What about using "frames"? A Special Warning about building a website using frames: We have discovered that a LOT of people still don't realize the significant drawbacks of having a site which uses frames, including many "professional" web designers. Because of the seriousness of these drawbacks we're taking a moment to let you know of them here. The fundamental problem is there is no standard way of creating a URL (web address) which specifies which pages to load into a particular frameset. This has a several important consequences for your framed website: Web search engines do not index framed sites Most all web search engines (like Google, MSN, etc.) will stop indexing your site as soon as they run into a frameset. The only pages to get indexed are the default pages loaded into your frameset (i.e. your "home page"). The rest of your site is ignored. If they do happen to index a framed site, the links provided will lead to "orphan" pages that provide no way for the visitor to navigate to any other page within the site. This has serious implications for anyone trying to get their site to show up in web searches (and who isn't??). The other problem is the creation of "orphan pages" where the search engine lists a link to inside your site, but the link pulls up only one part of the page. Sometimes it's the header or name at the top, sometimes it's the side navigation section, sometimes the body of text. The visitor is stuck - with nowhere to go but to hit the back button and on to check out your competitor's website. Your visitors can only bookmark your home page Because the address in the web browser window does not indicate which pages are currently loaded into the frames of your frameset, when one of your visitors thinks they are bookmarking a specific page of interest, they are typically just bookmarking your home (frameset) page. This is a big inconvenience if you have a big website. Printing pages is usually impossible! Visitors interested in printing out individual pages will end up with several pages, with the logo on one page, the navigation bar on the next, the body text on the next page, etc. After 1 try most people will move on to try another site (your competitors!)

What Makes A Really Good WebSite?

What Do Visitors to Your Site Really Want & Need??

Website Design Tip - Build a "professional looking" site.

• Many times a company will try to "save money" by building a website on their own (marketing assistant that took a class once on "how to build a website", college intern, teenage son of the office manager, the IT person that's "good with computers", the graphic designer in the Advertising Dept., etc.)

• Be careful when selecting color schemes - avoid intense colors, especially backgrounds, that are "hard on the eyes"
  » see website color choices for sites by Cole WebMaketing

• There is no way to determine how much business is lost each day from buyers making a decision solely on the first impression they get when they first visit a bad website.

Website Design Tip - Make your website very easy to navigate.

• Place clear navigation links/buttons on every page. Many sites today have navigation buttons on the top, sides and at the bottom of every page.

• You may think it's easy to get around your website and that customers can easily find what they are looking for. Ask them? Also, ask someone who has never seen your site before to visit it and watch what they do, where they go.
  (click on the pyramid image above for an enlarged view of our chart on Effectiving Organizing & Presenting Website Content)

• Always include a detailed Site Map. This can be in an "outline" form or "index" form, but it's critical to provide a crystal clear secondary navigation route so visitors can easily find what they need to inside your site.

Website Design Tip - Content, Content, Content!

• Fill your site with details. A website for a resort hotel or a nightclub might want to create a "mood" but an industrial website or other commercial B2B websites needs to be packed with specific, detailed information needed by the buyer or specifier.

• If you feel the need to put your mission statement and pictures of your facility on your website, put them on a secondary page inside the site; NEVER on your home page.

Website Design Tip - Design your site for BOTH your human and non-human visitors.

• This can be tricky! Your site needs to be visually appealing AND easy for the automated software programs, called spider robots, to "crawl" your entire website.

• People like pictures - robots like text. Building a site with a the right amount of both will make your website interesting to read and look at for the human visitor while providing the content required by spiders to index your entire website in order to assign "page rank scores" to your web pages.

• These critically important scores determine which websites get served up, and in what order (rank), when a buyer searches for your product or service on the internet.

Website Design Tip - OPTIMIZE your WebSite

• Part of every good Search Engine Optimization or WebSite Promotion project is creating or redesigning a website so that it is attractive to the Search Engines.

• Fill it with tasty "spider food" like lots of detailed text and accurate Meta Tags.

• Avoid spider blocks such as building your website in "frames", having broken links or links made from images that can't be followed by the robots.

• Avoid placing important information in images, "Flash" or PDF files. Identify and target key keywords and phrases used by your prospective customers to search for your products and services.

• Make changes on an on-going basis so that your content remains current and up to date (and appears to be "fresh" by the search engines). You can try to do all this on your own or you can save time and money by having an experienced outside SEO firm do it for you.

Website Design Tip - Be CAREFUL with your COPY

• In a passive sales environment like the Internet, it's imparative to communicate clearly & concisely. Chose words that are "idiot proof" and leave no room for confusion or misunderstanding. Unlike a live conversation, you can't re-clarify your statement on the web.

• Take this example of what NOT to do. The following is the opening statement pulled from a website: "our process-driven, ROI-focused sales expertise in the retail and commercial channels enables us to successfully apply our methodology across a wide range of industries and evolve along with our clients as their business needs progress into different areas."

• Huh?! Writing for the web is much different than writing copy for anything offline. Make sure you have someone from outside your company "proof" your content to avoid meaningless marketing fluff shown in the above example.

Cole WebMarketing is a Charlotte, NC based Internet Marketing company. We provide Website Design & Redesign, Website Promotion/SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Content Management & Site Maintenance and related services (such as URL registration & website hosting) to businesses in North Carolina, South Carolina & beyond.