Web Site Tips (pg. 1 of 2)

USE Your Web Site's Inter-Activity
As a medium, the World-Wide Web allows users to create inter-active computer programs which can make web sites much more than just "electronic brochures." Plan your web site accordingly, allowing users 24-hour access to information, purchasing and even entertainment from your site. Capture and sustain the user's attention with autoresponding e-mail, on-line ordering, fresh content, and timely responses to queries.

Evolve Gradually
Create a simple, basic web site at first. Monitor the traffic and response to various content, then adjust accordingly. Let your Web Site grow to meet the needs and desires of your visitors, and they will happily return.

Don't Exclude Potential Customers by Over-Programming
There are many special effects available on the Web today, but not all browsers and computers are capable of interpreting those effects. World-Wide-Net can program any special effect desired, but we encourage our clients to keep it simple. Fewer effects means quicker load times, a premium "special effect" in its own right. (See the next topic.)
Some effects use little memory but have startling results, such as this one, activated by placing your mouse icon over the following words: Cheap trick, but effective.

World-Wide-Net avoids using FrontPage and DreamWeaver and any other Wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) web site development package whenever possible. We program "from the ground up" in a hybrid programming language which will display your site consistently and efficiently via both Netscape and Explorer, as seen on both Windows and Macintosh. As of late 1999, over 65% of world-wide web users view the Internet through Internet Explorer, while another 28% browse with Netscape; therefore, web sites designed by World-Wide-Net are fully accessable to 94% of all web-surfers.

Maximize Your Download Speed
Recent statistics indicate that as many as 50% of your potential visitors will not wait longer than 15 seconds to see your first page load fully. The rest are likely to bail out if your page is still not loaded after 30 seconds.

More than 90% of web users in the world have modems of at least 28.8 Kbps (Kilobytes per second) speed. However, that percentage drops drastically when looking at 56 Kbps, ISDN, Cable and even quicker modem speeds. This is due to factors including web traffic volume, local telephone hardware, your computer's processing speed, and your browser's efficiency in translating the incoming signals.

World-Wide-Net attempts to balance your desired effects with quick download speed, using reduced-sized graphics, compressed files, and specific programming techniques. Users of 28.8 Kbps connections will download your web site quickly, while cable users will experience lightning fast downloads.
There's an intersting site that will help you test your own download speed. Visit SpeedTest.net.

Choose Your Colors Carefully
There are 216 basic colors which are recognized by all major Browsers and all color 8-bit (+) monitors. Each monitor may interpret any given color slightly differently. Operating systems also have an effect on how colors are displayed; Macintosh monitors tend to be brighter than Windows monitors, while Unix monitors tend to be the darkest.

View World-Wide-Net's Color Palettes, which display the 216 basic colors as interpreted by your operating system and monitor.

Of course, you may wish to display graphics using far more colors than these 216 (there are 16,777,216 colors available!), but far fewer monitors will be able to accurately display these colors, and the results may be decidedly unattractive.

Keep Your Web Site Fresh
To encourage repeat visits, keep your web site looking fresh, updated. Post the current date, change graphics and content regularly, and make sure your web site is useful to your visitors. World-Wide-Net prompts its clients to add content and refresh their look periodically, and even offers programming techniques which will automate the process.

Web Rings
Web Rings are formed by the joining - through special programming - of web sites with similar interests. By joining a Web Ring, your site gains added exposure in two important ways. First, the other sites in the ring will visit your site, possibly offering valuable feedback to your own site's design and function.

Second, visitors to the other sites in your ring may visit your site, thus you will reap benefits from other ring-members' efforts to increase traffic to their sites.

The premier Web Ring organizer is Webring.org, which lists tens of thousands of Web Rings.

Banners and Link Exchanges
Banners are those small (or not-so-small) boxes of advertising that you see on most Web Sites. Although placing your banner on a heavily-travelled Web Site could be prohibitively expensive, reciprocal banner-swapping is free.

A premier banner-swap site is BannerSwap.com at BannerSwap.com, offering many options.

Alternatively, you are free to make any banner display arrangement - reciprocal, for pay, or even for no particular reason - with any other Web Site operator.

Awards
Receiving awards for design and content is another opportunity to link sites at no cost. Not only are some awards prestigious and impressive, they also have a budget separate from yours which is geared toward increasing web traffic on their site as well as their award recipients (you!).

Award sites can be sought out via any Search Engine, and you can even apply for more than 100 awards simultaneously at Award-it.com.

Conversely, you may wish to offer an award FROM your site. If your product, service, or organization can be considered a standard-bearer, or your site can establish itself as a source of distinctive authority in some field, an award from your site would be sought out by potentially rewarding recipients.

Print Media
It has been said that if the computer was invented first, the subsequent invention of paper would be considered a spectacular innovation. Do not forget to promote your Web Site URL and e-mail address on all of your printed material:

• business cards
• letterheads
• fliers
• ads
• phone books
• billboards
• member directories