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8 Rules for websites.
1. You need a domain of your own.
2. Content is king!
3. A picture is worth 1024 words
4. Forget Flash Intros
5. Words in type - not graphics.
6. Never remove good content
7. Keep the good stuff above the fold
8. K.I.S.S. -Keep it simple, stupid.
9. Navigation is Everything! (Bonus Rule)
You need a
domain of your own.
It's hard to respect a site or the site owner who
doesn't own his own domain. See 8 Rules
for Domains
for info on selecting a domain.
Content is king!
Words are
content. Content is king!
A picture
is worth 1024 words
Use
pictures. Take your own. Don't resize the images
in html.
Draw your own graphics if you can. There's tools
to help you.
Also, watch the load times. Big pictures take
longer to download and display.
Forget
Flash Intros
Don't
waste your visitors time by making them sit
through a boring Flash Intro. You're competing
with other sites for the visitor's time and
attention.
Keep in mind that many people have short
attention spans (especially those with ADD). And
some people run several browser windows at once.
You'll lose those visitors if some other site
garners their interest before you do.
Words in
type - not graphics.
To be
effective and to boost your site in search
engines, your words need to be in machine
readable form. Written words "present"
faster than images normally.
Try not to scan documents and put them on your
site as a scanned image. And I hate pdf
documents. So don't put them on your site unless
you absolutely have to.
Never
remove good content
You spend
time adding content to a site in the form of
words, features, and pictures. There's hardly
ever a good reason to remove that good content.
Move it elsewhere or spawn a new site for it if
warranted.
Keep the
good stuff "Above the Fold"
When a
browser loads a large page, the first visible
part of that page is considered "above the
fold". Sorta like a newspaper. The paper's
"banner", breaking news, and everything
they want to show or get across to a reader at a
glance is on the top front main page "Above
the Fold".
K.I.S.S.
-Keep it simple, stupid.
Finally, make sure your sites domain appears
within all your advertising. It needs to be on
your business cards, mentioned on your radio ads,
shown on your TV ads, always in your print
materials. Make sure it's in your newspaper ads.
Put it on your cars and trucks.
And make sure you have both the domain with and
without the www. working.
Navigation
is Everything! (Bonus Rule)
It's okay
to put all your content on one page if your site
seems to fit that model. New sites often start as
one page. It's fine but consider navigation from
the start.
For larger one page sites there's still
navigation aides called anchors that can move a
visitor from a link "above the fold" to
specfic content further down the page.
Consider starting off with a menu from day one or
as soon as your site gets big enough to use one.
Then it's on your mind and layout considerations
will include the possibility of a menu sometime
in the future.
If your menu has graphic buttons you might also
include a second text only menu for browsers that
don't see graphics. Search engine spiders can't
see graphics very well either so a text menu can
help you there. |
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