And yet, despite all the functionality that many websites offer, there are still a huge number that do nothing but take up space, particularly on a search engine results page. What happens is that even with the most stringent of filters employed by powerful search engines, Internet users still need to wade through websites that are practically dead – dead because they offer no real information and are therefore useless.

Function over form?

But should it necessarily be that way? Do functional and effective websites come into being by simply throwing money at the issue? Does it mean that small companies cannot produce useful and practical websites? The answer to all three questions is a resounding NO.

With just a little bit more effort, small websites can offer just as much information, if not more, than the high profile websites maintained by media giants and conglomerates. And it doesn’t have to mean breaking the bank either.

The fundamental rule in designing websites is that content is the No#1 consideration.  You could spend a fortune on producing glitzy and flashy animation and special effects, but if your target user is not getting anything useful from the site, then all the bells and whistle will be for nothing. Remember that the Internet paved the way for the Information Highway and as such, content – useful content – is the heart of this medium.

Just what constitutes useful content?

When you first set out to create your website, you should think about your target users. These will, of course, vary with the kind of audience you wish to reach. Some target young people, others the business community, others cater to family households – there is practically a market for every demographic. It’s simply a matter of identifying what to present to whom.

Focus on Your Target Audience

And this is where you need to do your homework: to be successful, you need to focus on your target audience and determine what kind of information and content material will capture and sustain their interest.  For example, if your target audience is women in their early retirement years, you should be creating content that has appeal for them, perhaps gardening or golf. The same applies to teenagers, who will probably be more interested in celebrity stars, fashion tips or sports news.

Identify Your Website’s Goals

What should your target audience get out of visiting your website? This is the core question you need to ask to determine a website’s usability. Will it be able to answer or given solutions to problems commonly faced by your audience? The answer you should strive for that question is a big YES.

Sourcing Your Materials

Now that you have an idea what you want to give your website’s target audience, you need to find legitimate and reliable sources of the content you wish to present.

Of course nothing beats writing and producing the material yourself, or hiring someone to do it, because you can claim the material is uniquely yours and you do not need to worry about copyright issues. However, should you be unable to spare the resources of producing your own website content, there are still solutions around that.

The Internet is full of articles written by people of varied expertise, which very likely include your website’s line of interest. And the best part of it is that, very often, these articles can be published on other websites (including yours!) for free. The small trade-off is simply including the writer’s name and credentials before or after the article.

Nifty Add-ons

In addition to informative articles, there are all sorts of  Java-based mini-programs in the form of games, quizzes, body fat counters, weather updates and so on that can help to make your visitors stay on your site a bit longer and may encourage them to return.

The idea is to give your target user more tools to use that will help them with what they need to accomplish on and with your website. Once again, you have the option of programming these yourself and making it available on your website, or you can copy a code from a third-party programmer and integrate it with your own website’s code. Very often the only trade off again is reference to the creator – which is only fair. Other more interactive elements such as surveys, quizzes and the like may be enjoyed and appreciated by your audience (especially if prizes are available afterwards).

In providing useful content for your website’s target audience, you may not have to look very far or to pay prohibitive professional fees. All it takes is an attentive mind to what your audience wants and needs and the patience and resourcefulness of looking around and assessing what options are out there. Once you’ve got those down pat, it simply a matter of time when visitors will come by regularly and repeatedly because your site offers current and useful information.

Accessibility is a concept that is intertwined with the concept of usability. It refers to creating website content that is available to all people irrespective of language or disability.

Context

The issue has caught the attention of different sectors of society.  Why? Because 1 out of 5 people in America possess some kind of disability and this figure translates to around 30 million Americans. The figure is still increasing, with the coming of age of senior citizens. During the past decade alone, a dramatic increase of 25% was seen.

Why the Internet?

One might ask, “Why is the Internet a central focus in this issue of usability?” The Internet has transformed the lives of people during the past decade. People have been able to do things that they were not able to do before, this includes the people with disabilities. People who are impaired don’t have as much opportunities compared to people who are well and able. The Internet has provided them avenues for communication, information gathering, social interaction, engaging in cultural activities and it provides them with employment opportunities. However, statistics have shown that the potential of the Internet to provide these certain opportunities is still not maximized because the people with disabilities are hindered by usability issues from using it to the fullest.

Stakeholders

The issue of usability is not only watched by institutions which are related to giving support to people with disabilities, most of the sectors of society are closely watching its progress. Institutions which are involved in governance, education, media, public services and even the business sectors are observers in the game.

Benefits

The benefits of improving accessibility of websites will not only benefit the people who have impairments but will affect the whole web community. Businesses, services, information campaigners, everyone will benefit.

Many people are calling for developing websites using a universal design approach. This is a way of developing web content which would accommodate the widest range of users. Some features of this said scheme are: provision of inter-operability of applications; access for the disabled; localization and customization.

Recommendations for Improving Accessibility

Listed below are some of the key recommendations from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 which was developed by the Web Accessibility Initiative of W3C on how to improve the accessibility of the contents of a website.

Not all people will be able to use different kinds of content. These people may be disabled or may have a lower version of Internet browsers. Movies, sound clips, animations and other contents should be translated into text alternatives so as to provide information to the broadest range of viewers.

2. Developers shouldn’t rely on colour alone

Many people are impaired in color differentiation. Developers shouldn’t rely too much on the use of colors to relay information in the websites. Charts that are color-coded should be modified and the background and foreground colors of the websites should have enough contrast to enable people with color differentiation impairment to easily navigate the site.

3. Clarification of the use of natural language

Content developers usually mark up the changes in natural language in their websites. They should be able to identify the dominant language that is used in the site so as to avoid confusion.

4. Control of content changes that are time-sensitive

This issue particularly involves people who have visual or cognitive impairments and those who are not able to read texts that are moving quickly. Movement is seen as an over-all enhancer to the look of the site, but it may pose some problems to people with cognitive impairments.

5. Accessibility of user interfaces that are embedded

Objects that posses their own interfaces should be made accessible, and alternative solutions must be provided if this is not possible.

6. Provision of orientation and context information

The provision of information on how the objects are organized is important to provide people with guidance on how to access information.

There are other ways of improving a website’s over-all accessibility to make it more usable. Developers should take into consideration the different people who are going to view their websites and make them focal points in the designing process.

It is a fact that the majority of people use a search engine in order to find what they’re looking for online and there is a great deal of speculation about the best way of attracting them to your website rather than your competitors. If you want visitors to come to your site you must find a way of getting listed in search engine results pages (SERPS).  But which one?

Accounting for over 75% of global searches at a February of 2010, Google is the undisputed leader in the world of search engines. It is also a fact that people searching for something on Google will not look further than page 1 in most cases, very few continuing to page 2. The harsh reality is that if you’re not on page 1 in Google you are nowhere. So what is the best strategy for ensuring that your site reaches page 1?

According to Google themselves web page content should be written for human beings and not search engines. Google’s raison d’être is relevance – the better the content matches the keywords searched for, the higher the page will be ranked, so the more relevant content the page contains the better.

The algorithms used by Google and other search engines are very sophisticated these days and take into account many factors including the time it takes other pages to load, the number of other sites that link to that page, how relevant the content is to the keywords, and the amount of traffic the site receives. The actual algorithm, just like Coca-Cola’s recipe, is a closely guarded secret but occasionally Google gives away an insight as to how their algorithm calculates the relevance of the page.

At one time it was possible to fool the search engine by keyword stuffing the content of your page; this is no longer the case, as the algorithm can detect such measures. The people at Google are no fools and they have developed their algorithms to weed out fraudulent content. Content that is appreciably the same could be construed as duplicate content, as could other “black hat” techniques like creating other pages that contain the same content purely for the purposes of manipulating search results.

This may be completely innocent in its purpose, however, such as creating a page of identical content formatted specifically for printing.  In this case, you should tell Google which page you want listed as the premier URL for the page – a process known as canonicalization.   You could also use a “no follow” meta tag in the head of your print friendly page to prevent search engines indexing that page.

If Google suspects that you are trying to fool it to artificially elevate your ranking position it will penalize you by either not indexing your site, or worse still, “sandboxing” it meaning that it will be placed in a quarantine area where no one will see it.  Having said that, Google are also very proactive in terms of helping people optimise their websites and provide a number of very useful tools including a keyword selection tool, free of charge.        Their stated purpose is to provide the visitor with accurate and relevant information.

Google suggests a variety of measures to avoid having duplicate content indexed including:

• Using 301 redirects
• Using top-level domains
• Using their own Webmaster tools
• Using syndication carefully
• Minimizing repetition by linking to, for example, a terms and conditions page
• Using consistency in linking internally

Consequently it is of major importance to anybody attempting to get their website ranked highly on Google to have content that is fresh, original, and most certainly unique. There are many ways to achieve this, one of the most successful being actively represented on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, and Bebo.

A more recent phenomenon has been the rise of the blog as a new form of social media. Leaving relevant comments on blogs is a good way to distribute the address of your website for nothing, as is writing articles and contributing to forums.  Whatever approach you choose you must also ensure that other websites to link back to yours, so having fresh, relevant content is good reason for other Webmasters to want to link to you.

Many people ask for more information than this, such as a mailing address, the prospect’s date of birth, their telephone number etc – this will vary, and depend on the purpose of the list – but you should always have some means of contacting the prospect after they have left your site.

Building and maintaining a website can require considerable effort; without this data you have no chance of contacting that casual visitor again and turning him or her into a customer.

Make sure yours is an Opt-In list

But how do you go about getting people to sign up?  Well, obviously you need visitors to the site, and that usually requires some great original content regularly updated.  Then, I use a signup form on my website.  This could be something simple – a box with two fields for Name and E-mail, and a Submit button – or a professionally made signup form created by graphic designer.  The critical factor with any email list, however, is to get the prospect’s permission before you send information to them.

Junk e-mail

We all hate getting junk e-mail and legislation in the USA and Europe has made spamming a criminal offence so great care must be taken to verify that the prospective customer really wants to hear from you again.  The way most people achieve this is by sending an “opt-in” email to the prospect as soon as they hit Submit.  This e-mail contains a link that must be clicked before their details are added to your list – in other words, it verifies their subscription.  That way, there can be no argument in the future and you can be certain that everyone on your list is there because they want to be.

Forcible signups

Some people believe that the way to build a list is to force people to sign up before allowing them to access certain content.  While this practice certainly works, I have often found that the people who sign up just to get something for free will unsubscribe from the list as soon as they have what they want.  Even worse, some people mark your emails as spam as soon as you start sending them out.  This is to be avoided at all costs, as nobody wants to be regarded as a spammer.  Not only that, but your reputation and credibility will soon suffer — the Internet is a global medium after all.

Privacy and Incentives

I have always found that a much better ways to offer an incentive to the potential customer.  If your content is what people really want they will sign up anyway, and if you offer something free as an incentive they are far more likely to register.  I find it’s always worth showing samples of my newsletter to people before they sign up so that they can see what they are getting, and if you have any testimonials from existing subscribers so much the better – put them in as well.  Oh, and of course you will want to clearly state your privacy policy – that goes without saying!

Put yourself in your customer shoes

If I am interested in a subject I generally search for information on it online – probably just like you do.  If I find a website that I feel that I can learn from then I will very likely add my name to their mailing list.  They may well offer me an incentive to do so but that is not the real reason that I’m signing up; it’s because I genuinely want the information they’re going to send me.  When they begin to send me e-mails I will probably read them as keenly as if I was sent a magazine subscription through the post, and I’m unlikely to unsubscribe because the information I’m getting is what I asked for.

Auto responder software

There are many organisations that make software specifically to gather and organise subscriber lists.  These vary in size and sophistication, but all of the commercial vendors will only allow opt in lists.  Pricing varies from company to company, but normally you could expect to pay a standard fee which will include a number of subscribers and then a sliding scale where you will pay more according to how big your list grows.  Most vendors operate a monthly fee, most will also accept annual payments.

But what a waste!  I ought to unsubscribe from the lists I no longer require, but like most people I haven’t got round to it yet.  And I have a sneaky feeling that in the next e-mail I will read something really useful, so I leave things as they are.  However, if you’re on the other side of the desk, how can you stop the majority of your e-mail marketing being regarded as junk?

What can be done?

The maxim I always try to use it to treat other people the way I like to be treated myself.  Where e-mail is concerned, that usually means sending out something people want to read.  If I sign up for a newsletter from a website, I usually look forward to receiving it and to reading it, but if after several weeks it turns out to be the same old thing, or worse, a blatant attempt at a sales pitch, I’ll probably bin it without opening it.  If that is true for other people, I need to make sure my e-mail newsletters are interesting enough for people to open and read.

Why the subject line is so critical

In the same way that a newspaper sells copies by virtue of its headline, your e-mail stands a better chance of being opened if the subject line is engaging.  However, beware of trying to emulate a newspaper headline in an e-mail.  Because of the quantity of spam everyone gets nowadays, anything that vaguely resembles a sales pitch will probably result in a being confined to the junk mail folder.  In a recent survey the top and bottom 20 e-mail subject lines were compared for their open rates, and guess what?  The ones that were factual and informative were opened more than eight times more frequently than the ones that look like a sales pitch.  So when it comes to E-mail marketing, you could say that the best subject lines tell what’s inside, and the worst subject lines sell what’s inside!

Well, Google is the world’s #1 search engine and it accounts for over 75% of all the searches carried out worldwide.  That means that 3 out of every 4 searches worldwide is made using Google – and that’s some statistic!

What makes it work?

Most search engines work in a similar way: they base their search on the term you typed in the search window.  However, a great many factors are taken into account when the Search Engine conducts the search – the page title, content and Meta data, how many other pages link to it, whether or not it validates correctly, and of course, whether it is relevant to your search term.  All these factors (and more) are added to a mathematical formula called an algorithm which is used to aggregate the results pages, and this algorithm can often change to keep the results as accurate and relevant as possible.

Putting it into practice

So, let’s say you were searching for a pair of shoes – just searching for “shoes” would return a huge number of results (344 million) because the search is so broad.  You could narrow your search considerably by qualifying it somehow; let’s say by searching for “brown shoes”.  This would reduce the number to 35 million, but searching for “men’s brown shoes” would reduce it to2.6 million – a fraction of the original search!

Keep making the search more specific and the results become more focused as well, so adding “London”, “Bayswater”, “brogue” and “leather” to the search brings the results down to 900 – still quite a few, but a lot less than 344 million – and they are specific, targeted results.  Now, if you had a shop that SOLD men’s brown shoes, wouldn’t you want to make sure that anyone searching for some found YOUR website and not your competitor’s first?  I know I would!

Next steps (no pun intended!)

Search engines want to be as helpful as possible, so they want you to find exactly what you are looking for.  The content you put on your page should be written for human visitors rather than search engine crawlers.  If your site is full of fresh, original and relevant content Google will love it and reward you with a high ranking position.  All search engines are greedy for content, so the more you have and the more specific it is to the searcher’s term the better it will be viewed.  And the more times your search term appears in the content, the more relevance will be interpreted.

The process can be self promoting too.  The better your page is ranked, the more visitors it will attract and the more traffic it generates, the higher the ranking will go.  And the higher the page rank, the more other sites will want to link to it, which in turn means more relevance and consequently better ranking.

Content really is king

So “content is king”, as the saying goes.  Find good quality content that fits the site’s purpose, make it accessible, relevant and write for human beings and you will soon reap the rewards in terms of more traffic, better links, more conversions and ultimately, more money.  Almost everyone now uses the Internet, including your potential customers, so make sure they find you online first – give them lots of content!

What a CMS is and what it isn’t

A CMS is essentially a content editor that allows users to change the content of a website without any special or technical knowledge, with nothing more than a web browser and from anywhere in the world.  The system works by using in effect just one or two pages and adding content to them from data stored in a database.  Navigation is usually created automatically, and different levels of access can be granted to different groups of users.  What a CMS is not is a “web-builder” that allows individuals to “drag and drop” elements into a framework to create a simple website.

What will a CMS allow me to do?

If you have never used a CMS before, you are in for a treat!  Simply put, a CMS lets you edit the content of your website yourself.  Depending on the permissions you have been granted, you could:

• Add new pages
• Delete existing pages
• Edit pages
• Re-order pages
• Add pictures, sound, video or other content
• Change the look of the website
• Re-order items on a page
• Add or remove news items

In short, a CMS will allow you to make your website your own.  You may work for an organization that uses a website, possibly a company Intranet, built using a CMS.  If this is the case you will be able to generate your own fresh content whenever it is suitable and without waiting for a technician to get round to it.

You might have to have the content sanctioned by a line manager or other superior before it is published, and you almost certainly will have a set of rules to adhere to when writing content, but apart from organizational restrictions you should find the freedom this system gives you a refreshing change.

Adding text

Many people unfamiliar with content management systems are worried that they might find difficulty in writing for a website, but Google says you should write for human beings, not search engines, so you should write as you would do normally.  Most CMS have a fairly sophisticated text editor a bit like a mini word processor that will allow you to type right in the window or paste from another programme like Microsoft Word.  This is a great advantage as it means you won’t have to duplicate content you have already.

Text can be formatted in the usual way – like bold, italic and underline – and you can change the font face and size, the indentation and also the style, for example Heading 2 or paragraph text, from a drop down menu in most editors.  Some will also allow you to insert pictures, and others allow the inclusion of code for things like adverts.

Including Images

One of the things that makes the web such a vibrant place is the graphical capabilities modern browsers have.  Pictures and video are commonplace online and if your CMS has the appropriate functionality, you can add these too.

One type of text editor lets you edit images right there in the window.  You can alter the size to fit a particular area of the page, change the resolution so that the page loads quicker and even crop away some redundant parts of an image.  As a general rule of thumb, no image on your page should exceed 20KB in size, and the total of all your images should not be more than 200 KB per page.

Saving changes

Don’t forget to save any changes you make, otherwise the site will not be updated.  Most CMS have an option to save any editing so far but to leave the page open for more, usually called “Apply” and another that saves and closes the page in one operation.  When the page is saved you normally get a notification that the database has been updated so you know it is OK.

It is generally agreed by most people involved in Internet marketing that in order to build traffic to your website you need the following:

• Fresh, original content on your website – and lots of it
• A position at or near the top of the first page in search engines
• A good Alexa rank and PR
• A database of subscribers to whom you can market by E-mail.

Why?  Because your potential customers will decide when they want to buy, and that might not be the first time they visit your site, or the second, or third.  People buy when they are ready and not before.

Stay in touch and become a friend

An E-mail marketing campaign allows you to keep in touch with your potential customers, and to offer them advice and information about the product you hope to sell them.  It also gives you the chance to become a trusted ally – an expert they can trust, and the first name they think about when they have reached their buying decision.

How to choose the one that’s right for you

Okay, you may say, if that’s why I need an E-mail marketing campaign, how do I know which one to choose?

The decision generally falls into one of two categories; either you use the facilities afforded by your hosting company and organise things yourself, or you pay to use the services of a commercial E-mail host.  Which way you decide to go will depend on many factors, not the least of which is your budget.  However, for most people who are serious about E-mail marketing, the commercial option is the way to go.

E-mail marketing companies are sometimes referred to as auto responders or E-mail service providers (ESPs).  An ESP is a company that hosts an E-mail marketing service on their specially optimised servers, so all you have to do is create the E-mail content and decide when to send the E-mails, normally by using a familiar browser interface.  The ESP handles all the technical issues for you and will usually provide details on the results of your E-mail campaign.

Ideally, your ESP should be able to tell you how many were undeliverable, how many were opened and how many people clicked on the link in the E-mail – usually linked to an external website.  Many E-mail hosts have additional features, such as the ability to see who did what, but whether or not, a detailed report is a great benefit in helping you measure the effectiveness of your overall E-mail marketing.

Keep it Legal!

As legislation in the USA and Europe make it illegal to send out unsolicited E-mail, all commercial providers should insist that your list-building efforts comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.  In a nutshell this Act says that every subscriber must have opted-in to the list, and that every E-mail you send out has an unsubscribe link clearly displayed.  In order for the marketing to work, it is also a requirement that all E-mails are sent from a valid, working E-mail address.

It is commonplace for the subscribers to opt-in to receive E-mails from you by clicking a validation link in the E-mail they are initially sent.  If you are ever tempted to buy a list, don’t – I can’t think of a quicker way to lose your reputation, credibility and possibly even your business.

Features and benefits

You should consider the following features before signing up to an E-mail marketing service:

• CAN SPAM compliance
  • Any ESP that you choose should require customers to opt in to your list
• Private IP address
  • Make sure you are not sharing an IP address with another business – you may find that spam complaints against them gets you blacklisted by a major ISP. This could not only prevent your E-mails from being delivered, it could mean you can’t get off it – through no fault of your own.
• Support and tutorials
  • No point having a flashy sports car if you don’t know how to drive!  Before you sign up to a service, make sure they have good customer support facilities and tutorials on how to use the service.
• Reporting
  • You should be able to access a number of reports so you can see how many E-mails were delivered, their open-rates and click-through rates.
• Segmenting
  • You should be able to split-test by using different criteria to target segments of your list with content relevant to them
• Storage space
  • Make sure you know how much space you are allowed for storage on the ESP servers – some charge extra when you go over your limit.
• Reliable service
  • Make sure your ESP has reliable high-speed connections to the Internet and a hardware redundancy policy.
• Cost
  • Some ESPs charge a monthly fee based on the number of subscribers on your list, others charge a fee based on the number of E-mails you send.
• Ease of Use
  • Is the service easy to use? Check out their website to get a feel for it and remember to try before you buy if you can – most will give a free period.

Every website we create uses Cascading Style Sheets to control how the page looks and how the content is formatted.  This means that changing the look of the site is a process completely seperate from changing the content. That means we can make it easier everyone to access, and easier for search engines to find too!
– David Millard

Why do we use CSS?

Well, because seperating the formatting of a page from what it contains, like text and pictures, allows us to change the look of the site without changing what it contains. It also makes the underlying code much leaner, and smaller files mean faster loading pages.

Not only that, but it means we can produce a different version of the page for the type of media used to access it, so, for example, someone using a Blackberry or a mobile phone would see a special version of the site tailor made for their size screen.

And what about people who don’t use a browser like Internet Explorer? Lots of people prefer other browsers, like Firefox and Opera, while some prefer to use a screen reader. Will they be able to see your website? You bet!

This all sounds expensive…

OK, we don’t work for free. Do you? No, didn’t think so. But our services aren’t as expensive as you might think, and every page we make comes with:

• up to 4 images per page
• your own logo if you have one
• your very own domain name (e.g. www.yoursite.co.uk)
• email address (e.g.paul@yoursite.co.uk)
• web hosting for a whole year
• And your website is open “24/7″, giving your business a round-the-clock Internet presence

About us

Netresult began in 2002 as a Web Design agency in north Hampshire but was re-launched in 2006 with a specific business model – that of a local, reliable company catering to the corporate market. It has since grown to include hosting and search engine optimisation services.

Contact us

If you would like details of our services and pricing, please get in touch through our Contact page. And don’t forget, we can help make sure your own website is not buried in the depths of Google or MSN by optimising the content of every page so that it pops up when someone searches for it.