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WEB SPECIAL
Our clients who take advantage of our full Web Manager program will be pleased to know we have had a major blitz on all the sites and their registrations at the search engines. As you are aware the key to a successful web site is encouraging traffic to the site (figures!) and you make that happen by making sure you do well at the many and varied search engines around the Internet. We have a complete paper on how to make the search engines work to your advantage at the web site. This white paper was recently selected by the Bank of England for internal publication to all their staff. You can find it at http://www.c2000.com/papers/wt_inet4.htm Anyway, search engines change and advance, as other sites come along relative positions change and so on. So we have reviewed all our clients sites from top to bottom. Firstly, all the sites were reviewed to see if changes to the special META TAGS used to guide search engines could help with positioning. Secondly, for all frames based sites, we made sure that there was a non-frames based starting point. Then, we revisited all the major search engines (Alta Vista, Hot-Bot, Excite, Lycos etc) and re-submitted the sites by hand, then we used a broadcaster service to re-submit to around 50 of the lesser search sites. We also added cross-links under each clients domain to every other clients domain. Now don't worry, you won't ever see this link on your site - but what it does is automatically uprate your sites "approval" rating! Each of those cross-linked sites was also submitted to the search engines. The end result of all this should be two things: 1) Better placings in the search engines, nearer the tops of the lists. 2) A corresponding increase in the amount of traffic coming to each of the sites However, most of the search engines are running with extensive backlogs, it may be days, weeks or even months before the new details become available on the search sites, so please be patient. Secondly, there are still so many factors involved in placings on search engines, not least of which is that a number of them will place you nearer the top of search lists if you are prepared to pay. Browsers, did you know that? The top entry at Yahoo may simply be some-one shelling out for the position - don't trust neutrality on the web. P.S. In case your interested, updates at sites include: http://www.valenet.com/bevere-vivis/ For postcards, art workshops and much more http://www.riversidewines.co.uk/ For corporate christmas gift packages http://www.energyadvantage.co.uk/ For reducing energy costs in factories and offices http://www.racing-cars.com/ For scale model racing
Jack Schofield, writer for The Grauniad and sundry PC magazines reviewed the Hart DC site glowingly: "For an illuminating contrast in web design, compare The Room... with Hart District Council's pages... The Room is a trendy new Webzine, and the best argument yet against the use of Netscapes frames and advertising panels. By contrast Hart's pages are simple, fast, functional and might encourage you to move to this part of Hampshire. Hart claims to be the first district council to put its minutes on the Web..." Thanks Jack, that has always been our design aim, to encourage readership and use of a web site. Now we are not completely anti-frames, they have their place but they do have some significant problems;
Now, the needs of a site vary depending upon the audience, but our general view is that sites with a heavy information content, such as Hart's or our own, should be easy and quick to navigate; they should be easy to bookmark and link to; and it should be easy to store or print the information. So, what can you learn from our design philosophy on content sites: 1) Keep graphics to a minimum, re-use the same graphic over and over again. Content is usually in the text, not the pictures. 2) Don't forget though, a picture can tell a thousand words 3) Don't break longer articles over several pages unless you really have to. If you do need to do this then make a single downloadable version available too. This makes saving and/or printing pages easy. 4) Make sure your pages have easy navigation always to at least your Home Page, the top page of the section your are in. 5) Make sure each page clearly has the page URL on it, so that a user can find out where a printed copy has come from. 6) Make sure each page has a unique title, so it shows up clearly in their bookmark list 7) Always put your full name, address, telephone and web details on every page, so that when printed they can still contact you. This still has to be a number one failing of most web sites. You find an interesting page, you print it for reference, you want to call them... Ooops! No contact details. 8) Keep navigation consistent. Don't gratuitously change navigation styles in different sections 9) Don't move pages around and change URL's unless (a) you really have to (b) you have redirections from the earlier URL. Microsoft are really bad at this, which means that any Microsoft URL or bookmark you have is probably useless. 10) Don't put blinking, flashing, rolling, twinkling, bouncing, wobbling, rotating, roving and down-right DISTRACTING things on your pages! Now, frames, animations, JAVA and all the rest certainly have their part to play in different kinds of sites - but the trick is to use them in the right way. In fact our own site is littered with bits of Java and other scripts, but their are very quiet and you don't notice them, they are just there to make your journey smoother. And the proof? Well, to look at our own site, we currently have THREE MILLION hits a year from over a QUARTER OF A MILLION different visitors. Not only is that a lot of visitors, considering we are relatively specialised, but also, that is a lot of repeat visitors who keep coming back for more and more information. Overall, for all the web sites we manage there are over 10 million hits a year from over a million visitors.
Web Manager is one of key tools for our web building - when we started building web sites there were no web tools and so we built our own. Firstly, Web Manager was used to create the new look for our web site, a single push button operation applied the changes from a template across the whole site. Total time, about 5 minutes for a complete make-over. Secondly, Web Manager also includes our forum handling software. This has been updated so that forums now display the most recently updated forum at the top of the list and also to reduce the load time of a forum indexes. All clients using the forum software have had the update installed for them. If you want to understand the value of a forum on your web site, Schumacher Racing has 600 repeat visitors a week to its "Pitstop" forum, where they discuss anything Schumacher related. Those 600 repeat visitors can be perfectly supported and sold to via the forum. See for yourself at http://www.racing-cars.com/pitstop/
We use some fairly industrial strength (and industrial price) software for site management, but if you are only operating a small site, then these tools are probably too expensive to buy and too time consuming to learn, so here is a quick list of useful and free utilities on the web. 1) Web Site Garage: http://www.websitegarage.com/ Give it a URL and it tells you how good your HTML coding is, as well as how well it will do on the web sites. It even corrects your spelling! 2) Internet Server Monitor: http://www.servermonitor.com/ You can get a one off hit of how well your server works compared to others, or join up for the paying service which monitors the site permanently and will even tell you when it goes down. 3) Bobby: http://www.cast.org/bobby/ Daft name, but a great idea. Lets you view your web site as it would appear using different kinds of browsers, including those dumb, broken, unsophisticated and just down-right simple. Think you needn't bother? The biggest growth in browsers at the moment is from those little Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's). Small, black and white, runs on a slow modem... 4) Inspector Web - http://www.greenpac.com/ Will review your site for broken links. Can either be used internally to make sure your internal site links are OK, or use it to verify external links. Will report whether the link is down, moved or just plain gone. 5) My Postcards - http://www.mypostcards.com/ Lets you offer free electronic postcards from your web site. Not for everyone, but it can add a splash of excitement when you need it most.
On Wed, 12 Aug 1998 08:48:05 -0700, nospam@yadda.yadda.yadda (BlackBeard) wrote: >>> All this has made me wonder about something (and I can't >>> believe I never noticed it before!): how is it that you >>> can have your fridge be cold and your stove be hot even >>> when _both use electricity_??? >>Simple: the principle used is based on the simple fact that >>electrons have positive (warm) charge, and neutrons have >>negative (cold) charge. How does this work, you ask? >What a load of c**p! Everyone knows it's PROTONS that have the >cold charge. Neutrons are neutral! Aargh! You obviously haven't done elektrickle injuneering. Heating is done by the electricity from thermal power stations. Cooling is done by the electricity from hydro (cold water) power stations! What are they teaching people these days?
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Centreline 2000 - Uniplex, Unix, Windows and Internet Arle Court, Hatherley Lane, Cheltenham, GL51 6PN Tel: (UK) 01242 255 000 |
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URL: www.c2000.com/papers/nw_981207.htm © 1995-2001 Centreline 2000 Last Updated: 11th December 1998 |
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