Today, I would like to talk to you about frames. I personally like frames
if they are used properly. Some people seem to use them just because they can.
This can make you site harder to navigate and a whole lot more confusing if not
used properly.
Using frames should be like an other type of advertising
or marketing strategy you use for your business, base the decision on whether
or not it will enhance the message you are trying to get across. But make sure
that you understand the trade-offs that go along with using them.
1.
The biggest trade-off. And probably enough reason by itself NOT to use frames:
Search Engine robots do NOT read pages with frames! When they encounter a frames
page all they see is they outline of the frames, the . They don't see any links
so they assume it is a dead page (or a dead site) and they move on. This can be
disastrous for a web-site. If you want to generate sales, you need customers.
To get customers you first need to get people to your web-site. To do this, you
need the Search Engines. To go to the time, trouble, and expense of setting up
an Internet Store (web-site) and then to deliberately block your site from the
Search Engines is like opening up a retail store but painting the windows black
and not putting up a sign. You are open for business, but nobody knows it, unless
they happen to accidently stumble in.
2. Frames can oftentimes be confusing,
especially if all of them have scrollbars going up/down and left/right. Besides
taking up a lot of your already limited screenspace, the scrollbars are just distracting.
This can cause a lot of people to leave your site immediately. They figure that
if your front page is confusing (and that is the page you are using to draw them
in) that the rest of the site probably isn't worth their time or trouble either.
3. Navigation. You have to have Everything just right when you are using
frames. If you don't, when you click on a link it can come up in the wrong window,
thus destroying what was there and probably blowing any and all formatting that
you had done. And, if linked pages come up in the window where the Links are supposed
to be, the person is trapped on your site, in your frames, with nowhere to go.
Frames can be useful, but having your main site done in frames is not wise. Look
around at other sites that have frames, try top navigate them, and try to read
and see everything using all the scroll bars. Then... think about your average
customer. Is this something you would want to put them through? Is it something
you would want to have to go through if you were the client?
Copyright
1997 by Victor H. Schlosser
