A dozen most common Mistakes of new web sites

You may be justifiably proud of the new web site you have built up over months of hard work and painstaking research. It may look very pretty! It may also be your first one - you are to be congratulated for having got this far.

However the majority of new web sites (both home built and in a large number of cases professionally designed) start their lives with a number of flaws which will seriously hamper their performance. Here we take a look at some of the most common ones, and what you can do about them.

First just go to the web page, right-click on "view source" in the screen area, and look at that text editor that opens to display a mass of HTML code. Don't be afraid of the code - the code is your friend!

1. Keywords: Few web sites make proper use of their META data. Here is the line where the Meta keywords live: <meta name='keywords' content='business, training, performance'&gt; The line contains one important mistake. These words tell the search engines what you consider the most important keywords for your site - or to put it another way - what they should index your page for. There are many that say META is no longer important as it was, however it IS still worth getting right. The problem here is that your site will NEVER rank well for single words like the ones used, and so the meta has been wasted. Instead of single words choose phrases of two to five words, which you think people might use if they were searching for a service like yours - but didn't know yet. So for the example above, something like <meta name='keywords' content='cornwall business training, business performance monitoring, business training south west' /> Is far more likely to yield search results that the earlier offering.

2. Description: The Next important META is the description tag. The main function of this is that search engines quite often use it as the main body text in their listings. So make it sell your page. Note I said page - every page should have different meta, as every page can be indexed separately in Google. So your description tag should say something like: <meta name="Description" content='This gardning company has designed some of Kew's most attractive ornamental gardens'> Now if this phrases ends up getting listed in Google, people might have a reason to visit your web page.

3. Title: One more important thing in the

part of the page is the <title> tag. You should have one, and it should have your most important keywords in it. This is an important tag in page optimisation, again telling the search engines what your page is about. Ideally the <title> tag should contain words closely related to the <h1> (heading) tag, to give the search engines a clear idea what the page is about. How many home pages are still being optimised for the word "home", using the title "Home" or similar? Yuck!

4. Accessibility concerns. In this day and age there are still many of us that use tables in web page design. "What?" I hear you say. Just look down the source code again, and if you see regular tags like this: <table> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> </table> You are probably looking at a tables based site (the <tr> define a table row, while the >td > defines a table cell). The problem with this is that tables are now frowned upon, partly because they make pages slower to load, and partly because they hinder accessibility - the ease that handicapped (especially poorly sighted) people have in reading a web page, typically using screen readers. If the page is full of <div> tags then it is probably structured using the more modern "css" design principles. As this is a technical subject we can't go into it in any more depth here, but at least you know the difference now, right?

5. More accessibility: The other most obvious accessibility concern is this - do your images have an <Alt> tag? "Alt" stands for alternative text that describes the image to someone who can't see it. Accessibility is both a concern for reasons of basic consideration and morality, but also because of your legal obligation to make "reasonable Provision" for the handicapped. There has been a class action in the US about a non-accessible web site - not to say that it will get that extreme here, but keep it in mind anyway. Finally would you not like to profit from the "grey pound". Society's fastest growing group is increasingly Internet savvy, and you'll need to be accessible to attract this important marketing demographic.

6. Fonts. So many web sites use impenetrable fonts on fancy backgrounds - a real no-no. A clear font of a reasonable size on a white or nearly white background is the way to go. Look at Google. This is a concern both for accessibility and also for conveying a clear message to your users. Text should always contrast clearly with it's background. Well known fonts like Ariel and Verdana are the best. Ideally fonts should be resizable so that visitors can set the size that suits them. In Internet explorer there is a font size option on the "view" menu. If the font size does not change when you select a different size, then the page is not accessible. For the technical fonts should be sized in "ems" or "%", but not in pixels (px). Needless to say most still use pixels!

5. The heading <h1> tag. This is the main heading of the page. If you don't have one you are missing the opportunity to tell the search engines what the most important thing on your page is. If you just search the source code for "h1" you will soon find out if you have one or not. There should only be one <h1> tag on a page, and further headings should be <h2>, then <h3>, etc. This is called "Semantic page structure" for those that are interested.

6. Text: Right lets get away from the code for a while, and take a look at the text itself. How much is there? In many cases very little. Search engines need text like ships need water. If you don't give them text, they can't index anything. 200-300 words per page minimum please.

7. Menu Links: We may have optimised much of the page for your keywords, but menu links are another important place. Rather than having a menu link that contains the text "Home", use your most important keywords in the text. This is another way of telling the search engines what your page is about. This applies equally well to any links coming in to your site from outside. The structure to use for links to your "Spanners" sales page is this: <a href="http://www.mysite.com/page-about-spanners.html">Shiny Steel Spanners</a>

8. Overall optimisation: We have looked at each part of the page in isolation, just a bit about the whole page. Each page should be built around a group of keywords that are related. Those similar terms should crop up in the meat keywords, description, page title, h1 tag, menu links, and should be regularly interspersed throughout the text - but it should still be readable.

9. A Good headline. Headings are not only about keywords - they are also of course about people. Your headline is your first (and initially only) tool for keeping the new visitor from navigating away from your page. What are you going to say? Well the headline must be clear, bold, and must contain a compelling benefit-loaded reason why the visitor should stay. Lets say they search for "best route to Preston" and you have a page all about it, but your heading is "We sell maps". Where are the benefits in that heading? A benefit affects the reader personally, so perhaps "Our easy to use maps will half your journey time to Preston" would persuade them to stay a little longer?

10. Call to action. If the visitor does not take an action from visiting your web page, all the time and effort you have spent to attract them in the first place has been wasted. The action might be a purchase, a contact, or other. Consider persuading visitors to sign-up for something so you can market to them in the future, and make it something of real value, otherwise why should they sign up? This is a huge subject in itself, but look at each of your pages, and think - have I given my visitor a clear call to action in the event that they are interested in what we are telling them?

11. Information. So you've optimised your page a little and the visitor traffic is growing - or is it? Who knows? Your web host probably provides a statistics package that you rarely visit, most aren't very informative anyway. One of the best stats packages is Google Analytics, and the good news is its free. It tells you everything you need to know about developing and optimising your site. I would recommend searching for "Google Analytics" and following the sign-up process. There is a little code to put on your web page, its quite clearly explained - good luck. Also look for Google "Webmaster Tools" / "Sitemaps", and join that for free too.

12. Directories. The more other sites and directories that point to you the better. And the best is The Open Directory. Go to dmoz.org and submit your site. There is no better place to start.


OK all of the above should keep anyone with a new site busy for a while. If you're interested in finding out more or participating in our training course on web marketing, entitled "Learn how to Profit from the Internet", either go to our main web site: Channel Computing - Web Development and marketing in Cornwall, or the training page: Internet marketing course for Cornish Businesses.

Good luck with all that - should keep you busy!
Regards, Pete

Making the most of your web site using Google Analytics

Analytics is the next tool we'll look at, and this is an important one too.

What is does is give you very accurate and useful information about your sites visitors and content, and shows you where changes need to be made.

Setting it up:
The process of setting it up is typically easy, you go to Google Analytics, set up a free account, and it gives you a snippet of code which has to go on each page of your web site. This bit may be a job for your web developer. If you know where to find it you go to the tag at the end of your web page's code, and just in front of it paste the code snippet that Google Analytics gave you. If you use a content managed system you may be able to place this code in just one place, and the system will publish it on every page. If your web site is static HTML then the code will need to go on every page. Now you are up an running. The Analytics account will tell you that it is receiving data from your web site.

Using Analytics:
Next you have to make the best use of the data. It takes a little time, but there is clear information within Analytics to help you learn it.

Here is a summary of our favourite features:

1. You can add a number of different web sites to Analytics, and monitor them all.
2. The Dashboard shows your overall traffic figures and a view of other aspects of your site at a high level.

3. The Visitors tab tells you some useful stuff, like the geographical location of your web site visitors, the proportion that are new or returning, and more.
4. The visitors tab also tells you the language of your visitors - if there are significant foreign language visitors would your site benefit from including additional languages?

5. Traffic sources is very important. It tells you the proportion of your visitors coming from "organic" search, links from other web site, and those that have just entered your site name directly. On the right it tells you which keywords people have used to find you, which tells you something about how effective your site optimisation and marketing has been, and which keywords might be best to target in the future.
6. "Keywords" tells you more about the keywords visitors were searching for when they found you, and how long they stayed. If one Keyword brings lots of visitors who all "bounce" back out again or do not stay on the site for long, perhaps that is not a good keyword to be targeting.

7. The Content tab tells you which of your pages are performing well. If a page has a high "bounce" rate then you may want to improve the copy of that page - this indicates that it is not enticing your visitors to stay around.
8. Within "content" the "Landing Pages" section is important, telling you which pages people landed on first. This gives you a clear idea which of your pages is being indexed by the search engines and attracting real traffic. Be careful when changing your top pages as they are a great asset.
9. Top Exit pages is just as important. If lots of visitors are leaving from a page, should you take a look at making that page more attractive or useful?

10. We've saved the best to last, and this is the "Goals" tab. Essentially goals are when your visitors to your site do what you want - i.e. buy something, or sign up for something. All you need to designate here which pages on your site represent goals, and then enter those pages here. These pages might be the "Thank you for your order" page, or "Thank you for joining our site". You can also give each order a value which is vital in the future. This allows you to work out whether your Ad-words campaigns are working. For example if it is costing you £200 worth of advertising to achieve each £100 sale, then that campaign (of part of a campaign should be improved or stopped. However if it is costing you £10 worth of advertising to achieve your £100 sale, then carry on - your campaign is working a treat.

There is a lot more to Analytics than outlined above, but I think this shows you something about the type of functionality that is available to you.

It is important to get Analytics on to any site you are concerned about developing, as it tells you what you are doing right and doing wrong, and eventually how to make your site more profitable.

To set up an Analytics account: https://www.google.com/analytics
For further information: Making the most of your web site with Google Analytics

Tools for improving your web site No1. - The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

In these posts I'm going to give a little information about how to make the best of the free services that Google makes available to you on the web. This is important for our clients, as most of them are looking to increase the traffic and sales from their web site. Here is the Official blog giving more information about Google's Webmaster Central and Sitemaps.

What this does is allow you to:
1. Submit your site to Google for indexing.
2. Include a sitemap so that Google can find all your pages.
3. Verify that the site is indeed yours.
4. Tells you when the Google Bot came to index your site, and what it found.
5. Any errors in your web site, missing pages or broken links which would count against it.
6. Your best Keywords, which bring you traffic and how much.

This last is probably my favourite tool, as it allows you to look back in time and see the keywords which have improved, and where any increase in traffic can be attributed.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: New: Content analysis and Sitemap details, plus more languages
Finally here is the sign-in for the Webmaster Central / Sitemaps itself:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
please have a look and enjoy, and remember - this could help you to make money!

All the best,
Pete

Channel Computing Blog Welcome

Welcome to this new blog. I already do a bit of blogging elsewhere, at http://gravesie.blogspot.com and http://hypnobirthing.blogspot.com. However those are for personal friends and my mother's web site respectively, so this gives us the chance to do some blogging which is definitely on-message for our business - Channel Computing, in Penryn Cornwall.

Channel Computing is all about providing our clients with the most comprehensive web development and marketing service possible, and relies on my experience both as an IT developer and project manager of 15 years or so, but also in the worlds of sales, marketing and sports-promotion where I have also spent some time. The company is currently made up of myself and my partner Anna Barrington, but with the current welcomed pressure of work we may soon start to grow a little. See the Channel Computing Home Page for more information about web development, marketing, and training services in Cornwall, UK.

Please enjoy these blog posts which I hope will be both useful and informative, We'll try to keep them coming as often as possible.

All the best - and welcome,
Pete