Secondly, keep menu titles to an absolute maximum of 3 words - they are titles not executive summaries. Finally, keep your items grouped and ordered in a logical format - the average web user is easily distracted / confused - do not make life more difficult for them!

• 4. Colour

  OK, we are not all artists and not every website needs to contend for a design award but likewise, we all judge on what we see - including your potential customers. Start your site design with a palette of colours in mind and try to work within the range. Remember that you only need to change colours very slightly and they can begin to "clash".

  Finally, remember that some people are colour blind to red / green but also (more rarely) blue / yellow.

• 5. Content

  The majority of people have found your website because they are searching for something, they will scan the content of the pages very quickly to see if you have what they are looking for. Therefore make the important key points visible and the text relevant to your products and services.

  Break up large amounts of text into bite sized chunks, much more appetizing! Think about using a good, professional copywriter if you are struggling with content.

6. Less = more

If there is one thing that is guaranteed to drive users from your door, it is requesting high levels of detail about who they are in order to get a response / brochure / quote or even to access parts of the site.

The normal outcome of this is to get fewer enquiries and proportionally more "junk" information. Try slimming down your requirements to the absolute minimum in reply forms: Name, e-mail and address (optional). That way, you should get more valid responses to start your sales cycle with.

Marketing

• 7. Contact details

  It may seem like a small point but it is important none the less. If you want people to contact you, show your contact details - often.

  8. Be Search engine friendly

  • • DO Title your pages relevantly and make sure the copy on the page reflects this.
  • • DON'T use frames or flash if being on the search engines is important to you.
  • • DO give images "Alt" tags (a description of the image for the browser).
  • • DON'T try to cheat the search engines - even if it works today, it won't tomorrow - stick to displaying relevant, well presented information.
  • • DO link to your pages with text links where possible.
  • • DON'T use an image to show text on the page (aside from the odd title, which will need an alt tag of course).
  • • DO put titles and meta tags in your source code for your site description and keywords, the search engines use the title for the link and the description for the paragraph beneath.
  • • DON'T allow your site to become stagnant, keep your site updated regularly. The search engines re-index on a regular basis and you need to make sure they have your most up to date information.

• 9. Be found

  Pay for your site to be reviewed by Google and Yahoo. Try wherever possible to have a link put on other sites to your site and spend as much time as possible submitting to search engines (market focussed and geographically relevant) - REGULARLY!

  Think about a budget for on-line promotion and monitor the effectiveness on a monthly basis. Be realistic, there are millions of websites out there and most of them would like to come top of the search engine rankings for their category. Rome was not built in a day, it may take a few weeks, or even a few months to see your rankings improve, but providing you follow the points above and continue to do so it will happen.

  DON'T expect people to find your site using specific keywords if they are not found anywhere within your site.

  DO combine important key words and key phrases in your body text and page titles; try to mention them at least two or three times within each relevant pages.

10. Review your site

Websites aren't "fire and forget" marketing tools, you need to spend time looking at how the site is used, where the weaknesses are and what strengths you can build on.

It's all fairly easy to do if you have the right information to hand - look at the statistics of the web site, where people are coming from, the words they used to search for you and where they went in the site. With this, adjust the phrases that you want to be found on and where and make changes to the site content to reflect this.