Building a Web Site the Right Way!

If you have a web site or are considering building one for your business, think about

 these important web site factors - beginning with appearance.  A look of a website can make or break yo

ur business. First impressions always count. Here are ten tips to building a better business

 website.

1. Color - A black background is not recommended. It's hard on the eyes. I don't know how

 many people have problems reading white or coloured text on a black background and with that said, don't go neon pink or glaring orange either. Genera

lly black text on white background is best. Ideally you can choose two colours, but make sure they match and use it consistently on all your pages to maintain

 fluidity and continuity.

2. Layout - Don't cram everything into one page. Cluttered websites overwhelms the visitors. Keep it clean, crisp

 and concise. I had a CMS style website before and although it looked organized because there were three columns, there were also

 a lot of text. Navigation wasn't as plain as day and it overloaded the senses. Take these three words to heart, less is more.

3. Navigation - The more user-

friendly the better and your visitors are bound to stay longer. You don't want your visitors to be jumpin

g through hoops to find what they are looking for. Make shopping carts or payment buttons visible and easily accessible. Everything

 should be just a click away. Make sure all your links are working. Finding broken links becomes frustrating and annoying.

4. Spelling and grammar - There's nothing good about visiting a website to find loads of misspelled words and poor grammar. It's unprofessional and you can bet your visitors will leave.

5. Load Speed - When it comes to website loading, no one likes to be kept waiting. They will definitely leave a site if it won't load properly. People's time is precious; don't make them wait.

6. Proper Graphics - Be careful of using big flashy graphics or banners. Too many animated and too many big banners take away a site's credibility. It also slows down the loading time of your site considerably. Not everyone uses high speed Internet. Remember people don't wait around for slow loading sites.

7. Adding Audio - If you like it and want it, change the default setting to give the visitor control if they want to hear audio or not. Make sure it's visibly accessible to the visitor. The last time I landed on a site, I couldn't find the button to disable the audio so I exited the site immediately.

8. Avoid Pop-ups - Although many people now have pop-up blockers, it may not be so much of a nuisance, but a pop-up of anything is intrusive, unwanted and annoying. Adding a form to your page in a highly visible spot is much more effective and non-intrusive.

9. Valuable Content - Informative, resourceful content will keep a visitor coming back. No one wants to visit a site that hasn't been updated in a long time. You can add a small graphic or a simple text in red with the word "new" or a "What's New?" page to inform your visitors you have made updates.

10. AdSense ads - Too many AdSense ads on any page looks scammy and it downgrades the quality of your site. If you can handle honest opinions, have someone critique your website. It really all comes down to personal preference and you will never be able to please everyone and that's okay.

The main goal should be to build a functioning, well laid out website that is successful and prosperous to you for many years to come.

This post provided by S. McIntyre owns http://www.WorkAtHomeSpace.com, a free work at home resource focusing on telecommuting companies, daily telecommute job leads, articles, business resources and other work at home related topics.

Design Your Website For Optimal Effectiveness

The architecture and design of any Web site will play a major role in search engine rankings. A design emphasizing aesthetic values and flashy gimmickry may command an award for design, but they will seldom be indexable by search engines robots. One could potentially end up with a nicely designed site that no one else can find.

Conversely, a site that provides rich content but is devoid of any aesthetic value may not meet all the needs of Web authors or end users despite otherwise fantastic search rankings. For these and many other reasons, Web authors must take special care when designing their sites to ensure that they will be accessible to all users - mechanical or human.

Since a thorough discussion of design could easily fill an encyclopedia, this document will simply provide a list of design considerations along with simple rationale for each.

Design Checklist.

• Make sure each page is reachable by at least one static link. If a search engine cannot find your document, it will never show up in a user inquiry.
  
  
• Offer a site map with links that point to important parts of the site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, break it into separate pages. These help search engines locate all of the content on a site
  
  
• Keep URL's simple and static. Complicated URL's are difficult for people to type and hard to remember. Additionally, longevity is a factor in search ranking (more on this later...).
  
  
• Keep the site hierarchy fairly flat. That is, each page should only be one to three clicks away from the home page. This aids both humans and machines in navigating the site.
  
  
• Minimize the use of Macromedia flash as well as Java applets. Although they can add useful demonstrations and animations to a site, they are not indexed by search engines.
  
  
• Avoid the unnecessary use of frames as search engines often have difficulty indexing them correctly.
  
  
• Since dynamic page content is expected to change frequently, the relevance to search keywords will probably not be maintained. Moving content to static pages will improve indexing and lighten the load on the Web server.
  
  
• Make sure internal pages link to the homepage to aid navigation.
  
  
• Organize content by topic and divide the site into logical sections, each focusing on a given topic. This allows search engines to better target specific information relevant to keyword searches.

A Web site that is optimized for search engine effectiveness will be as easy to navigate as a good book. The home page should read like a table of contents, linking visitors to relevant information organized into useful sections.

Sites which feature dynamically generated content such as forums or weblogs should still incorporate static HTML pages to aid search engines. Images, animations, scripts and videos should be used only when text is inappropriate and they add to the value of a given page.