How to effectively design and promote your web site

In the busy modern world, the old adage that “time is money” is perhaps now more a statement of wisdom than of philosophy. The arrival of Ecommerce has promised faster information, faster business and faster transactions, making money by cutting costs and saving time. Yet until recently the tide of the Internet had turned against its very credo, with a trend towards slow unwieldy Flash pages, virtual navigational mazes, and content that served no apparent purpose other than to visually overwhelm or entertain its visitors. From the very height of the dot.com boom until the recent resurgence of the Internet industry and Ecommerce, web sites often became expensive social accessories rather than functional work horses designed to provide rapid sales and information. The fashion of ornate and flashy sites, in combination with the dreaded plagues of pop-ups, viruses and spurious links to sales sites, marked a period of decline in the Internet as an efficient and safe place in which to forage for good deals and fast information. Fortunately recent improvements in search engine technology and secure credit card payment systems, combined with affordable anti-spam and anti-viral software, has partially restored consumer confidence in the Internet. This is especially true in the entertainment, fashion and modelling industries, where consumers are returning in droves.

In fact it is now difficult to imagine any successful professional model, fitness trainer or entertainer without a well visited personal web site, as it is often the first place that a fan seeking merchandise or a business person looking to hire will turn. However the Internet remains a tangled jungle of opportunity and risk, where fortunes may be won or lost, and time well spent or squandered. This short guide will highlight easy steps to successfully designing and marketing your web site to maximise your exposure and financial gain with a minimum of wasted time and money.

Designing an attention retaining web site

Keep your site fast and light : People these days simply have no patience, simply because they have no time to be patient. What is more the Internet has spoiled us by universally providing rapid access to countless competitors, most of whom do not charge for the privilege of entry, such is the culture of the Internet. People now expect the freedom to browse the Web at speed, undistracted by the noise of pop-ups and dynamic images, and unfettered by “capture” sites or giant Flash intros. On the Internet people quickly become irritable, especially when they are forced to wait more than ten seconds for an image to download, when they cannot instantly find what they are looking for, or when they are unable to return freely to the search engine from which they came. Why is Google one of the most successful of all Internet companies? Not least because its front page could not be lighter, simpler or less pretentious.

It is good practice not to waste people’s time with a front page consisting of a giant Flash intro or large Company logo, and then, when everything has eventually downloaded, say “click to enter”. If someone clicked onto your link, they must have wanted to look at your site, and probably don’t care to be kept waiting at the front door to see a fireworks display. If you really must have a “front door” page, then ensure there is some useful text or a ‘light’ image which first appears to hold their attention whilst the rest of the page downloads. Personally I still have yet to see a Flash animation which conveyed any useful information that could not have been displayed more quickly or more simply by an image or text. As a simple rule of etiquette, if a movie or Flash presentation is necessary to enhance a product, then it should be labelled as such, and be requested by the visitor by a click, and never imposed upon the unwitting visitor by a Flash designer overanxious to impress. 18+ entry screens are also a bad idea as they deter many visitors, especially those who may be legitimately using a family, shared or work computer, and may also give a false impression that a site contains extreme material. Why not put all adult or nude images behind a separate section on your site with a separate 18+ screen and password access? When it comes to making sale, a customer must be freely enticed and then persuaded to pursue more of a product with a purchase.

Remember to keep your web site as “light” as possible. The contents of a web page, especially the front or entry page, should not exceed 200 kb in size, inclusive of images. Okay, so how do I know how large my pages are? The simplest way to gauge size is to go to Windows Explorer on the Start menu, and from there to view the icons for all the elements on the page. You will surprise yourself how big your image-rich pages are. One of the easiest ways to make a page lighter is to reduce the size of all the many gif image elements (the simple images commonly used for arrows and buttons) and to save them at the size at which they are to be displayed. Also avoid using menus composed of images instead or words or blocks of text. This is partly because search engines do not read images (although they can read image “alt” description tags), but principally because text images (picture images of words) consume far more Internet bandwidth than simple text. If you are worried about controlling the presentation of your text on a page, then span and font html tags may be used to clamp the text at a preferred size, font face and color.

It is also important to reduce the size and to minimise the resolution of any pictures (i.e. jpg format digital images). This may easily be done in Adobe Photoshop, an essential tool for any web designer or model. If you are worried about compromising the quality of your image then please compare the two images inset. Which is better? After several seconds you will correctly conclude that the one on the left is superior. However consider that the small image on the right has a size of only 16kb and the one on the left is over twice the size at 40kb. Ask yourself the “bandwidth cost-benefit” question. Was the extra bandwidth consumed, which you will have to pay for, really worth the difference in image resolution? Now consider a series of model galleries containing one hundred full-scale digital images 400kb in size, all of which may be downloaded by an interested visitor. Each visitor may therefore consume over 40 MegaBytes of bandwidth "memory" in a single session, as well as having free access to copy written © images of saleable quality. If visitors do want access to higher resolution images then you should have a sale. At this rate it won’t be long before you’re paying for a high bandwidth site for relatively few visitors. However advertisers don’t pay for bandwidth, only per visitor or “click-through”.

Another important tip is to make sure that key navigation elements such as “links”, “contact”, “link to me” and “site map” are visible instantly at the top or at the side of the main page, not tucked away in a tiny font at the bottom of a long page which you would need a microscope to see, as though to say “Go away, don’t bother me”. One should never assume that the content of your page is entirely self-explanatory or that visitors may not have any legitimate reason to contact you. All navigation elements such as ‘gallery’, ‘contact’ or ‘links’ should be presented in a clear and uncluttered manner as a main feature panel on the front page, not as an afterthought. One of my long held theories of the consequences of information technology is that overloading the nervous system with complicated pages, cluttered navigational mazes, or chaotic explosions of information and countless pop-ups is that it causes a form of stress, especially in an office environment where tasks have to be completed quickly and efficiently. An “information overload disorder” was elegantly predicted in the film “Johnny Mnemonic” as the “Black Shakes”.

Imagine a serene surfing experience where content is streamlined, images are well-ordered and relevant, and blocks of information such as navigation bars and news features are presented within well-spaced and well-separated arrays. Visualize a navigation page which contains no more information than is absolutely needed, and that there are no flashing images or text to high jack the user’s attention span. Picture a content page with plenty of margin space which does not try to distract the reader with the next tantalising morsel of information before the first one has been read. A simple, well-ordered navigation menu is all that a visitor needs to maintain his or her interest until they have gathered all the information they need. As Google elegantly demonstrates, less is more. Ask yourself if all the elements on a page are really necessary, or whether they are better placed further ‘downstream’ within the content flow of site, or whether they are best left out altogether. Another important point is to always include a site map. This not only greatly aids a search engine spider to compile your pages, but also helps a visitor to recover his path through your site if he or she becomes lost.

How to get picked up by a search engine

Search engine spiders are dumb animals, or rather dumb processes or algorithms. They are not as complex as the human mind and do not stop to consider semantics, elegant design or design oversights. Your web site will not be ranked as an entrant into a beauty pageant, or given a higher ranking because it contains more information or content. Doubtless, as search engines start to use increasing complex programming, then no image, computer language or deceptive linking strategy will evade them, but as of present they are still relatively simple, straight-forward and friendly creatures. Whilst a great avalanche of advice and information is available to the would-be consumer of the new industry of search engine optimisation (SEO), the rules are relatively simple and straight-forward, and are adhered to by most of the main search engines. Whilst only a third of web site traffic comes through search engines or web directories, it is still important to achieve a high search engine ranking and to maximise every potential avenue for visiting “traffic”. So here are some simple guidelines to adhere to, which will help your search engine ranking and avoid a large SEO bill:

1. Search engine spiders generally don’t like dynamically generated pages, frames or “doorway” pages. Although spiders can index dynamically generated pages, they have a tendency to overload and crash web sites which create dynamic content, and so often limit the number of dynamic pages they index. “Frames” (sub-divided web pages) provide an attractive option for web designers because the navigation bar is held constant and doesn’t have to be added to every page. However a frames page is actually made up of many pages; a master setting page and as many as four component sub-pages. The consequence of this is that spiders tend just to index the setting page and not the actual content of the sub-pages. One solution is to use dynamically-generated or frames pages only for the back pages of the site, and not for the main entrance pages which you would like the spiders to index thoroughly. What’s more when spiders do index a frames sub-page so that it is displayed on a search engine, only the sub-page is displayed which leaves the webmaster with a programming headache.

2. Don’t spam the spiders. Spiders are not easily fooled by simple tricks like text written in such small font that it appears to be a line, or hidden text which is of the same colour as the page background. In fact it will likely get your site banned by the search engine. Text spamming (endless lists of key words that do not appear elsewhere in the document) with spurious lists of words which are either not in the meta-tags (the hidden coding information within the head of the web page) or within the main text of the document is another practice much disliked by search engines, as are pages with over a hundred links. Automated redirect pages designed to corral spiders to other sites or other pages is also behaviour which has an averse effect upon ranking. Even if original tricks can fool the spiders, irate humans make good feedback agents for search engines, and often report such ‘spam’ sites to search engines. Perhaps most importantly a site requires a good reputation and good traffic for its long term survival, that is to say it needs to claim visitors with a genuine interest.

It is also very unfavourable to participate in link exchange schemes or to link to “web spammers” or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links. Especially don’t use automated search engine submission machines or engine rank checking software as this is against the interests of the bandwidth of the search engines. Multiple submissions to a search engine is not appreciated either. They likely received your site submission the first time, and, as they are doing you a free favour, it is best not to upset them.

The most important aspect of making your site attractive to spiders, other than having good written content, are the hidden tags in the “head” section of the web document. The most important of these is the title tag, and many top-ranked Internet sites often have just a short title tag. To view this simply open an Explorer window of a few of the top ranked sites on the search engine and click on View in the Explorer menu, then scroll down to click on source and see how simple successful title tags are. Indeed it seems that the shorter and more relevant the contents of title tags, the better the site fares in the rankings, although this must be qualified by stating that any words or phrases included within the title, or keyword Meta-tags in the head of the web page, must be included within the text content of the page (not as gif images!) or the spiders will disregard them. Title and keywords are especially effective when included within a page content heading tag, for example H1Alicia Angel’s model portfolio/H1 in both the text and within title tags would be very effective in catching a spider's attention. Once again, less is proven more. One web designer has gone so far as to rank the priority of page content tags in search engine ranking evaluation, concluding that a hierarchy exists where page title tags carry more weight than hyperlinked text within a page, which supercedes ordinary page text, which in turn outweighs image “alt” tags and image file titles (e.g. Alicia_model.jpg). Therefore it is a good idea to give all images relevant names and titles, for example “Alicia_Angel.jpg” or “portfolio.gif” would be spider-friendly file names, and the “alt” tag (which is read when a mouse passes over the image) should also state “Alicia Angel”. The Internet is very competitive, so literally no stone should be left unturned when promoting a site on the search engines.

This brings us on to the key topic of meta-tags, a technical term that often terrifies the uninitiated. Don’t worry, meta-tags are straight-forward, useful, and if well designed, optimise the spider’s ability to categorise your pages. Remember that the search engines will spider most of your pages, especially if you provide them with a site map, so place meta-tags on all your pages. Remember people may avoid the front pages and go directly from a search engine into a back page, and there is no reason why they should not be encouraged to do so, as this creates a search engine “drift net” capture of visitors. Other than the accursed syntax, meta-tags are no great sweat, but make a great difference to your search engine rankings. To add meta-tags simply copy and paste the meta-tag formula provided below within the head/head tags of your web page, changing the content with each “content” set to optimise page content for the search engines (deleting all the explanatory text in (round brackets)), noting that to stop your browser from reading the tags the & symbols in this article are actually images rather than text and will need to be added manually!

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titleAlicia Angel’s international model portfolio/title (the all important title tags)
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" (indicates language and text character format of page) meta name="distribution" content="global" (is your content ‘regional’ or ‘global’)
meta name="Alicia Angel" content="Alicia Angel designs" (who owns and designed the site, this will aid company search rankings)
meta name="copyright" content="Alicia Angel designs" (establishes copyright)
meta name="description" content="Alicia Angel’s international model portfolio and resume with latest galleries and itinerary" (remember the description should ideally be contained in page content and should be as short as possible as search engines display this information and cuts the text at 130 characters including spaces)
meta name="keywords" content="Alicia, Angel, model, international, lingerie, fashion, glamour, photo, design" (include between 6 and 15 keywords or “phrases”, preferably adding all keywords to web page content)
meta name="robots" content="index, follow" (request the search engine to spider all of your page links) meta name="revisit-after" content="28 days" (frequency with which you request search engines to spider your pages, i.e. how often page content is changed – be honest!) meta name="rating" content="general" (is content for ‘general’ consumption, or is it ‘adult’ in nature?)
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Last, but certainly not least, we come to the issue of search engine submission. There are over one hundred search engines in existence, and there are at least as many companies who will charge £50 or more to submit your domain automatically to them, and then reinvoice you the same amount every few months to “guarantee your search engine position”. The plain truth is that it is free and easy to submit your site to a search engine yourself, and that search engines neither require, nor encourage repeat submissions. Indeed there are only six “main players” in the search engine market to concern yourself with at present. For example for one of our top ranked international sites received 201,748 visitors over an 18 month period, 122,865 (60.9%) came without any referral from a search engine or other site; 29,444 (14.7%) came from Google; 11,532 (5.7%) from Yahoo; 10,722 (5.3%) from MSN; 4,015 (2%) from ask.com; 1,876 (0.9%) from AltaVista; and 1,355 (0.7%) from AOL, leaving a grand total of 19,939 (9.9%) from over two hundred other search engines, directories and links. Whilst the other links will greatly enhance your search engine position, submission to a myriad of hundreds of other search engines does not feature greatly in contributing to your all important desired end result – referring traffic to your site.

Be patient. It may take up to two months for a search engine to get around to spidering and listing your site, as there is always a queue. It takes much longer still for all your hard-earned links to feed through to aid your search engine ranking. Starting a web site is like opening a coffee shop in a remote village, you will get no passing trade and, unless you market actively, no business. Contrary to the popular myth, search engines are not nationalist, partisan or biased, nor are they aesthetically driven, and they cannot be bought or bribed. Often you will see a less attractive site ranked much higher than your own. However it may be better designed from a search engine’s point of view, or it may simply have been around for much longer and have generated more links. It is better to expend your energy in improving your site and marketing, rather than in developing a green eye. Remember even the most profitable sites on the Internet like Google, Yahoo or Danni’s Hard Drive took at least five years to dominate their respective markets.

Promoting your web site by direct marketing

Automated mass marketing Email campaigns are generally not a good idea. Most Email addresses that are targeted either expire or are ill-placed on the list of 100,000 email addresses you might have paid good money for. Of the 100,000 names that you targeted, most of these will block the your ‘junk’ mail or bounce back as ‘spam’ or ‘unroutable address’. Of the few that actually get through, only a tiny fraction will be opened and generate any interest in your product at all. If you get a 0.01% click-through rate from the 100,000 emails that you sent (which equates to 10 visitors) it will be par for the course. All you will have succeeded in doing is having your computer IP address and domain name condemned to the most wanted list for public nuisance number one, the spammer.

Hold on a moment. Don’t drop direct E-marketing from your list of things to do, and don’t trust a third party E-marketing firm to do it for you. Think again. Most people are connected to the Internet, and most have at least one personal and one professional interest. For instance, if you own an Ecommerce site specialising in Beatle’s memorabilia, spend an hour or two searching for all web rings and individuals who are Beatle fans. Obtain a quality mailing list from the web rings and related sites, and then send simple attractive Emails in the form of html attachments (which are designed in much the same way as a web page). Each one should be addressed by name to every individual on your direct mailing list and each should be sent individually. The html attachment should contain a link to your site plus a selection of attractively priced products. Personally for such direct E-marketing campaigns we receive a click-through rate of between 5 and 15%, and a conversion rate of 2-5%. Far from upsetting people with unwelcome Emails you will receive a generally positive response, as many people might actually want to know that a service that interests them exists.

Linking campaigns are also important, as is how they are done. Many links will come without request from admirers of your site or product if it is well designed and useful, but as with all direct marketing campaigns, this is a consequence of the snowball effect of successfully marketing your site in the first place. Don’t just throw up a links page and send out a cascade of link exchange requests. Take the time and trouble to make your links page or pages attractive and well designed, use ornate images to brighten them, and most importantly give them a theme. For example a model site could link to a number of preferred photographers’ sites with a sample image by each photographer, their name and their link. Instead of calling the page “links”, it could be marketed as “Guide to Top Photographers” or “With Thanks to My Photographers”. Which self-respecting photographer when invited would not want to link back to you or photograph you? Combined with your direct E-marketing campaign and a press release on launch, this should round off a low-budget and successful marketing campaign for your web site, albeit time-consuming.

Hopefully this will prove a useful guide for those drowning in the noise of Ecommerce and web design. In a winner-takes-all market, it’s worth the extra time to have a site well prepared, well planned and well executed,