| One of the great things about the World Wide Web is | | | | how yourwebsite loads for him/her. |
| that even the "littleguy" can be big. | | | | Make sure your web hosting provider gives you |
| Your website can give the appearance of a large | | | | enough bandwidth and a fastconnection. We |
| organization, even when it'sjust you and the family dog, | | | | experienced this problem (among others) while stuck in |
| sitting in your kitchen in your underwear (notthe dog, | | | | a 2year contract with a hosting provider. We've since |
| you in your underwear!). It's all about presence and | | | | switched to anotherprovider and don't have this |
| appearance. | | | | problem anymore. See Web Hosting to find outwhere |
| This article discusses how to make your website look | | | | we went for better bandwidth. No matter what we did |
| large, even when whatis behind it is just getting started. | | | | to make our |
| The World Wide Web is making moremillionaires | | | | Website load fast, our foundation was not good |
| faster than any other phenomenon in history. | | | | enough to make people want tocome back. More than |
| Elements of a Winning Site | | | | a few seconds to get to your website, and your |
| The elements that make a website a "winner" are the | | | | sitegoes down in history as not being seen, along with |
| following: | | | | all the websites hostedat places where websites are |
| 1. Loads Fast | | | | free. (You probably know who they are) |
| 2. Looks Great | | | | If you have huge graphics and all kinds of whirlygigs |
| 3. It's links actually work | | | | and java scripts thatwould make a grown man cry, |
| 4. Quick response when people request information, | | | | your site is in trouble again. Try to make allyour |
| report trouble | | | | graphics small and in a .jpg (jpeg) format. |
| 5. Is Useful | | | | If you must use moving gifs or other animated stuff, |
| 6. Is Interesting | | | | make it somethinguseful that replaces text information. |
| 7. Serves a great need | | | | It must have some use on your page -not just to look |
| 8. Is Fun | | | | good. And try to make it only one per page, if you can. |
| 9. Offers lots of free stuff | | | | If you love java, be aware of a couple of issues with |
| 10. Presents an appearance in keeping with whatever | | | | fancy java scripts: |
| you are selling | | | | Not everyone can see them if they don't have the |
| 11. Sells in a very subtle way | | | | right browser or the latestversion of some browsers, |
| 12. Is not like everyone else's | | | | not everyone is going to appreciate that theirmouse |
| 13. Does not use email addresses retrieved from its | | | | leaves "trails" across the screen, or that everything on |
| contents to "Spam"people | | | | your site iswhat they call a mouseover (where an |
| 14. Has some kind of newsletter that allows visitors to | | | | image changes into something else whenyou run your |
| keep in touch on anongoing basis | | | | mouse over it). Leave this stuff to your "other" site - |
| 15. Has clear navigation | | | | youknow, the one you wrote for fun. Try to keep this |
| Now we'll discuss these elements, one at a time. Miss | | | | stuff to a minimum on abusiness website. |
| any of these crucialelements, and your website traffic | | | | A plain white background is always better than some |
| will suffer. Ignore none of them, if youwant people to | | | | fancy, bandwidth-eatingbackground bitmap image. If |
| "show up". Just like a boring preacher has a hard | | | | you must have a background image, make it avery |
| timegetting people to come to church, just providing | | | | small watermark-style image. Better to leave it plain. |
| good choir music is notgoing to make up for it. Your | | | | Makes iteasier to read for many people who don't |
| website may look good, but if it serves nopurpose | | | | have the greatest video card or thebest pair of eyes. |
| whatsoever or is not clear in its message, it'll flop like | | | | One side note: It's always good to test your website's |
| one ofthose movies that doesn't make it in the box | | | | pages in anotherscreen resolution. If you like to keep |
| office because the first groupof people to see it keep | | | | your resolution (right-click on thedesktop in Windows, |
| the rest of them from showing up. | | | | go to settings, change the slide bar) at 1024x768, |
| The first thing you have to make sure of is that going | | | | testyour site using 800x600 and possibly 640x480. |
| to your website isnot frustrating: | | | | You can also put some javascripts that test the user's |
| 1. Loads Fast: If your website loads so slow that | | | | screen resolution and adjust accordingly, oryou can put |
| people get bored waitingfor it, your business will never | | | | a disclaimer on your main page that says: "Best when |
| get out of the starting gate. Largegraphics, lots of | | | | viewed in |
| those great java scripts, lots of background bitmaps, | | | | 800x600 resolution". You decide how easy to make it |
| anda slow server to run on are some of the causes | | | | for your visitors. |
| of this. No one will everstay long enough to find out | | | | Remember that things that may look great on your |
| what you're selling if your pages are slow. Thebest | | | | machine might look likecrap to someone with their |
| way to test your site is to get on an average | | | | screen resolution set differently. |
| connection and time itwith a stopwatch. You may be | | | | The next thing to make sure of after they actually get |
| operating on a DSL or cable modem connection,so it's | | | | to your site iswhether or not it looks good. |
| best if you can visit a friend who has a dialup and see | | | | |