| There
is nothing worse than going to a website
and waiting more than 15 seconds for that
page to load. Many of your visitors don't
have the time to wait for a web page to
load and nor should they. Timewise, many
people will go on to something else if
your page is slow to load. Ten years ago
15 seconds and more might have been
acceptable but in this day and age of
high speed internet this is highly
unacceptable. Check this free site for
help with load time for your website.
Dcotor HTML http://www.doctor-html.com 3. Graphics
Do you
hate it when your gonto a site for
information and finding missing graphics.
Worse than missing graphics are graphics
that do not at least have an ALT tag
which would at least give your visitor
some idea of what the graphic was about.
When you have ALT tags it also allows
search engines to recognize all the
content on your site. Make sure to use
good keywords and use them often on your
page, as it will help you rank higher in
the search engines. Use the free link
verification program at XENU http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html to ensure that
all your graphics are loading.
4. Links
Not Working
One of
my major pet peeves is visiting a site
and clicking on a link and finding it
does not work. This is one of the fastest
ways to loose a potential customer.
Broken links are something you should be
checking on a daily basis. This is your
bread and butter and you can not afford
to loose even one potential customer.
Again, XENU at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html is an excellent
free program to help you keep your
website in tip top shape. Also note,
search engines do not like missing links
and you risk your ranking with them if
your site is not up to snuff. Xenu will
give you a comprehensive report that
shows all broken links and their
corresponding pages.
5.
Making Your Index Page As Small As
Possible
The old
saying that time is money is never more
true than when someone visits your first
page. Getting it to load quickly is one
of your main objectives. This mean you
need to run your page through an HTML
optimizer. Doctor HTML http://www.doctor-html.com, a free website,
can be invaluable to you when it comes to
shrinking your page. Your site will still
look the same but will take less time to
load.
6. HTML
Validation
Validating
your HTML will help your visitors to have
no problems while visiting your website.
With valid HTML, browsers will function
correctly at your site and with future
browser updates people will have a smooth
transition. Tidy GUI is a great free
program for fixing errors and reducing
the size of you page. It can be
downloaded at http://www.emailpromotions.net/download/TidyGUI.exe
7.
Reduce The Size Of Your Graphics
The size
of the graphics on your site, and these
graphics not loading quickly, can be one
of the major reasons for your page to
load slowly and for your visitors to
leave. Always shrink the size of your
images and watch how much faster your
website will load. Spinwave http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html is a free online
cruncher that can offer a maximum
compression of approximately 30%.
8. Your
Visitors Browser
Not
everyone uses Internet Explorer and that
leaves you with the problem of making
sure that visitors to your site, using
Netscape, Mozilla and others, all see the
same thing. Unless you ensure
compatibility then different browsers are
going to display things differently than
what you designed or what you see. With
some browsers some people may not be able
to see anything on your site. To check
your website on different browsers visit
Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer at
http://www.delorie.com/web/wpbcv.html
9.
Contacting You
No
website owner can afford to take its
customers for granted. When they need to
get in touch with you in order to ask
questions, it is imperative that you have
easy to find contact information. Nothing
is more frustrating than having to search
a site to find how to reach you. Your
visitors are your livelyhood...keep it
simple for your customers. It makes for a
great relationship with your visitors.
10.
Spell Check
Last but
not least, check your spelling. No one
likes to read a page filled with spelling
errors. Most HTML software offers this
simple service and it should always be
the last thing your check before you
upload your page.
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