TRAFFIC
General
Web Design
Logic
Logic 1
Logic 2
VISITORS
Traffic
Navigation
Menus
Site Theme
Updates
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TRAFFIC
General
This article continues the information provided in the previous article WebSites
and explains more fully my experiences while putting together this site.
Web Design
Having spent time speaking to a large number of professionals I've found
that they will most often tell you what you want to hear and why not -
it's in their best interest to get your site design work for themselves.
They won't tell you about the pitfalls - they won't tell you about image
scanning that you have to do or provide photos for them to scan and that
you will have to spend time providing copy in some form of text file for
them to include in your site which they are designing for you.
Believe me you will spend a lot of time with these two - getting the
right images and story to go with them to give your site an expression
of your practice and work.
But it goes way beyond that it goes to the look and feel of the site as
a reflection of yourself and your office - the background is just as
important as what you end up putting on it and into the site.
The first time somebody enters your site it loads up and what are they
confronted with? Well if it was like my first attempt under the expert
direction of a web designer...a mess. What they see usually has no logic
to it and is, as it was in my case, a load of rubbish.
I spent a lot of time looking at other sites and ended up putting
together a 'frames' site because that was what I was led to believe was
the 'latest way to go'- every site has frames.
Wrong - I found out latter that it looked OK...but I also discovered
that Search Engines gave it the 'pass by' and I wondered why nobody was
visiting my site - I had no 'hits'. I sure found out the hard way what
the cause was - expensive as well.
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Logic
Logic plays a big part in web design and the fact that I had a frames
site meant that the search engines when they can to index my site found
nothing - not a single thing. They found the first of the frames pages
and then nothing beyond that page. The code for frames I found acts like
a brake - so if you want to be found by the engines - even the minor
ones my advice is if you are thinking of FRAMES - DON'T.
The next thing I found was that there are certain things that the
engines look for - a TITLE, KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION.
That's easy you say - right. Only the TITLE cannot be longer than a
certain number of characters, KEYWORDS similarly if they repeat the same
word or combinations of words give the engines apoplexy and they leave
very smartly. Then of course there's the DESCRIPTION - well if you don't
get it exactly or exactly close to 200 characters the same things happen
- you guessed right apoplexy and they're gone with out even seeing what
else there is available for them.
Then of course there is the matter of how many times your keywords are
used in the text of your page - who cares you say well the engines DO.
They score you on all these factors and give you a rating.
And you thought there was logic involved. Of course there is information
out there on the WWW - if only you can find it or even know it exists.
Some of the engines do give you a guide with notes on the way they score
your site - most don't and I've found that the web designers know less
about the subject than you think.
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Logic 1
There is another part to this logic - just when you think you have got
it right somebody tells you that one of the major engines doesn't have a
computer robot search your site - it's done by humans.
Well the logic just went out the window - did somebody say that humans
are logical. If the computers have an algorithm to test the logic of
your site and score it what are the humans going to use by way of logic.
Who knows I certainly don't. The scoring systems appeared to me to be
very arbitrary at best - particularly for those engines using human
'robots'.
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Logic 2
Some of you may remember my mentioning navigation previously in
reference to search engines. When search engines visit your site
they start with your entry index or home page. They use this page to
extract hyperlink information from here which leads them through your
site - so sites which have an illogical trail through them will stop the
robot from finding information to follow. It is no good developing a
site which has no internal links from page to page or no links at all.
Likewise robots look for external hyperlinks referencing other sites as
well as information contained in your pages such as email addresses and the like - they store
this information in their database and use it to score and index your
site.
Apart from looking for this relevant information robots carry out a
logic analysis of your site where the content and the structure of the
site is scored - if the robots find no logic (in their terms of
reference - and what that is I've never been able to find out) they
DON'T BOTHER going any further they just leave.
As you can see it's important to get all this right for your site or
your site won't even rate a mention.
AND IF YOUR SITE IS NOT INDEXED THEN NOBODY CAN FIND IT.
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VISITORS
Traffic
By traffic I am not talking about cars, what I am talking about is
visitors to your site.
Assuming that you have got it all right and you have been listed and
people apart from you can find your site the next hurdle you have to get
over is that of upload times of your page from the host server when
somebody types in you URL. What happens when your page starts to load
into your visitors browser and your visitor sees nothing for but the
'loading......' message, is that if it lasts for any more than 20 to 30
seconds the visitor is gone. Sure faster modems and direct cable links
mean faster download times generally but there are still people out
there who use 56K modems and the rule is any more than 30 seconds at
28.8K and your visitor is gone.
What does that mean for the Architect who wants to show of his projects
using images is obvious - the larger the image content the slower the
load times and as a consequence you might be stopping visitors because
of your content.
Similar principles apply to the page background design - many architect
site use images for backgrounds - all of these as well as large project
images mean the same thing ....your visitors are gone before they
arrive.
The answer - find a piece of software which allows you to create
'thumbnails' of your photos - smaller files which load faster, as well
as storing the larger images on your host server so that if somebody
wants to see the 'full photo' they can click on the thumbnail and your
server will load just one image and quickly.
After all isn't it the visitors you are after in the hope that you might
be able to get some projects out of your website?
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Navigation
Once you got the visitors into your site you will want them to be able
to find the information that's there easily and logically - don't you?
In looking at architect sites on the WWW I've found many where it is not
obvious what the site is about and it is not obvious what information is
being provided and it is certainly not obvious how the designer intends
for you to find that information. Sure there is the 'back button' in
your browser but place yourself into the visitors shoes and imagine what
would happen if you couldn't get to the information that was supposed to
be on the site - wouldn't leave AND NOT COME BACK thinking that that
site was a waste of time?
I know I would!
So make sure you have navigation bars that provide a 'click' to the page
that has that particular piece of information on it and when your
visitor gets there if you have more information about that piece provide
him or her with a next 'logical click link' to that piece and so on.
Don't forget when he or she gets to the end provide a link back to your
home page.
You can use TOP SIDE AND BOTTOM MENU LINKS on your site - some software
packages such as FrontPage have wizards that create these automatically.
At the end of the day keep them simple - if you complicate them all you
are doing is creating another headache for yourself.
Return BOOKMARKS like the one below are also a good idea to get somebody
back to the relevant table of contents - help and make it easy for your
visitor and they stay and browse.
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Menus
From what I have been able to find out there is no right or wrong menu
system to use for your site. At least the menu system doesn't make any
difference to the way your site is indexed or scored.
The basis of your menu system should be one of simplicity.
If you look at this site I've placed a menu bar at the top where all the
main items of information that I want people to find can be found.
Along the right side I've included a sub-menu reference bar which allows
expansion of the main menu - so that people can go to specific topics to
find the information they want.
While at the bottom I've included a back and forward button which allows
them to navigate once they have got that far.
I've found this works for my site it may or may not work for yours. The
important thing is to keep it simple and give your visitors the simple
options of navigation depending on the content of your site.
I've kept the design of the buttons simple an consistent so that
visitors get the idea as soon as they enter my site.
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Site Theme
One of the ways the you can identify your sites content and give people
an understanding about the content of your site is to develop a 'site
theme'.
I've looked at a great number of architect sites on the web - most are
pretty 'flat and say nothing about the site'. If you look at sites like
YAHOO or ALTA VISTA you can identify them easily because each has
distinctive graphics at the top which gives each a theme and a
'trademark' appearance.
I've done the same for my site - and being an architect site the
graphics of the background give it a sense of 'technology' - I think it
works and provides a basic structure which is evident throughout the
site.
The experts say that you need an element which will stick in your
visitors minds and identify your site from others - remember there are
millions of site on the WWW and growing each minute.
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Updates
You need to keep your information current and updated. At the bottom of
this site there is a footer which does just that.
Apart from a link back to the webmaster via email the software I use
generates the time and date information for the last time the page was
opened and modified.
Many robots look for this kind of information when they revisit your
site - OH YES they do come back to check if you are still there and if
there is any new information AND they do score your site better if there
is new content.
So keep your site information current and add to it regularly - it
effects your traffic and popularity.
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Victor Z Yanchenko has been involved with
computer technology since 1969 specifically in the areas of evaluating
CAD based mainframe and PC based systems. In the early 1970's he
assisted in the development of APDesign a PC based third party
application specifically for use by Architects with AutoCAD the worlds
most widely used PC based AEC software. In the early 1990's, apart from
his Architectural responsibilities he designed, managed and maintained
several Web Sites including the Sarlos Yanchenko Collaborative Web
Site as well as undertaking implementation and integration of Internet
based remote Design and Documentation of various projects for
clients in locations such as Mongolia, Thailand, Malaysia as well as
other Asian and Oceania based projects.
This site was built using some of the knowledge and information in
this article.
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