Tag: Web Design

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New Quick Launch Website Completed

We’ve just finished a new Quick Launch website for the Global Movement Against Radical Islam. You can view it at www.GMARI.com. Quick Launch is our super fast web presence program that allows you to cost efficiently have a great looking website completed in record time using pre-made website templates.

This template is from Dreamweaver CS3’s template library and has been customized to fit the client’s needs. The site was completed in one day – now that’s a quick launch! We’ve got lots of great templates to select from and some can handle more customization than others, but take a look if you need a budget website done fast.

 

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Five Website Killers

There are many things that you can do to benefit your website, but have you thought about the things that can kill your website? Here are my five top website killers – things you clearly should stay clear of doing to get good organic search engine placement and impress viewers.

  1. Don’t build your website all in Flash. It looks cool, but search engines cannot catalog the information contained in .swf files or for that matter .flv files. Google has just announced in early August that it is working with Adobe to try to rectify this problem, but that doesn’t help you now.
  2. Don’t ever steal your content from another website. You need unique content, don’t scrape someone else’s site. Not only will Google penalize you for duplicate content but you may get sued for copyright infringement. You can’t use the content even if you give credit – that’s still infringing.
  3. Don’t test your website in Firefox. If you don’t check, you won’t know and you really should. Firefox is an important browser and the browser of choice for nearly 25% of the browsing readers. If you don’t look good in IE AND Firefox, you may alienate a large part of your readers.
  4. Don’t make your web page layout too big. Although there are actually still some people surfing the web with 800 by 600 pixel resolution, the bulk of people are at 1024 pixels wide and larger. For my own site, still nearly 30% of my viewers are at 1024 pixels wide. Make sure you have website statistics that track this and then make sure to design your site to accommodate this important segment and not alienate viewers by having scroll bars at the bottom for 1024 pixel resolution viewers.
  5. Don’t use webmaster tools. Google, Yahoo and MSN have webmaster tools, make sure you are using them so you will know how the various search engines see your website. If you have problems, these tools can be invaluable in order to diagnose problems.
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Web Presence on a Budget

Websites are expensive, really expensive if you are selling something, and just plain expensive for a great optimized site. So how do you get out there if you are just starting up or just want a web presence on a budget?

Here are a few options worth considering for a budget web presence:

  • Consider a website using a template design. There are some website templates that you can buy that don’t look half bad, just don’t expect things like that to get you fabulous organic placement. Be realistic, use them as a stepping stone allowing you to walk before you run. When you can invest in a better website, but use inexpensive options to get out there. We have a program called Quick Launch that is our version of an inexpensive website. For $600 you get 5 pages with a degree of customization and the content you want.

 

  • Consider using a blog as your first website. With a myriad of blog templates and WordPress you can even create section pages. This is a simple easy way to start a web presence for under $150. This even includes an expert setting up your blog on your selected hosting server.  Creating the content and customization will be up to you, but that is a super bargain to get your feet wet on the Web.
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Don’t Defeat Accessibility on Your Website

Some people need extra help surfing the Web. Some use readers to actually read the content of a web page and others need to enlarge the text of websites using Tools >>Text Size. When your web designer creates your page design and uses a pixel size for fonts instead of a percentage or an em, you are defeating the ability for readers who need extra help to get it.

As a web designer myself I do like to have control, but now there are many new options that designers and site owners simply need to be aware of to help. One new option is to use a global style sheet that controls your fonts, font sizes, colors, and links all on one page for the entire website. Another one to be aware of is to describe font sizes in a percentage or as an em, which is the width of the letter m in any font. Using these font descriptions instead of using a pixel width description allows your reader to resize the font as needed.

Web designers need to design especially for use of font accessibility, it is not something that can be added as an after thought but rather as an integral part of a new design.

I am currently in the process of redesigning my 1221 page website and am incorporating improved accessibility features in my new website. So when you hit a website where the font doesn’t change even when you click largest font, you will now that the web designer has defeated one of the biggest tools on the Web that shouldn’t be tinkered with to help people who need it.