10 web tips

Robin and Marion Jones, Croque-en-Bouche, Underdown - Grooms Cottage, Gloucester Road, Ledbury, Herefordshire HR8 2JE. UK

t. +44 (0)1531 636400 f. +44 (0) 870 7066282 mail@croque.co.uk Site problems? Please let us know, click here

I rent my dedicated webspace from NamesCo. The company has a very good reputation, and also supplies quality broadband.
If you are interested, use this link. Need advice? Ask me. I’ll get an affilliate fee, and will credit your account with me, to the value of £20 plus VAT. Domain names are best renewed through me, as I get 50% discount. I only charge you the cost price to me for domain registration and renewal anyway.

DESIGN

WEBSITE

1	Keep it simple. You may love that ‘falling leaves’ fade-in graphic on a fave site. But you must be on broadband, and were you a potential customer, or just browsing? Large page size will deter many. You’ve got 15 seconds max. to impress - research says so.

Graphics vs. text. Graphics are fun and give style, but search engines, can’t read, for example, croque-en-bouche at the top of this page. Nor odd browsers. SE’s look for a nice slug of relevant text. BTW, you must use one of the common fonts. Arial, Times (both boring), Verdana, Trebuchet (here), Tahoma, Georgia (serif, better than Times), Comic Sans (informal).

3	Keep text punchy. Net users have attention spans of gnats. Whatever text is in in your existing stuff, better be half that on the Web. Put interesting info first.

4	Never underline anything that’s not a hyperlink. And Italics show badly en masse. Use bold.

5	Boring (old-fashioned) text links on each page - spoil the look? But search engine ‘spiders’ use them to check your site, and people, with non-standard browsers. ...more on this?

6	Assume the audience is chronic lazy! Have a consistent look - in case they think they’ve gone to a new site. Navigation links must always be in a shade of blue, please. And minimal scrolling.

Give me first your keywords! The Artillery Tower is a ‘restaurant’ in ‘Plymouth’. To find a ‘restaurant’ in ‘Plymouth’, you’d put that in a search engine. The AT site is well-populated with its two keywords; in the text, headings (blurb below this page is in a special Heading tag), page titles (stuff in blue strip at top), and page names. Test your idea of keywords on Google. A bit techie, but right-click a competitor’s homepage, choose ‘view source’. See ‘keywords’ early on in the META tags, and check out their keywords. ...more on this?

You wait for search engine listing. There’s a mass of spam/nefarious/devious sites being created to attract search engines. Google, Yahoo, MSN, et al., will mostly wait six months before listing any regular site, to let the dodgy sites fade away. They want to sell you Adwords, which use your keywords. Pay 12 - 30p each time a punter comes to your site from Google (and others), and you’ll be right on page one of Google results. Google sets up in 15 mins.! Generally much liked by clients, as you only pay for results ( cf. cost of newspaper/mag. ads.),and easy to turn on and off.

9	Check your spelling; check my spelling; get your wife/partner to check both - I do. My favourite maxim: can’t spell, can’t cook.

10	...Have a splash page at your peril! See a graphic-based homepage done for this site.

I’ve never feared giving an opinion. Good at being a pedant. Sorry!

But I have learnt some basic rules that apply to menus, wine lists and the Web.
Of course, they can all be challenged and broken. But know their relevance first. Some may seem obvious and simple, but they are in ‘cos I see the errors often.

Here’s the Web stuff. There’s also my
set of rules for...

TIPS