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Published Articles
Currently, we have a column in the Staffordshire based newspaper The Sentinel where each week we write a website review along with a small article covering issues regarding web design & development.
In case you are unable to catch the Business Pages on a Monday, below are the articles:
Top 10 Search Engine Optimisation Tips (19th June 06)E-commerce small print (12th June 06)
Picking a website design (5th June 06)
To update or rewrite your website? (1st May 06)
Domain Name Pointers (1st May 06)
Website Images (24th April 06)
Securing your business (17th April 06)
Accepting Credit Cards (10th April 06)
Security and your website (3rd April 06)
Search Engines (27th March 06)
Top 5 do’s and don’ts for your company website (20th March 06)
Choosing an Internet Service Provider (13th March 06)
Flash Animation (6th March 06)
So what’s your website for anyway? (27th Feb 06)
E-commerce Starting Blocks (20th Feb 06)
Dynamic Content (13th Feb 06)
Top 10 Search Engine Optimisation Tips
- Don’t build your website first and then start thinking about search engines. Good search engines techniques start from the ground up for a website.
- Ensure you write good quality content for your website. Sticking a few lines of text about what your company does wont help search engines or customers. Lots of descriptive text is always helpful.
- Ask your web developer about what they are going to do for your website regarding search engines. They may charge extra to include optimisation techniques, so you need to talk about this in your first meeting.
- Get some decent statistics running on your website. There is no point spending any money on advertising if you don’t know if it’s making any difference.
- Don’t spend money with a company that offers something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Remember to listen carefully to what they are offering, most people can get you number one in Google for your company name (unless its generic) but you need more than that to get great hits.
- Get as many people as you can to link to your site. You probably know quite a few people with websites already, and if you offer to link back, everyone benefits.
- These days you will need to spend money as it’s increasing difficult to get somewhere without paying anything. Make yourself a budget, E.g. Spend £250 this month on a Google Adword, track it for the month with your stats and see if your orders increase. If you didn’t make the money back, then consider trying a different word or tactic.
- If you have the time, try a few submissions yourself before going to a company. Paying for an advert in yahoo is quite simple, just follow the online instructions.
- It takes time to appear naturally in Google. Don’t get frustrated if it seems to take months and months to get anywhere, this is quite normal.
- Remember to promote your website everywhere possible and ensure you have your URL on everything. The more hits you generate, the better you will appear in the search engines.
E-commerce small print
To show you are a trust worthy company online, you need to provide your potential customers with as much information has you can to reassure them that they will receive the goods.
The following pages should be easily available on your website:
Privacy Policy
A privacy policy refers to information that you collect from the customer. You need to inform them about your companies policy regarding passing on their data to another companies. You also need to assure them that the data is collected and stored securely.
Delivery
Many people will view your delivery page as delivery costs make such a difference to buying online. Users always want to know information about when they can expect delivery, what happens if it doesn’t arrive in the time and what delivery options and systems you use.
Terms & Conditions
You need to explain your Regulations for returns and cancellations along with information regarding how you deal with complaints.
Terms of use
This page refers to the expectations you have of your customers. It should explain that they must ensure information they provide about themselves is correct and they must also agree to not hack the site!
Remember, always have your full contact details easily available (not simply a contact form), many users email or call to double check information before placing an order.
Picking a website design
Many people don’t think about how they would like their website to look before going to see a web developer, but the design of your website is very important.
Primarily, the design has to tell the user within 25 seconds what the website is about so the user can decide if they want to stick around or go back to their search engine results to try someone else. ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, is a phrase well worth keeping in mind, if you only have a few seconds to convince someone that your website is what they are after, some well placed imagery that’s part of the design can really help as they are unlikely to read any text.
Consider the industry that your company is in, a kids fancy dress costume website would not look the same as a hen parties website or an accountants website! Users are already programmed with set meanings to certain imagery, you need to work alongside that. However at the same time, you also need to look different! If you look exactly the same as everyone else, then you won’t be remembered by your visitors and could lose out on repeat hits/business.
You can give your designer a helping hand by visiting websites you like and dislike before you have a meeting, this way the designer can get a better feel for your industry and your personal views. Remember, you know your business vastly better than the designer, so for them to be able to produce something that works well, you need to give them as much information as possible. But do listen to their advice too, they know what doesn’t work well on the Internet and can help transfer your concepts into a really great website design.
To update or rewrite your website?
Many businesses now have a website, however after a while the website can start to date and over time might need a few bits taking off and a few new bits adding, so what do you do?
Well, it depends on many different things…
Firstly what the technology it was originally written in, for example if your website was written in Flash and you don’t have the original .fla file used to make it then your site cannot be updated, you would simply need to start again, which might not be a bad thing. If your site was written in dot net, then without the un-compiled version of the files, you won’t be able to make any changes either. You also need to check that your web developer can handle the language it is written in, these days with so many coding options, developers often are specialists in a particular area.
Secondly, you might find that after you have reeled off the list of changes you want to your developer, they might simply say it’s not worth editing and starting again would be cheaper. This is particularly relevant to graphical redesigns and database restructures. From a developers point of view, editing someone else’s code who might not use the same standards as them is time consuming and can be frustrating.
However, adding a new button or changing some text shouldn’t end up resorting to a redesign, text changes can usually be quite cheap as they can be completed by a junior developer.
Ensuring your website doesn’t get out of date is very important, so it is worth assessing it once a year just to check it does everything you need it to do for your business and it is working for you.
Domain Name Pointers
These days, it’s not so easy to get the domain name you might like, many short and simple domain names have already gone. However the best thing to do it use a ‘whois’ lookup on the Internet as this will enable you to search to find what domains are available and which ones are taken, type whois into Google to find a selection of websites. Simply checking to see if there is a website on a domain name doesn’t means it is available.
Try and ensure it’s easy to understand when you tell someone your domain name over the phone, if you are going to use numbers, buy both domains one with the actual number, the other with the number written, then it doesn’t matter which your customer types.
Search engines take into account your domain name, so it can be worth having a domain name that is a search term used for your product to point to your website as it may help your ranking.
What extension?
A co.uk domain name is fine for a UK company, especially if selling to only within the UK. If selling internationally a .com or a .net are usually more common, however there is now the new .eu domain name for Europe. The advantage to this is that not all .eu domains are yet taken, and it is short, which makes it easy to type.
Ensuring your domain name is safe is vitally important. Companies completely rely on email and if you lose your domain name, your email will stop working. You need to ensure that who ever registers the domain for you that they will ensure its renewed in time, as other people do buy up domains the second they expire for their own use.
Ensure that you are the legal registrant, you can find this information out when doing a ‘whois’ lookup on your domain name. If you are not the legal registrant, you do not own the domain and have no claim over it, however you should contact the company who registered it for you immediately to get it rectified.
Website Images
If you are selling products on the web, the images you have of your products online becomes very important. Low quality images will affect whether or not a potential customer buys anything. Getting good quality images can be a bit of a minefield, especially if you are not experienced in graphical manipulation.
Flat Screens vs. Old Style Monitors
The first issue which is only just starting to come to light is that the quality of a flat screen monitor (TFT) is not the same as an old tube monitor (CRT). CRT monitors show true accurate colour, and are used by most graphics companies, TFT monitors (unless they are very high end) do not show true accurate colour. Most images that are produced on a CRT monitor will look good on a TFT (although sometimes can look a little faded) however if you product images on a TFT monitor, you will find that the images lack contrast, depth and colour on a CRT to the point where you might not be able to tell what colour the items is! The way to tell if your TFT quality is not great is to create a graphic on a CRT monitor with different shades of light grey. If you then look on your TFT monitor you will probably find that the image simply looks white, or only shows the darkest of greys. Make sure that if possible, you can produce your images on a CRT monitor, to ensure you don’t isolate any potential customers.
File Size
Another issue with images on the Internet is size, file size and physical size are two different things, but are related. File size is the image in Kilo Bytes (e.g. 30Kb), physical size is the image in pixels (e.g. 150 x150 pix). The larger the physical size the larger the file size will probably be. All images on the Internet only need to be 72dpi (Dots per Inch). This allows the file size to be quite small, so you should try to ensure your photos are no larger than 50kb. To do this, you will need to use compression, there are two main types used on the Internet, .jpg and .gif. Jpg’s are best for photos, Gif’s are best for graphics (such as a button or where there is large areas of the same colour). Jpg’s, can have different levels of quality, most photos do not need to be the best quality, mid to high quality is perfectly adequate.
Software
Although the main professional product for image manipulation is Adobe Photoshop, it is expensive, but there are many cheaper versions that can achieve the same thing such as Adobe Elements, Paint Shop Pro etc, all these packages come with the tools you need to ensure your images are resized, cropped, cut out, and laid out in a nice manner to ensure you customer can see the quality of the goods.
Securing your business
Firewalls are now an essential part of connecting to the Internet. Without them, there is no doubt that you will gain a Trojan, computer virus within a very short period of time or possibly even hacked. However these days, they are a little more complex and can cause issues, so I’m going to explain a little bit about how they work and what they can do for your business.
How they work
All computers communicating across the internet use ports on your computer, each different Internet task you do on the machine will go through a different port. Imagine ports as a number of doors on your computer, different types of information go in and out through various doors. FTP files go through door number 21, websites go through door 80, email goes through door 110/25 and so on. This becomes important because without a firewall, all these doors are open allowing anything to go in and out. A firewall locks these doors and only allows certain doors to remain open. If you shut all your doors, you would have no Internet connection at all, nothing would work.
Types of firewalls
Software firewalls are installed on to your computer and monitor and block ports. They will sometimes request to block a port now and again if it thinks something unusual is going on. If you allow your computer to block anything without reading the message, you may find that it has enthusiastically blocked a port, for example 110 which would then stop your email from working. This is one of the main causes of email failure and a common support call we encounter.
Hardware firewalls are placed between your computers and the internet connection. The firewall will only block what it is set up to block, which means configuring it correctly is important, but once it has been set up, it requires little maintenance. Ensure you only open up ports that are required, or the firewall can become pointless.
Hardware firewalls can now be purchased with VPN (virtual private network) capabilities. This allows you to log onto your network from anywhere else in the world securely. Your computer creates a direct connection to your work place network, it gets given a local work place IP address and then acts like another computer in your work place, so you can share files, connect to databases etc. It’s a great tool to enable remote workers or even if you want to put in a few extra hours but don’t fancy staying in the office.
Accepting Credit Cards
Accepting credit cards is vital for trading online. Internet shoppers will not expect to have to send a cheque in the post or make a bank transfer to buy goods from your website.
To accept credit cards, you need a merchant ID, however getting a merchant ID from your bank might not be as easy as you first think. It’s worth shopping around with Banks, your current bank is always the first step, but if they reject your application, don’t give up, another bank might accept it. Keep in mind that the bank is trying to protect itself from fraudulent claims and your business potentially going under, so if you have no trading history, or are selling a service online, it can get difficult and expensive to gain a merchant ID. Therefore if you are thinking of trading online, start off talking with your bank before your web developer.
Once you have a merchant ID, you will then need a Payment Gateway, unless you already have a PDQ machine. Many banks have a recommended Payment Gateway, however you can usually use any, and it’s worth taking a look around as they have different charging structures which can depend on how many orders you get.
Some Payment Gateways allow your web developer to integrate your website directly into the Payment Gateway, this is a good idea, as your customer never leaves your website, which makes them feel safer about making the purchase. Chat to your web developer about integration, as they may have more experience using a particular Payment Gateway, which would probably reduce your cost for the integration code.
What if you can’t get a merchant ID? Well, there is always Paypal (an online payment processing company where you use their merchant ID), however if you want your business to appear as professional, genuine and legitimate as possible, I would only go down this route as a last resort.
Security and your website
One of the biggest issues I come across as an ISP & web developer is the lack of knowledge regarding security on the Internet and what should be done and whose responsibility it is.
SSL certificates
When shopping online and entering your credit card information, you should ensure as a user that the site has a padlock in the bottom right of the browser and that the padlock is valid. (You can double click the padlock and if there is a problem with it there will be an error). You should ensure that any website you have had developed has its credit card page hosted on your ISP’s secure certificate. However simply having this doesn’t make your website secure, or the users information safe.
Credit card data
What’s then done with the credit card data is key to security, I have come across sites far too often that hold the credit card numbers of all past orders in a database on the web server with no security at all, leaving it open to abuse by hackers or even an unscrupulous ISP! The other thing that can happen is that after been collected the credit card information is simply emailed to the company. The content of these emails can be ‘sniffed’ by hacking software to read what’s in them.
If credit card details must be stored on a web server, which to be honest, they really shouldn’t be stored for any length of time at all, then they must be encrypted. If credit card details are emailed, then they too must be encrypted before being sent. There are many products that can encrypt data, PGP and S/MIME are two of the large ones, and these can be used to encrypt both your emails and the rest of your computer files.
Since there are no authorities to regulate ISP’s or web design companies, it’s up to you to ensure that your website is safe for your customers to use. Always check the SSL certificate and ask your developer about what happens to the credit card data and if it is encrypted.
Search Engines
Search engines are always a hot topic, so here are a few key points worth bearing in mind when looking into the minefield that is Online Marketing.
One of the biggest problems about having a new website developed is getting to grips with search engines. If your website has been around since the Internet dark ages, then your site will probably seem to appear quite well without much effort, however new sites have a much harder time at getting ranked and may have to consider paying significant amounts of money into the process.
Now as far as money goes, don’t simply give it away to a company that promises the world. All search engine optimisers that I know and trust all explain that they can try their best, but they refuse to guarantee rankings. Spending money to get listed into the Yahoo directory is well worth a shot, and you can do that yourself. You can also try your hand at Google Adwords (which gets you a link in the advertising lists on Googles pages) these can be quite targeted and you can limit your budget, so you can see what does and doesn’t work.
Investing in some decent statistics for your website is very important if you are spending money on search engines. If you can’t see what difference the investment is making to the visits to your site and the orders you are getting, its not worth paying for.
Getting people linking to your site is so important these days. If you have people you know with websites, why not ask for a link in return for adding one of their links to your own site, it costs you both nothing, yet you will both gain. Also look into putting links or banners on relevant websites. E.g. if you find there is a website with a forum where people talk about hairstyles, getting your hairdressing companies banner on their site will help you with search engines, even if you don’t get any traffic from the actual banner.
Top 5 do’s and don’ts for your company website
Do
- Always try to have a white background with dark text on it or something else just as easily readable. People have many different screen settings (such as contrast) and what may look good on your computer might be difficult to read on some one else’s
- Think very carefully about what you want to do with your website before going ahead and ordering one. At the end of the day, the most important thing is the information on your site; if it doesn’t say what you need, there is little point having it there
- Have your own domain name and use it for your site and email. Often spam filters will block out emails from AOL and Hotmail for example, so ensure you have professional email hosting and you will always be able to stay in contact with your customers
- Have your contact details including telephone, email and address clearly accessible. Not having these implies you might be a spoof company
- Get a merchant ID from your bank if you are going to sell online as using online payment portals such as Paypal doesn’t look professional
Don’t
- Have animated graphics for the sake of it. For example bouncing animated ‘contact us’ email icons will make your site look dated and unprofessional
- Have ‘under construction’ or ‘coming soon’ on your site. You are far better off putting some basic content or not having the page at all until you are ready to fill it
- Build it yourself. It might seem a cheap and easy way to go, but there are lots of things to take into account when building a website which you might not be aware of, such as putting huge file sized graphics into a page will make it impossible to view using dialup. You wouldn’t print your own company brochures on a printer, you take them to your local printers; the same should apply to your website
- Host it on a free ISP which has banner adverts and popup windows; the annual cost of web hosting are so low, it is not worth putting off any of your clients
- Let your website content get out of date. Having a latest news article for 2001 makes people think your company is no longer in business
Choosing an Internet Service Provider
Once you have your website, you need to get it visible on the Internet. For this you need a hosting company (ISP) who can register your domain name, store your website files on a specialist computer on the Internet and provide you with email.
There are many different ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) on the Internet. From large ones such as IBM, Pipex, BT or Easynet to budget ISP’s like Fasthosts; the choice can be overwhelming.
However, not all ISP’s are the same. Some of these companies might not offer the support you would like e.g. they only offer help via email or they might require you to use their premium rate phone line. They may use a call centre (sometimes abroad) which could mean staying on hold for a while before you can speak to a person and you probably won’t speak to the same person twice, so forming a relationship with the company can be difficult and sometime frustrating if you are having an ongoing problem.
There is however (to quote a certain bank!) ‘another way’, which Royal Doulton has taken. Within the Stoke-on-Trent area there are several ISP’s that offer a different service than what you might be used to.
Hosting Systems, Internet Central, UKSubnet , Xperience Web Hosting (alphabetical order so as not to show bias!) are just some of the ISP’s located in the Potteries. They all have the appropriate equipment to run their services, but tend to offer a more personal direct service and you can usually pop round to meet them too!
Having a direct relationship with a local ISP might not be the cheapest option, but it can save you time and effort when you encounter issues, and in business, time equals money. Be aware though, that just because an ISP has a flashy website doesn’t mean they are necessarily the best choice. Email is vital to most companies these days and it’s difficult to run your business without it, so choosing a local Stoke-on-Trent firm can ensure you get the support and service you need, along with helping the local economy too.
Flash Animation
What is Flash?
A product produced by Macromedia, Flash is in essence an animation program for the web. Your web browser will try and download it the first time you come across a website that uses it. However as your browser downloads the latest version it needs to view the animation you may end up downloading it more than once. Single animations can be added to an HTML website or an entire website can be built in Flash.
Why use Flash?
Flash enables you to create some really interesting effects in the browser. You may have had a funny animated email sent to you by a friend, this is usually a Flash animation. You can add sound and interactivity to Flash, for example you can animate a box to open when you click it.
Websites written in HTML are limited to what graphical functionally you can have. Flash enables you to create many more exciting visual options, however this comes at a price.
Why shouldn’t you use Flash?
HTML is basic and very quick to download. Download speed, even with the expansion of broadband (40% are still on dialup) is still very important. When you browse the web you make split second decisions on whether or not to stay on a site. If a site takes too long to download you will probably lose interest. To create animations in Flash that are worth having produces large files; these take time to download and the majority of users simply can’t be bothered to wait. Think how long you are willing to spend waiting for a website to download; if your company’s site takes longer than that then you could be losing potential customers.
What are the costs of Flash?
Flash animations are time consuming to build, which means they are expensive, as most web development is based on time. They are also compiled, which means you need the original file the animation was made from to be able to alter flash items on your website. If you are having any Flash animation on your site, ensure the designer provides you with the original .fla file, so you can always get a different company to make changes later on should you wish.
So what’s your website for anyway?
Many people contact me requesting a website with absolutely no idea why, or without any plans about what to actually put on it, apart from saying an odd comment like ‘I saw this cool animation the other day’.
Spending some time thinking about what you are trying to achieve from a website for your business is really important. A web developer can produce any site you want, with an almost unlimited range of styles and any functionality you care to mention that you have seen on even the biggest of sites (it’s just a matter of costs!).
I would always recommend every company has at least a single page with their own domain name. This includes all those small local businesses from plasterers to window cleaners. The primary reason for this is that many people use a website as a simple phonebook and address page. Having a nice and easy to remember domain name makes this easy, it also means that should you decide to change your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to another one, you don’t have to change your email address every time.
Many companies have absolutely no reason to have an e-commerce site, as they have nothing to sell directly online. However, this seems to stop these businesses thinking about what other types of functionality they could have on their websites. If you are a company that sells online, it’s easy to see what business improvements a new e-commerce website will make to your companies profit line, but if not, what should you have on your website? Such items like news articles are OK, but you must be willing to actually enter relevant text. A website with the last news article dated 2002 doesn’t do your business any favours!
The key thing to do is to think about your business processes. Are there any procedures that could be made easier if they were online? For example, do you email out the same documents again and again to your customers? Instead you could have a secure system with your latest business documents online that could be accessed by your clients.
Saving time and money should be a key consideration when looking at systems to develop for your website.
E-commerce Starting Blocks
There are many things you can have on an e-commerce website, but I’m going to outline just some of the key basic components you need to start thinking about.
First off, you need some products to sell! The best thing is have your products held in a database, this way you can update your product details easily and whenever you need to. This is very important, as you need to ensure you can delete products you don’t sell anymore and that prices are kept up to date.
You then need a shopping cart. This will allow users to select items from your site and put them into a temporary list. The ability to remove items or change quantities is useful.
You then have to take customers details. Many E-commerce sites offer a different delivery address than that of the invoice. This does however increase the risk of fraudulent orders as the goods would go to a different address than that of the card holder.
There are many different postage options that you can choose from, so it’s worth thinking about how you expect to deliver your items. You could have a total delivery cost per order, individual costs per each item, separate UK and world wide delivery cost or delivery costs based on weight. It all depends on what products you are selling.
Accepting credit cards is vital for online ordering; for this you require an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate to allow users to enter their credit card details securely. This encrypts the communication between your web browser and the web server. You should never enter your credit card details into a website that doesn’t have a SSL padlock on your browser. You then either need to have the page integrated with a payment gateway such as World Pay, Epdq or Sec-pay to actually take the money from the credit card, or you need your own PDQ machine which you manually enter the credit card information which would be emailed to you using encryption to stop other people reading the credit card details.
If you are going to trade online, you do need some key pages that people expect to see on an e-commerce site; I get a lot of questions regarding this and many people don’t really know where to start. Privacy Policy, Delivery, Terms & Conditions (Returns & Cancellation) and Terms of use are key areas to look at. Taking a look at other established e-commerce companies online will help give you some ideas.
Dynamic Content
What is dynamic content? Allowing people without any knowledge of HTML (the language all websites are written in) to update the contents of your website; a good example of this is a page displaying your company’s product range. If you had a plain HTML website written, every time you wanted to change the price of one of your products, you would need to contact your web developer to make a change; this can be time consuming and costly. However with a database driven website, you would have access to a secure admin area on your website. This would allow you to type into a form your updated product details. The information would then immediately change on your website, giving you control over the content.
How does dynamic content work? Firstly you need your site to be written in a dynamic programming language such as ASP, PHP or JSP. You also need a database such as Microsoft Access, SQL Server, MySQL or simply a text file to hold the data. The programming language then creates the HTML page, based on what information is in the database, every time you view it in your web browser. You will need to ensure that the ISP you choose can offer the correct service you require to host your website otherwise the code will not work.
Is dynamic content costly? Yes, its initial programming will be more expensive than a simple HTML page, however you will only have to pay for it once, then you will be able to update your website content as often as you like, so you need to consider the long term saving against the initial cost.
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