Tag: Web Design

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Google Says Website Page Load Speed is Key

This past month Google has been talking about website page load speed. They have been chatting up the topic in forums and have even recommended a Firefox browser plugin that runs a website speed clocker that provides recommendations for improvement.

The chatter in the forums and blogs is that Google is going to be considering page load speed as one part of their organic algorithm. Remember however that there are about 100 factors that Google considers for organic placement so although this may be an important one, it is not the one that will make or break your website’s organic placement.

My recommendation is that if you are redesigning your website this year a snappy page load should be a design consideration. If you have an existing website, do what you can to improve page load time, but don’t get so spun up that it becomes your only concern.

For existing websites, there are many important factors that you can still very easily control now such as content freshness, authority of your content, readability, search friendly navigation, good site architecture and cross linking between pages that will help you right now even without tweaking your page load speed.

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Do Spin Off Websites Help You Organically

I have tested this concept myself for a full year. My main website is here www.McCordWeb.com. I created a spin off site just on the topic of custom web design and our templated Quick Launch web design services here www.McCordWebDesign.com.

For a year I monitored placement and trying out several search engine optimization techniques.  What I have found is that my spin off site has never really quite gotten the placement that I thought it would even though it was very focused and on topic. I was careful to not have duplicate content for the site so as to rule out that issue as a factor for organic placement.

Here’s a real world search example:

on www.Google.com search for custom web design Maryland. My main website is #1 out of 304,000. My spin off site is #80 out of 100 results. Although this is an incredibly small sample, when client’s come to me to say let’s do a two page spin off site – like a doorway page, I simply will not do it. It is far better to develop and work on making your main website the best it can be than to fragment your message and try to scam the organic results. Clearly my own test proves that a spin off site, no matter how optimized will not beat your original main well-developed website.

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Adobe Introduces InContext Editing

What a cool new online tool Adobe has come up with. It is called InContext Editing and allows any site you create with Dreamweaver to be a content management site. Specifically, this means that any site you create with the proper syntax and is set up on InContext Editing can now be edited by your customer using a browser and no HTML knowledge.

To take advantage of this new tool, here are the steps. You set up your site with Dreamweaver templates, locking down certain sections of a page where you don’t want your client to change – like navigation or footer information. Then you set up the “FTP bridge” on InContext Editing and then load your real files and templates to your own web hosting server.

InContext Editing allows the client to login to a control panel, call up a page from their real web server and change the areas that you have approved right there in a WYSIWYG mode. The client can publish the updated page with one click. Clients can even add pages to their site, links, and images.

What a great innovative new product! I will be doing some in-depth testing in the next several weeks and will update my blog with my thoughts after I have really taken it for a whirl, but at first blush, it seems like an excellent tool that allows the end-user to be in control.

What is great from my view point, is that you can create the ease of a content management site without the headaches and programming overhead that a typical content management site needs. On top of that, our websites are built for search engines unlike a content management site that is built for user friendliness, so keeping the optimized code in place yet allowing the client to change wording or add things when they want is an excellent feature.

Right now the application is free, but don’t expect it to stay this way forever. I will be very interested to find out what Adobe feels that they want to charge for the application after they’ve gotten web designers in to take it for a test ride.

In the meantime, you can check out more information and even watch a video demo on Adobe InContext Editing on Adobe.com.

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Using Dreamweaver Spry and Data Sets

I’ve just changed how my custom website portfolio is rendered. You can check it out here. I used to have a Flash portfolio but now have created a Spry portfolio that uses an XML data set that allows you to click a website name to view an image and accordion style information reveal.

Spry is Dreamweaver’s name for AJAX widgets that use JavaScript and add a new level of interactivity to websites. I already have implemented a Spry drop down menu that runs horizontally across the top of the page of my website at www.McCordWeb.com, but was looking for ways to use some of the other cool new Spry features.

The big deal is that Spry with XML data sets can be used in all kinds of ways. By creating your data set with any attributes you want, you can then use cool Spry widgets to return the data on your web pages without using a database. The XML widget acts as an easy “database” that is client-sided versus residing on your server accessed through a browser action call. The difference is the speed and the fact that your browser performs the functions versus calling up information from your website hosting server.

For me, you can click the column header and sort the websites by name or click the pages header and sort the websites by the number of pages. When you click a link in the list, a new image is shown and data under the image changes. If you click the accordion folds under the image you will see additional dataset information specific to that particular website. The folds open and close based on your click activity.

Dreamweaver facilitates the set up of the features, but it is no walk in the park. I ran into a few major problems in regards to syntax and the fact that the xpath.js file did not render HTML in the accordion folds. It worked fine to show text but when I wanted to show a bulleted list only the source code showed. I upgraded my Spry files and still had problems. I eventually loaded a saved copy of the xpath.js file and all was well.

It certainly pays to do significant testing on the new features if you add them as I did. I found that Safari does not show the accordion tab colors when highlighted as IE, Firefox, and Chrome do. But the major browsers do render nearly everything else the same.

With time to customize the style sheet that controls both the accordion panels and list you can style the widgets to complement your site. All in all, I learned quite a bit about Spry implementation and am looking for new ways to integrate more features. My next project is to “properly” skin my Spry drop down menu and move away from the default skin.

If you don’t know what Spry is or AJAX, click in to my custom web design portfolio and check out the implementation.