Telling someone their site has a lot of design problems
is not a very popular stance, particularly if that someone just spent thousands
of dollars to have it designed for them. Or, if they gave up their nights and
weekends to write it themselves.
The fact of the matter is, however,
that the vast majority of emails I get regarding lack of sales and consequent
complaints about other sites whose 'banner ads don't perform' or 'classified ads
don't work' have much more to do with my prospective customers' poor web site
design than the ad or banner service they're blaming.
Not popular, I know,
but critical analysis is just that: critical.
This is one of the reasons
why tracking statistics software is essential to the health of a site. The site
owner can track exactly what's happening with an ad campaign and see for him or
herself what ads are working and how long someone stays at a page.
If
a page gets lots of hits, but no one stays more than a moment, chances are the
page is suffering from the slow load blues and no amount of advertising will generate
sales.
One of the most common errors I see when analyzing other sites
is, unfortunately, what a new site owner wants most - lots of graphics. Big, beautiful,
full color images; spinning graphics everywhere; animated images at every corner
and on every line; jumping, bouncing, flashing, bubbling images next to every
paragraph.
Great fun, but the more images on a page and the larger the size
of the file, the longer it will take to load. Try to remember not everyone out
there has a 56k modem hooked up to their 400 MhZ, 164 MB RAM CPU.
Think
content. A few images will spice up a page, and enable you to "hide" valuable
keywords for search engine placement, but too many large image files will send
your visitor surfing before they even know what a great product you have to offer.
A good rule of thumb: keep images under 12k and try to keep each page limited
to 5 or less files. A page should load in 15 seconds or less with a 28.8k modem.
Again, it's content, not cool, that will keep your visitors from moving
on, and keep them coming back once they've found an interesting site.
For instance, a customer wrote me and explained that he had spent a lot of money
having a web site written for him, but he wasn't making any sales. He wanted to
start a progressive advertising campaign to promote the site.
However,
when I visited his site I knew immediately that any advertising dollars would
be completely wasted. Images the size of the Grand Canyon covered every inch of
every page, and what was worse, no image size specs (height, width) were specified
in the HTML. The pages were filled with very nice, but very large photos, and
very little text content. Even on my top of the line system, his site suffered
from slow loading, big time. No matter what promotional campaign he undertook,
and no matter how much money he spent, he'd never make a sale with his expensive
site. Any visitors in their right mind would leave his site long before ALL those
truck loads of images loaded.
Bottom line: think content; keep it
simple; avoid too many images; avoid too many photos; keep animation simple -
and limited.
Don't talk your web designer into putting a lot of large
image files on your pages.
Then, and only then, plan your advertising
campaign. And then, keep updating your site's content to make it dynamic, interactive
and attractive to repeat visitors.
If your site never changes, if your content
is never updated, what's the incentive for a visitor (translate customer) to keep
returning?
Diane Standish is Publisher of the eCave NetGazette.
She has 15 years of marketing experience, both off and online in computer and
business services, and is founder and President of a multi- million dollar service
business. Reach her by email at ezine@ecave.com or visit her site, eCave Internet
Services, at http://www.ecave.com
