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How to build a great website or web page,
without
getting picky, or to technical. Remember, not on the
web? You're dead or dieing... just may not know it yet.
We get a few emails a year wanting to know how we built such a great
website. Here's the basics.
You need pictures and informative pages
Map the website before you start with a simple flow of what you want to
say and what you want your company or organization communicate. THIS IS
VERY,VERY IMPORTANT! Keep updating this map as your develop the pages.
There needs to be a map to start. It can be ignored only after you get
a few hundred pages built and the main core set up. (We built our site
several times in the late 90's because we had no clue where we were
going with it.
you have three seconds of stay or leave per visitor, do not waste it on
flash, java, pop ups, large pictures or large worded, flowery text.
KISS, keep it simple, stupid! Say it clear text, if you can't, then you
need to figure out what you're doing or what your trying to do a little
better.
If they do not find what they're after, or something that leads them to
what they're after, in three seconds, they leave. Simple, clear pages
of information rule!
Lists they leave, short descriptive lists with pictures might help you a
lot, without killing you.
When you start slamming pictures everywhere we've found openoffice to
be a wonderful application. *OpenOffice*.org: Home Page <http://www.openoffice.org/>.
Just like building a Word or Wordperfect document, but in html.
Pictures need alternate text that makes sense. Pictures without
alternate text are a waste. Too many pictures also cause a lot of
problems. More that one or two pictures, and you'll have to put them in
a table format or they'll float all over the place.
Pictures need to be compressed to about 21% of normal. Picture size
needs to be less than 30 k per picture. Again huge picture sizes hurt,
you can make pictures that are up to 600X600 pixels and compress them
down to 30 or so kilobytes.
Pages need description, title for each page. Each thought on each page
needs a header. Best if you can build pages with several flavors of one
though per web page.
You'll need pages and pages of INFORMATION, not sales pitch, nor tripe,
information. Build one page for every idea you have or want to refer
to. Ten pages, HA! Hundred pages might be found, five hundred pages and
you'll get into the top 30 listings on Google. Each page reflects about
one customer per year for a fair website, 10 per year for a good
website. Each one THOUSAND visitors is about one customer. We get about
3-10,000 visitors per day. Thirty visitors per day and you've wasted
your time, a thousand a day and you'll start noticing it no matter what
the subject is.
Build relevant links within your site. Say you're building a kitchen
website, put the pans in one directory, pictures of pans in a picture
directory under the pans, make one page for each pan going back to to
the pan directory, pan directory. Pan directory needs a small thumnail
for each page and a sentence about each pan. pictures (including
thumbnail) need to be named for each pan, as specific as possible, with
no spaces in name, use _ between words.
No links out unless it's a friend or a GREAT site. do not email me
asking for links to a crumby site you built on a Friday afternoon, or
paid some hack to build on a Friday afternoon. Good sites take a lot of
time and energy and will attract links.
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If
you're planning on putting a site up, you, the CEO, president or owner
have, HAVE to write much, or all of the basic stuff, and map or
coordinate the site. A good web designer will badger the hell out of
you for content, he/she cannot flavor the site the way you want it, nor
knows your business as you do. The more you avoid providing content,
the less the site reflects your standards, your customers, or where you
want the business to go. A bad website can be worse than no website, as
most people see your website as your exposed soul, not your business
card. A bad website reflects on YOU the owner or CEO. Put up a
suggestion or complaint page and read it at least the first few months
before delegating to a lesser, but still import person. That person is
controlling your future. Ignoring input is deadly.
Take a notebook with you, write a page a day, revise it until
comfortable with it, then set down and write the pages or feed them to
your web designer, with pictures.
Check your website for broken links as you build it with Xenu,
Klinkstatus or whatever link checker you feel comfortable with. Broken
links pique people and they leave or get lost.
Also check the website on a dial up line, checking it on a T1 line is
not real. I've had to cold boot my computer before on some sites that
had 200 meg. PDF files. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed, nor
returned. Simple, information pages written in good html are best. No
bells, no whistles, no bull, no direct sales, indirect sales are ok.
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Check your website and what you think are your
competitors with
www.alexa.com <http://www.alexa.com/>
if in windows also check content with
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/keyex.htm
do not fill the page with targeted keywords, fill the page with
information about the subject, keywords come from that subject
naturally. Use keyword extractor to build your titles and headings,
they should reflect your subject. If keyword extractor comes back with
mostly words not related to your subject, you'll need to rewrite the
page to more target your subject. Information about the subject if more
important than ANYTHING else. One page per subject. You cannot reach
stardom on the web by asking for links, paying for inclusion, or
spending one hour building a website. A good website is worth hundreds
of thousands of dollars, you cannot do that quickly and easily. You can
pay overture or Google for ad words once you get something for the
public to see and use. Paying for inclusion of a moronic site is
really, really stupid, but I've hit many an ad word and gone to a site
with nothing there. Cost them fifty cents or so for me to see their
stupid mistakes. Spend time making your site full of information and
pictures about your subject or product. Expect it to pay you back after
a year or so, not a day or so. A year to build, a year to pay back,
then it just sets there and makes money or contacts with just a little
work.
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A few months or so ago, I visited your site and made use
of a handy planting guide. You punched in your zip code and
other info about watering and soil type and were provided with a nice
list of native plants that might be suitable. I just visited
your site again and can't seem to find it. Is it no longer
available?
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www.mynativeplants.com
A figuring out how to navigate our massive site has been a real pain.
Google's search has helped. To many pages for a menu(it blew off the
screen, even making multilevel popups blew off). Half the people want
everything on the front screen, other half complaining that there's too
much of front screen.
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Hi,
sorry to bother you about this, but your website appears on my screen
to be extraordinarily wide, making it necessary to scroll across to
read each and every line, & then scroll back to the beginning
of the next line.
Are you aware of this? Is it a problem for others?
Is there a simple way for me to make your page fit on my
screen? I feel illiterate (computer, that is). I
went to AOL help, but cannot find the correct terminology in a search
to find an answer.
I'm sorry to ask you for help on this. If you don't want to
answer, just hit reply, but if you're aware of a way to help me resize
your website for my screen, I'd truly appreciate the info.
Well,
you really helped me to 'resolve' my screen width
difficulties. Thank you very much! I played with
the settings & reset my resolution to 1162 x 864. The
screen seems quite large enough, although I was quite shocked to find
such very tiny little letters. lol I played with
the display for a while & while I'm still not comfortable with
the small fonts, I suppose I'll either adjust or go blind. At
least your whole page is visible & wow, so much content on one
screen...amazing!
Thank you
very much for taking the time to help me.
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(
I told her how to right click on the screen, go to properties, and
change the display settings to at least 1078X768, here screen was set
at 640X480. Sell or give someone a computer for the first time set at
640X480 is like dropping off all the major materials and tools to build
a boat on a desert island, but no instructions, nails or objects to
hold it together. )
About
a third of the people looking at the website are cruising with default
settings on their monitor.
Someday
the developers of pc's will find a simple way to adjust program/screen
display settings that will change automatically according to one time
criteria set up by the user.
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