And How Does Your Web Site Compare?

UK WEB DESIGN REPORT How does your company compare on its web approach?

At http://www.mrweb.co.uk you can read summaries of a new report on UK web design. They reviewed the use of the web by companies within the UK.

Firstly, they estimate there are now over 79,000 corporate web sites in the UK, annual growth of 160%. In the first six months of this year alone there were about 30,400 new sites setup - over two-thirds of which were DIY sites.

The average spend was £4,965 - although this is probably seriously warped by the very big spenders (who seem to be alcoholic drinks makers).

What is suprising that less than half of those using external designers asked for a competitive quote or spoke to more than one design company. This suggests that our efforts to be better than the rest may be a waste of time!

Corporate Sites versus the Web Designers Sites

In an interesting comparison of business sites versus designers own sites Mr Web turned up some interesting snippets:

Web designers home pages were significantly faster to download and over a third of them would fit on a low-resolution screen without annoying scrolling.

Corporate companies liked white backgrounds, design companies liked black! Corporates loved animations, designer co's didn't.

Significantly though, through the use of screen layout, good menu design, carefully created graphics files and careful use of frames the design companies sites were much easier to navigate and use.

And, as a final curiosity, only 13% of corporates included full contact details. So must of them completely failed to provide any follow-up on the sale!

DOING IT YOURSELF How to check your HTML code (or even your designers...)

So, you've written your HTML coded web page and now you would like to make sure that you've got it exactly right. Where you gonna go? The web of course!

There have been a number of HTML validators available on the web for some time. In our opinion www . netmechanic . com is the best.

You can ask it to validate a page, or much more usefully - a whole web site. You can have the HTML checked, and optionally internal and external links to other pages (and graphics).

You go to netmechanic to initiate the test, then you can log-off. Netmechanic then goes away and does it stuff over the next few hours and will email you when its done. You then return to the web site to read the various reports it has prepared for you. (By the way, the reports are only held for 2 days, so don't start on the check on Friday, hoping to read the results on Monday!).

So how did Centreline 2000's site fair?

As you may know we use own in-house developed tool, WebManage to create and validate our sites. Among other things WebManage allows us to apply complete new layout templates to a whole site at the touch of a button. But WebManage also checks for internal links to documents and graphics, so not surprisingly we came through OK on internal links.

What was dissapointing was the number of external links no longer valid. On our links pages (http://www.c2000.com/links/) we have over 2,000 great or interesting sites over two hundred of which were no longer valid. Sadly that is a significant number of useful resources being lost to view.

FOUR GREAT TIPS IF YOU MOVE YOUR WEB SITE

You started off with a little local page somewhere, and now you've got your own pukka web address, how do you signpost your new web site?

ONE) Don't remove your old site, replace it with a "redirection" page. This page should make your new address very clear, not just whisk the browser away quietly.

TWO) Use Alta-Vista to find sites which link to you. Then seek them out and email them with requests to update their links. Repeat 1 and 2 months later just to make sure.

THREE) Don't forget to register your new site at the search engines. (See our search engine tips at http://www.c2000.com)

FOUR) DON'T FORGET YOUR CONVENTIONAL MARKETING! Make sure your new web address is on your brochures, letterheads, faxes,. business cards, everything.

FREE FAXES ON THE INTERNET

Yep, that's right completely free! You can receive enquiries from your web site, direct to your fax for free.

How's it work?

There are several companies trying to establish themselves as service providers of large corporate fax services. They have an arrangement of local fax sending capability across most of the world, they use the internet to transfer the fax content cheaply across the world and then do the sending of the final fax at local call rates. Now the idea is if you are a large corporate you would sign up as a fee paying customer to cut your fax costs (and a jolly good scheme it is too).

But, as a loss leader, they will let anybody send a fax by internet, it just comes with a front page advert for the service.

So, lets say you set up your web site with an on-line order form - you can have the order form filled in and faxed direct to your sales department within minutes, all for free.

For smaller companies who only occasionally check incoming mail this is a real boon. It ensures an instant reaction in dealing with customers request.

Or maybe you have branch offices without email connection?

Of course its not just order forms, but also contact queries, requests for sales info whatever.

And the final beauty? The customer isn't aware of the fact that he's faxing at all. It's just another web form as far as he's concerned.

User Case Study Selling Fine Wines and Gifts

Riverside Wines (http://www.riverside-wines.co.uk) specialise in importing fine wines and spirits. They have no email connection at the office, but they do have fax machines.

So whenever an order is placed on their web site, it is faxed direct to the sales room for follow-up. All with no requirement for email connection in the office at all.

Riverside Wines do great Christmas hampers, if you haven't got yours yet why not check their web site now! And if you are into fine wines, including special imports direct from the vineyards, then come back to Riverside in spring for the '98 vintage.