Don't be baffled by the so-called 'experts'. Steve Walker cuts with
insights into website through the technical language development and
maintenance.
Today, the Internet is at the heart of global communications but
when it was first introduced, many people were sceptical. The turning
point came in the late 1990s, when no one really knew what a web site
was for but they had to have one. In those early days, most users were
bewildered by web site design and so-called 'experts' were keen to
retain an air of mystery, exploiting the uninitiated, over-charging for
web site design and maintenance.
Even now, buying the services of a web designer can be risky. Once the
work has been commissioned, it's unfortunately common to find that the
designer's promises have not been met. Such promises include
performance on search engines, speed of download and ability to update.
Understand the language
The development of a new technology is accompanied by the birth of a
new jargon and a range of terms and acronyms. Ironically, once broken
down, these complicated expressions represent simple concepts, which we
are all able to understand. Some of these terms are used in this
feature, please see glossary on page 22 for a translation.
Creating a website: Best practice
Websites range from functional utopias to diabolical designs. The
web community has responded to inconsistencies by increasing its
efforts to create 'best practice' guidelines for website construction.
It's so easy to exalt the virtues of an animated gizmo without
realising your navigation system makes it impossible for users to find.
Page validation: ongoing development is working to ensure web pages
adhere to strict standards, visit www.w3.org for details. When a web
page is designed a declaration is made in the first line code that
looks something like this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-/ /W3C/ /DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional/ /EN"
..http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REChtml401-19991224/100se.dtd">
With this in place you can 'validate' your web pages; that is to say,
use a 'page validator' such as http:! /validator.w3.org/ What this says
to web browsers (and in this case the validator) is that this is a
World Wide Web Consortium-okay document that is using HTML 4.01
transitional coding (there are a number of different standards that may
be chosen dependent on the functionality you want in your website). The
validator will use this information to check your page using that
particular standard and will report back to you any issues in your code.
Page layout: there are many options for page layout, but a near-decade
of web use has seen convergence on some common sense approaches. A
typical layout will incorporate a bar with a header, a left column with
the navigation, a right column with the main content, and footer.
There are variations on this theme but don't ruin the user's experience
of your website by trying to be too clever. Keep your navigation clear
and if you're going to have a 'site search' service, place it in the
header (normally top right) so that it appears on every page and is
easily accessible.
Accessibility: making your site accessible to everyone not only
boosts the value of your website but it also carries ethical
implications. At the most basic level you need to ask some fundamental
questions: is the content ordered logically? Is the navigation clear
and usable? Delving further you should start to address issues such as:
Visually disabled users: without a text description, a user who
can't see an image has no way of knowing what it is or what it
represents. Often a website that looks good visually will be no good
when it's listened to through a screen reader (a web browser that reads
websites aloud).
Hearing impaired users: unless an alternative is provided that
does not use sound - such as a text description or an image users with
hearing disabilities will have no way of understanding the information.
In addition, you need to think about users with physical
disabilities (some may not be able to use a mouse), or cognitive and
neurological disabilities. According to current figures, disabled users
currently make up around 10% to 20% of the population in most
countries. A good accessibility checklist can be found at http://www:w3.org/TR/WCAG 10/
Services and costs
Website development services are currently suffering from a lack of
definition in the marketplace. Exactly what do you get for your money?
Typical rates for a professional web site development company range
from ?150 to ?550 per day. You may know someone who can build it for
you for free but remember you get what you pay for. The highest-priced
designers are not necessarily the best and you'll want a professional
service that's delivered on time as well as decent support when
something goes wrong.
Rough figures for websites begin at around ?500 for a basic page
'Brochure' website; to between ?3,000 to ?6,000 for comprehensive,
database-driven, e-commerce websites with integrated content management
systems (CMS). If you want to save costs, there are now a number of
websites where you can place an advertisement for a 'freelance'
designer.
Vetting designers
Create a good functional specification for your planned site.
Include descriptions of how you want it to look and feel, ideas on the
way a user will navigate, the typical experiences they should have and
the key information you want users to take away. How do you plan to
market your site? Is performing well in search engines a priority?
Get all this information down into a brief and then ask designers to
send their proposals to you using the document as a guide. You'll
quickly get a feel for market rate pricing. The professionalism of the
design companies will come across in their proposals - did they answer
your questions or bailie you with technical terms? Did they spend time
understanding your business and marketing objectives?
Search engines
Online con artists adapt to the opportunities of the time and are
currently exploiting the area of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Adverts claim they can submit you to thousands of search engines and
that you'll appear top of every search engines' results page.
There are some logistical issues concerned here. Firstly, ask yourself
how many search engines you use? Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN represent
around 94% of the current market share. So why worry about doing well
in the other 6% of search engines (if they actually exist at all)?
Concentrating your efforts on performing well in the top four makes
good sense.
Secondly, be wary of any SEO consultant who tells you they can
guarantee the number one ranking. They can't - it's not possible. All
the major search engines, especially Google, periodically make
adjustments to the rules they use to rank their search results - an
effort in part to foil abusers of the system. The process of SEO is
ongoing. You make your site perform as best you can, and then you tweak
it when necessary.
Here are some tips to steer you in the right direction for good search engine rankings:
Keywords: You have to work out what search 'keywords' your target
audience tends to use to find your website. Remember, the more specific
you can make your keyword selection, the better. If you want to achieve
the number one ranking for 'nursing care provision' you're going to
compete with a lot of other sites. If your keywords are 'nursing care
provision, Oxford' you will have less people searching on these more
specific terms, but your chances of getting that number one spot
increase dramatically.
Title: The vast majority of search engines now ignore 'meta data'. This
is descriptive information held in the web page that isn't displayed on
the browser page. More important is the title of your page (seen on the
top blue bar of your browser). Search engines make the assumption that,
if the title of the page says 'care at home', and the text of page has
lots of references to domiciliary care (often referred to as 'keyword
density'), your page is probably about domiciliary care.
Text: Search engines can't read images but there are designers out
there who'll create the majority of a website out of graphics. Search
engines like text, and they rate your site dependent on the ratio of
html code to text within your pages. A current 'rule of thumb' is
around 60% text.
Images: For any images, make sure your designer populates the ALT html
tag. This is a descriptive tag in html that allows you to add
descriptive text to an image. This also has ramifications for deaf
users as mentioned in the accessibility section
Link building: This means getting other websites to link to yours. It's
an important part of search engine positioning, because search engines
look at these links as a 'vote' for your website and they will boost
your rankings accordingly when other sites link to you. Once you find a
site you'd like to link to, e-mail the website administrator. They'll
probably want to set up a reciprocal link. On most websites there will
be a 'contact webmaster' link on the site. If not, use the standard'
contact us' section to find out the name of the person to speak to.
Remember, the search engines aren't there to give you a hard time.
Work on the keywords, keep the content rich and relevant and chances
are you'll start doing well in the rankings.
Exercise caution
Website design is a straightforward technology that can bring many
benefits to your business, when applied in the right manner. Always
choose carefully. If a designer can't explain the issues to you in
layman's talk or if they seem reluctant to tell you how certain
adjustments or gizmos will benefit your business: you should think
twice.
Steve Walker is founder of new media agency oneworldmarket.
Glossary
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): using CSS allows web designers to
separate the content from design. All the settings for the form of a
website are stored in a CSS file. This allows the designer to update
one file that applies changes to the entire website.
Content Management Systems (CMS): CMS allows non-technical users to
login to an administrative part of their website and change the
content. It means you don't have to pay someone to make rudimentary
site changes; and it allows you to keep dynamic content, such as news
sections, up to date.
Cookies: pieces of information generated by a web server and stored in
the user's computer for future access. They typically contain
information, for example, if you clicked the 'remember my login
details'; the website can identify you on your next visit.
DHTML: Dynamic HTML is a combination of technologies to make web pages
dynamic. To most people Dynamic HTML means a combination of HTML 4.0,
css and JavaScript.
Domain name: a unique Internet address. You buy your domain name, which
tends to be billed on a yearly basis. This allows you to set up a
website, as well as an e-mail address. E.g.
Flash: a tool for creating interactive and animated
websites. It uses vector graphics, which means that the animations can
be scaled to any size without losing clarity/quality. While it's a
useful addition to website programming techniques, it has recently
suffered from overuse in situations where standard html offers a better
solution.
Hosting: your website is made up of files that need to be stored on a
'server' computer. The 'server' is permanently connected to the
Internet and delivers your website to Internet users.
HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language): is the basic language used in web
pages. It is designed to run in different browsers and different
computers. It is a list of instructions that tell the browser how to
render the page, eg text size and colour, where to place graphic images.
JavaScript: a programming language that can be embedded into web pages
to enhance the dynamics and interactivity of a website (eg special
effects, interactive games, security passwords).
Internet Service Provider (ISP): a company that provides dial up access/ broad band and hosting to the Internet.
Keyword: a search term employed by an Internet user. For example if you
have a website providing information about domiciliary services, the
keyword that you may wish to emphasise for the sake of a search engine
will be 'homecare'. This helps users to easily find a site.
MySQL: is a database system that can hold information online. It allows
sophisticated searching facilities using SOL (Standard Ouery Language).
MySQL isn't directly available to HTML pages but can be accessed using
a language such as PHP (see below), which can bridge the gap. MySQL
allows a website to be database driven: with features such as chat
rooms, forums, stock catalogues or customer information.
Navigation: areas on web pages that are labelled or change when the
cursor moves over them, and move the user to a new page/location when
the mouse is clicked.
PHP: is a comprehensive programming language that allows for increased
functionality within websites. PHP is a server side language: this
means that the script is passed by the PHP engine on the server before
the page is downloaded. Since PHP can output HTML instructions (as well
as JavaScript instructions), this allows different versions of pages to
be out putted depending on preset conditions. PHP is also used to
communicate with online databases, such as MySQL, which allows
information from a database to be outputted as an HTML page.
Search engine: a software program that trawls through the web (usually
via pages that have been submitted to it) and indexes web pages into
various categories. These pages can be then be found by search engine
users. Examples of search engines include www.google.co.uk/ and
www.yahoo.co.uk/
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): the process of making improvements to
your website that increases its chances of performing better in the
search engines.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL): gives the location of a file or service on the web, i.e. the website address.
