But the one thing that you should never neglect is backups. You can compare it to insurance. Chances are you won’t need it, but when you do, you are very thankful you took the time to do it.

Doing backups is not as easy as it should be. A lot of time and effort is required to set it all up. But fortunately they can be automated to a high degree. And don’t forget to test them too. Even when a backup appears to have gone without a hitch, the only way to know whether it’s of any value is to attempt to restore the information. If it can’t be restored, the backup is worthless. And it’s not good to find that out just after your hard disk has died.

Most good web hosting companies generate their own backups. These are all well and good, but you cannot rely on them. The backups they make are for their own purposes in case of hard disk failure. If you find you have accidentally overwritten a file that you shouldn’t have, this is where your backups come into play. Your webhost’s backup will not be suitable for situations like this.

If you host uses Cpanel, you have the chance to generate your own backups at will. You can take a full dump of your web server space, including all files, email filters and databases. Unfortunately, you have to save it to your webserver or transfer it via FTP. Don’t forget to keep copies of your own backups however. If you store your backups on the same server as your files then it’s not a backup at all! It is all time consuming and tedious, but it is still essential.

So it’s worth putting some time into developing a good backup strategy and sticking to it.

Make sure network capacity is sufficient for your website

Please note: This article was written from the perspective or a website developer. I am not a networking or HTTP expert and this article is designed for people who have general responsibility for running websites. Feel free to leave any comments below.

Introducing Two Old Friends

Bandwidth and server load are two factors that can affect your ability to run a website.

Bandwidth actually has two meaning when refering to running a website. Firstly it can mean the network capacity for web traffic back and forth at a given time, i.e. how much data can be transferred per second.

Alternatively it means the amount of data that is allowed to be transferred in a specific interval, such as one month. Both are important when running a website. As files are uploaded and downloaded, emails exchanged, and web pages accessed, network bandwidth is being used.

Total monthly bandwidth is a cap that all hosting companies place on sites in order to share the total network capacity equally between all the sites. Cheap webhosting is available because hosting companies can cram multiple websites onto a single server. For sites with relatively low traffic and data demand, this “shared” hosting is perfect. It is cheap, but sufficient resources are available to run your site smoothly. Hosting companies monitor sites in order to keep one site from accidentally or deliberately consuming all the network capacity.

Even websites on dedicated or virtual private hosting will have a bandwidth limit, but they will be significantly more generous than the limits on shared hosting.

Server load is a much less commonly discussed subject. It refers to CPU utilisation on the server that hosts the website. The CPU (central processing unit) is the component in a computer that processes information and commands from programs, ordering memory to be used a certain way, moving files from one place to the next and more. For example, every time MySQL needs to access and process some information from the database, the CPU will perform all the calculations.

Server load is displayed as a number usually in the format x.xx. The aim is for the server load to be as low as possible. Basically, a higher server load means the server is under pressure to do more work.

There is no cut off as to what is an acceptable server load and what isn’t, but it generally accepted that your server load can increase by 1 for every CPU your server has and all should be OK. For example, if your server has 1 CPU a server load up to 1.00 is OK. Whereas if your server has 3 CPUs the server load is acceptable up to 3.00.

Memory capacity on any computer is limited. In a perfect world, every component of a server would get access to as much of the CPU as they needed. Unfortunately this cannot always be the case. Special operating system functions control how the processing time is shared out among all the competing processes. The server load indicates how “in demand” the server currently is. It constantly changes and will ebb and flow throughout the day.

But Is It Important

While keeping an eye on your bandwidth usage and server load is not the most important, or most exciting, or administrative tasks, it is still important. If you use up all your bandwith your webhost could potentially charge you a lot of money. Even worse, your website could be unavailable until you get the problem sorted out.

It is completely unacceptable to run out of bandwidth and if you ever get as close as using 75% of your available bandwidth, get the situation sorted immediately. All you need is for your site to get popular on Digg or Stumble Upon and you could potentially use a huge amount of bandwidth in a short period of time. If those visitors start receiving a message that your site has run out of bandwidth, you are losing out on a great many number of visitors.

High bandwidth plans are extremely cheap these days.

Server load is beyond your control. You don’t have any influence on how many websites are crammmed onto a single server or what the high demand times are for those sites.

Conclusions

After exploring bandwidth and server load our conclusions are quite clear. In this day and age of super cheap hosting there is simply no excuse for running out of bandwidth. We have also learned that server load is important, but we have no control over it. If you find that your server has a consistently high server load, it is time to consider to moving to a new host, or perhaps looking for VPS hosting.

Accessibility is just as important on the web as it is in the real world

Creating accessible website has never been as important as it is now. Accessibilty used to be about making sure your website was compatible with screen readers, used by people with visual impairments. These days an accessibile website is now more about creating a user friendly website for everybody, whatever their needs.

Why Make a Website Accessible?

The web is becoming more about rich media, audio, video and AJAX. The bottom line is that you want as many people as possible to be able to use your website. There are several situations when thinking about making your site accessible will help you:

• The use of mobile phones to access the Internet has exploded in the last few years. Many have limited support for Flash and Javascript, and they have small screen resolutions.
• 6% of all web users don’t support Javascript, either because they have it turned off or because their web browser doesn’t support it. (Source: The Counter, December 2008 statistics.
• Browsers such as Lynx do not support images. All browsers have the ability to switch images off. Would a visitor be able to use your website effectively if they were not able to see the images?
• Supporting users with diabilities. Whether they are visually impaired, or are unable to use a mouse and rely solely on the keyboard, or touch screen. Many countries have laws that make it illegal to discriminate against disabled people. Link to law article.
• Search engine spiders need to be able to access every page on your website, just by following links. They cannot enter terms into a search box and they cannot choose options from a drop-down box. Any page that is inaccessible will never feature in the search results.

How Do I Make My Website Accessible?

The W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative announced on 11 December 2008 that version 2 of its accessibility guidelines were finalised. They are a great resource for learning what steps to take to make your website accessible. Some of the steps are basic and very obvious, but there are many that you may not have heard about before.

This list outlines some of the more important steps that you should take to ensure that your website is accessible. Most of them should not be after thoughts, but things that you consider as you build your pages. Take a look at the W3C’s site for an exhaustive list.

Audio and Visual Content

Sites like Youtube are making an effort to make their videos more accessible to people who either cannot see them or cannot hear them. Subtitles (or Closed Captions) are a good idea for deaf visitors. It is not just about disbaled people however. What if I don’t have a sound card installed on my computer? Always provide alternatives. A text version of any audio is essential.

Don’t Confuse With Colour

Make sure text and background have a suitable contrast level. This is a basic rule, and doesn’t just affect people with visual impairments. There is a reason why black text on a white background is so popular.

Don’t highlight errors by simply changing their colour. For example if a page features a form and that form is validated on the client-side before it is submitted, ensure that any errors are highlighted clearly. This should include a text-based warning rather than simply changing fields colours to highlght an error.

Decorative Graphics

Never use graphics as spacers on a page. Use CSS for this, as it was intended. Any decorative images should be implemented in a way so that blocking them doesn’t affect the use of the page.

Make Text Readable

Text should be at a sufficient size. Additionally, the user should be able to adjust the text size using their browsers text size controls. You should never block this function.

Ensure headings are clear. The use of proper heading tags should ensure this.

Use A Proper Page Structure

Keep all your content and layout information separate by using stylesheets. Not only will this help people who diuse screen readers and text-based browsers, it also helps keep your code cleaner and easier to manage. It is easier to make layout changes if all the presentation data is an an external stylesheet.

Avoid Using A CAPTCHA As Much As Possible

CAPTCHAs are designed to prevent automatic registration by bots. They require the user to identify some obscured text to ensure the visitor is a real person and not a machine. Some argue that they are very effective. Few would argue against them being an accessibility nightmare. Decide if a Captcha is really necessary. For blocking comment spam, perhaps Akismet would be better.

Navigation Must Be Easy To Use

Navigation is something that needs a lot of thought put into it. Every page on your website must be accessible. If the only way to access your pages is through a javascript drop-down menu or a Flash menu, you need to rethink. This type of poor navigation doesn’t just impede disabled visitors. What about search engine spiders? What about people who don’t have the Flash plugin (still 1% of Internet users).

In Summary

These are just a few of the reasons why it is essential that your website is accessible. Not only will your website meet local accessibility laws, it will be spidered by search engines much more frequently and easily. You will find your traffic levels increase. You see, by creating an accessible website, everybody wins.

Online sales is a lucrative market for a big brand to get into. Many people like the convenience of shopping from home and being able to compare prices before the make a purchase. You would think that these companies would put a huge amount of effort into making the shopping experience as comfortable and straightforward as possible. Well, you would be wrong. Sometimes the only conclusion you can draw on some of these websites is that they don’t want your money.

In this article I have illustrated some of the stupid things that e-commerce websites do that turns visitors off.

Don’t Spend Money On Marketing If You Are Going To Neglect The Basics

Online retailers pay tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars on content managament and product catalogue software. Why splash out on all this money if it can’t do the basic properly? Why spend money on pay-per-click marketing if you are going to neglect the SEO basics.

Take Waterstones, the online book seller, as an example. While each page contains a meta keyword and description tag, the title on every category page is the same. It simply reads Welcome to Waterstones.com. If that was the title you were presented with on a search result page, would you click on it? No, thought not.

Another basic SEO failing on many e-commerce sites are poor URL choices. Many online retailers (particularly in the UK it seems) use the same catalogue software and the following are all the homepage URLs from a few of them.

• http://www.missselfridge.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?storeId=12554&catalogId=20555
• http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Home?storeId=10051&catalogId=10051&langId=-15
• http://www.homebase.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=20001

Compare these two URLs. They are both from major UK electrical retailers and both point to that company’s page for vacuum cleaners. Which would you rather click in a search engine result?

1. http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0129255136.1222344286@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccekadeffffejdjcflgceggdhhmdgmi.0&page=Category&category_oid=-30615&fm=4&sm=7&tm=undefined
2. http://www.comet.co.uk/shopcomet/subhub/80/Vacuum-Cleaners

Don’t Make Me Register Before Checkout

It is one thing asking a customer if they wish to register with your site so their information can be saved, but it should never be a requirement. If I wish to enter my details and my credit card information every time I visit, that’s up to me. This is a crime perpetrated by both Woolworths and Currys in the UK

Don’t make me register before I can use the site

Using Asda as an example again, on the home shopping section of their website you are required to put in your postal code to check if they can deliver to your area. This is a fair requirement – there is no point in doing shopping if they can’t deliver to you. The problem is that after you have checked your postal code, you can’t even start shopping until you have fully registered, which includes the frustratingly inane question that you seem to get everywhere – “where did you hear about us.” You can browse the shop but you get an error message when you try to add something to your basket.

Show Me Alternative Products, Not Error Pages

Thomas Cook and First Choice are two of the most popular holiday travel agents in the UK. Let’s compare how their websites handle when they cannot find what we have searched for. The first screenshot shows the Thomas Cook website.

Where is the first place you are going to click after this? Most likely to another website. Compare how First Choice handles this error below.

One Website – One Registration

ASDA, the UKs second largest supermarket (owned by Walmart) has a website that allows you to do your grocery shopping online but also buy large electrical items, CDs and DVDs, flowers and even mobile phones. Sounds great, but what’s the drawback? You have to register separately for each section of the website. This is absolute lunacy!

Even more annoyingly, say you add some flowers to your shopping cart and go and browse the DVDs, when you return to the flower section your shopping cart is empty. We are using Asda as an example quite a lot, but they seem to do so much wrong.

Don’t Distract Me At The Checkout

The object of an e-commerce site is to get people to buy things. When they have added a product to their basket and are at the checkout, this is what they are trying to do. Enable them to complete their transaction and distract them as little as possible. The checkout is not the place to list the latest special offers or allow the visitor to browse categories. A link back to the homepage is OK, but the only clicks they should be able to make are ones that take them forward in the buying process. Don’t make it too easy for them to abandon their order.

Amazon’s checkout is the perfect example of how to build a good checkout system.

Tell Me The Real Price From The Start

For this example we will look at two UK airlines – Ryanair and Easyjet. Both are very popular low-cost airlines and they both take online bookings. Let’s look at how the prices change through the booking process.

A search on Ryanair gives a price of £39.84. When we proceed to the next stage we get to “extras” page. The only way you can get that price is to remove the insurance, take no hold-baggage, remove the priority boarding and to check-in online.

With Easyjet our flight cost is £28.99. They give us the option of adding priority boarding, but this is not added by default. Again however, they charge for a checked on bag and they automatically add one on to your booking unless you ask to remove it. Unfortunately, also like Ryainair, they add insurance by default too, which you have to double confirm to remove to get the price you were originally quoted.

While it may be true that the quoted price is for the flight, people want to know what price they have to pay up front. I don’t know the statistics of how many people need to check in bags on a flight, but I expect that it is quite high. The two companies might argue that it is not very high, but if so, why do Easyjet add it to your booking by default?

A post from e-consultancy in 2007 told us that 93% of UK online shoppers were “annoyed” by hidden charges such as these. Ryanair has previous history of mis-advertising its prices stretching back for years.

In Summary

This article just goes to show that there are still so many companies that can’t get things right. There are just a few outlined above, but there are countless more out there all over the Internet. Companies need to spend more time focusing on their customers’ needs rather than the needs of their management.

What Is A “Bounce”

A bounce occurs when a visitor leaves a particular website after only visiting a single page.

A visitor is regarded as having left the website when either

• Their session times out,
• They close the browser window or tab,
• They type a new address into the address bar, or
• They click the back button to return to a different website

By default, Google Analytics’s session timeout is 30 minutes. That means that if the user stops activity for 30 minutes then carries on browsing the site, a new session will be created. If the user leaves the site but then returns within 30 minutes, the return visit is counted as part of the original session. You are able to manually change the timeout length.

Each specific page on a website has its own bounce rate. It is generally expressed as a percentage and it means the number of visitors who left after viewing that page and no others.

For example, if a page has a 30% bounce rate, it means 30% of visitors who enter via that page leave without visiting any others.

In addition, there will be an average, site-wide bounce rate. You can work out how effective a specific page is by comparing its bounce rate to the site-wide bounce rate.

What Is A Good Bounce Rate?

There is not one single figure that is suitable for all types of website. As a very rough idea, a bounce rate between 20% and 50% is not too bad. However, the ideal bounce rate depends very much on the type of site you run and the type of visitors you attract.

If you run a news-type website, the chances are you will have a higher bounce rate. A visitor comes directly to the news story they wish to learn about, reads it and then leaves. Having a bounce rate of 80% for this page doesn’t necessarily mean that the page is ineffective. In fact the page may be so effective, that the visitor doesn’t need to navigate to another page.

If you run an e-commerce site and are looking for people to complete a checkout before they leave then you would expect to have a very low bounce rate. If people are entering a product page and leaving without visiting your checkout, then something is wrong. The same is true for any site that wants visitors to complete some sort of task, be it a newsletter signup, or registration at a forum.

Analysing Specific Pages

To find the bounce rate for a specific page in Google Analytics navigate to Content -> Content by title. Choose the title of the page you wish to analyse. You can then see the bounce rate of the page. In the example to the left, you can see the bounce rate is 39.16%. Google Analytics also tells us that this is 50.28% below the site average.

This suggests that this is a particularly effective page at enticing visitors to navigate the rest of the site. Note that we aren’t looking at the absolute bounce rate, just how it differs from the site-wide rate. I will explain why the site-wide bounce rate is so high later.

The bounce rate for our homepage is 83.35%. This is 5.82% higher than the site-wide bounce rate. This means that only 17 out of 100 people who enter from the homepage navigate to any other pages.

Analysing Bounce Rate by Source

Another interesting experiment is to look at how the bounce rate changes depending on the source of the visitor. This can tell you how interesting people find your website depending on who referred them. To locate the information, click Traffic Sources -> Referring Sites and click the domain you wish to analyse.

First we will look at the referrer domain buyhitscheap.com. They are a company that sells website hits. I used it in a previous experiment analysing visitor loyalty. As you can see, the bounce rate is 100%. Every single visitor referred by that domain leaves without visiting another page. From this statistic you can get a good idea of how interested the visitors were in your website – not very.

Let’s have a look at stumbleupon.com. This referrer has a bounce rate of 75%. This is not too bad compared to some other referrers. 1 out of 4 people from Stumbleupon navigate to at least one other page before leaving. It shows you that the traffic from stumbleupon will be more likely to visit other areas of your website than the traffic from buyhitscheap.com. With this information you can decide which is better to focus your attention on.

Summary

We all know that digging through statistics is incredibly boring. Webmasters don’t want to spend time trawling through analytics data, they want to spend time working on their site. But bounce rate is one of those particularly useful pieces of data, and is more powerful than it seems at first.

In my opinion it is well worth spending some time working out who are your best referrers, as they may not just be the sites that send you the most visitors. It is also worthwhile being able to determine which pages make people want to explore more of your site and which ones have people scrambling for the back button. All of this is useful information that will help you to improve your site, and ultimately gain more visitors.

Choosing a good URL is important

One aspect of constructing a website that is often overlooked is the URL that is used. As well as it being a useful description of the contents of the page, in some search engines the search terms that are present in the URL are emboldened. Getting your URL highlighted in this way is an extra enticement for the searcher to click through to your website.

This article presents some ideas that not only make your URL less annoying, but make it technically superior, resulting in fewer 404 errors, and happier visitors.

Don’t go more directories deep than necessary

• http://www.just-eat.co.uk/pages/frontpage.aspx

Is it really necessary to put the homepage of your website inside a sub-directory? When you access this website via the URL http://www.just-eat.co.uk you are actually redirected to the above mentioned page. This is surely unnecessary.

Other examples

• http://www.premierleague.com/page/Home/0,,12306,00.html
• http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html
• http://www.gysd.net/home/index.html?width=1024

Don’t Rely On Uppercase Characters

By default, IIS servers treat URLs with capital letters the same as those without. This means that the following URL:

• example.com/INDEX.html

is the same page as:

• example.com/index.html

Apache servers will treat these URLs as different.

Take the example:

• http://www.positive.org/Home/index.html

Accessing the following URL:

• http://www.positive.org/home/index.html

will result in a page not found error. Relying on a URL to be entered with an uppercae character is not a good idea.

Make URLs readable by humans

• http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_3383688,00.html

While it is perfectly acceptable to put the date of publication or other such data in a URL, this example from Sky Sports is just a mess. Do you think your visitors would be able to write this down?

Compare the URL to this one from the BBC website:

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/7330235.stm

It is much more organised. Incidentally, these two URLs are both reporting on the same story.

Which is more effective and useable?

The following URL from the Movie 10,000 BC is also a very poor URL. All the zeros increase the chance the user will make a mistake when entering it. In this case, spelling it in words rather then numbers would probably be more effective, even if it resulted in a longer URL:

• http://www.10000bcmovie.com/

Don’t spoil your URL with ugly session IDs

• http://www.locata.org/(S(f0yd0paqhs5pp155qpoutz55))/Home.aspx

I cannot imagine why this website felt the need to design their website in a way that it used session IDs this way. The URLs are extremely ugly and you certainly wouldn’t be able to write it down. Interestingly, accessing the following URL will take you to the same page:

• http://www.locata.org/Home.aspx

Where session IDs are necessary on this website is unclear.

Think about what your URL could mean

These URLs are all genuine, famous examples of people not thinking before they decide on a domain name.

• WhorePresents.com rather than WhoRepresents.com
• ExpertSexChange.com rather than ExpertsExchange.com
• TheRapistFinder.com rather than TherapistFinder.com
• MolestationNursery.com rather than MoleStationNursery.com

Always think about what your domain name means when you register it.

Can Users Bookmark or Forward every Page of your Website?

The website traintimes.org.uk is an excellent example of an accessible website. It presents train timetables in an easy to read and clear format. The most beautiful part of this website however, is the URL format it uses.

Most websites of this type use POST on all their forms. This means URLs cannot be bookmarked or forwarded. You are forced to go to the homepage and begin a new search each time. Traintimes.org.uk is different, however. Running a typical search results in a URL like this:

• http://traintimes.org.uk/kettering/leicester/11:00/2008-05-07

You can bookmark this or forward it to a friend. Additionally, it is clear what each part of the URL means and you can easily modify it.

Use the tools at your disposal to their best effect

Having a good website design is essential. If a user doesn’t like your website or cannot find what they need, they will leave. It’s a simple as that. Building your own website design from scratch is not for everybody. Likewise, if you use ready made software such as a message board or CMS, you will want to modify the default theme to give your site some individuality. This article looks at some of the best places to find templates for your CMS, blog or website. It also discusses where to find stock photos and clipart.

Website Templates

There are many websites on the Internet offering website templates both for free and paid. Using a ready made template has the advantages of being quick to acquire, visually attractive and semantically accurate. Somebody else has had to worry about producing accuare HTML and CSS and testing the design on different browsers. The main disadvantage is that your website design will not be unique. To solve this problem, many template sites offer you a “unique price.” This will cost you extra but it means that you will be the last person who buys that template. After you have paid, the template is removed from the site and nobody else can purchase it. Unfortunately, you don’t know how many people have used the template before you.

The following list should get you started on finding your template but there are literally hundreds of websites offering tens of thousands of templates at various prices.

• Template Monster
• Website Templates
• Dream Template
• Design Load
• Hyper Templates
• Free CSS Templates
• Templates Box
• Free Site Templates
• Free Website Templates

Blog Themes

When searching for themes for and ready made software, always ensure that the version you have installed if compatible witht eh theme you are using. Version upgrades will often make changes to the templates or add new features which are not included in older templates. When new versions of software are released, it usually takes a few weeks for suitable themes to become available. Always check for compatibility before you buy or download themes.

Wordpress

• BG Themes
• BlogFlux
• Wordpress Theme Shop
• Blogging Themes
• Revolution Theme

Moveable Type

• BlogFlux
• Movable Type Style Library

Typepad

• Everything Typepad: Themes

CMS Templates

Joomla

• Compass Designs
• Joomla Yard
• JoomlArt
• Joomla Shack
• Free Joomla Templates

Mambo

• Template Monster
• Ocarda

Drupal

• Template Monster
• Ocarda

PHP-Nuke

• Template Monster
• Ocarda

Clipart and Stock Photos

In these days of broadband connections, multimedia, graphic rich websites are now commonplace. The best place to source graphics and clipart are from specialised “stock” websites. Generally, there are three types of stock photo.

The first is royalty free. In this context, “free” means that you don’t have to pay every time you use it. You pay for the image once and you can reuse it over and over. It is important to know that these photos will be sold over and over to as many people as the artist wants to.

The second type are licenced images. You pay to use them once, but you have exclusive use for a fixed period of time.

The last type are the free images. While they are free to use, the licence terms usually require you to attribute the source of the image. As these images are free, they are likely to have been used many, many times.

• Stock.xchng
• StockXpert
• iStockPhoto
• Free Images
• Clipart.com
• GIF.com
• Photos.com

Custom Built Templates

If you want an original, custom-built template for your website you can either build it yourself, or comission somebody to build it for you. While this is the most costly option it comes with the upside that you can choose your own budget and you can be very specific in what design you want. You can choose the time frame for the project and you can monitor the progress of how the template is going along.

While hiring a coder is quite a significant initial outlay, remember that it is a one off fee and you are paying for the services of a professional coder. You can supply them with a rough idea of what you need and they will work with you to produce a more specific design brief. The best websites to use to find a custom coder are ones that allow people to bid on your project. You post a brief outline and a budget and coders will bid for your project. You can check their previous work and ask them question before deciding who to assign your project to.

The best sites to check are:

• Rent-a-Coder
• Elance

Good navigation is essential. Simple as that.

No matter how good a website looks, if your users cannot navigate the site they will leave. It’s as simple as that.

The basic principle is that users must be able to get to where they want to go in as few clicks as possible. In the modern Internet splash screens are out, “click here to enter” is out, “this site is best viewed in Internet Explorer” is out and Flash introduction movies are out (“Skip Intro” is possibly the most clicked on phrase on the whole Internet). User want content. This cannot be emphasised enough, so it will be repeated many times. Users want content. Investing time and money building a wonderful and useful page is no use if visitors cannot navigate to it quickly. Navigation shouldn’t be simple or straightfoward. It must be more than that, it should be obvious.

Give Users What They Want, Not What You Want

An example of bad navigation

The screenshot on the left shows a classic example of how to turn your visitors away. It is from the Chippenham Town Council website. Visitors aren’t here to see flashy text welcoming you to the website. They are here for the content of the website. There are very few websites where a Flash intro works so make sure that using one adds something very significant to your website.

Reinventing the wheel is not necessary when designing your navigation. Creating a new, flashy, original navigation bar that nobody knows how to use is a sure fire way to have your visitors scrambling for the back button. Users know what to expect from navigation so don’t dissappoint them. They are familiar with terms such as “homepage”, “about us”, “view cart” and “contact us” so don’t be afraid to use them.

Use Consistent Navigation

Each page on your website should have a consistent navigation area. Once your users have become accustomed to how to navigate your website, changing this is suicide. Additionally, your logo should be a part of your navigation section. It should be in the same position on every page and it should always link back to your home page.

Remember that not all users enter your website from your home page. These days, search engines bring the majority of traffic for a lot of websites. People often link to specific pages via social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and Digg. If your website receives a surge of traffic to an “orphaned” page (i.e. a page with no navigation or links to any other pages) you are losing a lot of potential new visitors to your webisite who may have explored more of your site if only you had given them the chance.

Make Links Obvious and Descriptive

Website visitors have become accustomed to knowing what a link looks like. They expect link text to be underlined and a different colour to the rest of the text. You must be very careful if you deviate from this principle as you may confuse people. Users become very frustrated when underlined text appears to be a link, when in fact it isn’t.

“Click here” is, in my opinion, the most abused phrase on the whole Internet. A search on Google for “click here” yields 1.3 billion results. Unscientific I admit, but it certainly illustrates the point. Link text should be short and meaningful. This means it can be understood out of context and, perhaps more importantly, users will understand what is going to happen when they click the link.

Let Users Search For What They Need

For large sites where linking to every page is not possible, a search box is a must. Like your navigation area, the search box should be easy to locate, intuitive to use and present on the same place on every page of the website. A link to a search page is not good enough either. A small text box with a submit button labelled “search” is what you need. For accessibility, pressing return should take you to the results page.

Other Features To Consider

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are links that show where the user is on your website. It allows them to navigate up to different levels of your website and they know the context of the page they are on. Simply put, your visitors know where they are on your website. You can see a breacrumb trail at the top of each page on this website. Ideally a breadcrumb trail should be a the top of each page, but at the bottom may be useful too.

Sitemaps

There are two main forms of sitemaps, those designed for search engines and those designed for human visitors. Sitemaps for search engines list every page on your website that you want crawled by search engine spiders. They are just a guide and do not guarantee inclusion in the search engines. You can find more details on the sitemaps website.

Sitemaps for human visitors are an index of the main sections of your website so people can easily find what they want to on your site. If you have a large website listing every page is not necessary, but on a smaller website you should list all your pages.

Choosing a good host is essential

Whereas finding a domain registrar was relatively straight forward, finding a good web host can be very tricky indeed. Don’t let that put you off, however. There are many excellent web hosts around and it is just a case of finding one that suits your needs. There are many hosts out there and choosing the right one for your needs is important.

Paying for webhosting is essential for any website. Free hosting is avilable but is never recommended. Most put ads on your website and few will be able to deal with large ammounts of traffic. Additionally, when choosing paid hosting, try not to be swayed by offers such as inclusive domain names and free software. The actual value of these offers are never usually as much as having good, reliable hosting.

Where to Begin

First of all, draw up a list of your requirements:

• Disk space,
• Monthly bandwidth,
• Linux or Microsoft hosting,
• Programming languages supported: basic HTML, PHP, ASP etc,
• Website building tools and add-on scripts such as shopping cart, blog, bulletin boards,
• Monthly trial period or money back guarantee,
• Additional features such as databases, crontab access, SSL certificates.

Disk Space

Disk space is the space that your files take up on the server. Check whether the figure include database storage too. Bear in mind that any pages that are built dynamically on the server will gradually increase the disk space used. Each time your post on your blog or add a new product to your shopping cart, this will take up more space. Always ensure you have adequate space on your hosting plan. Adding on extra disk space will probably end up costing you more than simply upgrading to the next plan.

Monthly Bandwidth

People building websites for the first time are often confused by the concept of bandwidth. In the context of web hosting, it essentially means how much traffic your website can handle. Each time data is transferred on your website this uses up some of your bandwidth. For example, if 2,000 people access an image of 10KB, this will use up 2,000×10 = 20,000KB = 20MB of bandwidth. Hosting companies will give you many gigabytes of bandwidth, and you should take as much as you can.

How Much Bandwidth WIll I Need?

As you might expect, there is no straight forward way of telling. It depends on the average size of your pages, how large your images are and whether you offer any large files for download. For a very, very vague estimate try multiplying your monthly page views by your average page size. Since a change in your visitor numbers will affect your bandwidth, try multiplying your estimate by three just to be safe.

What Happens If I Exceed My Bandwidth?

If you ever see that your monthly bandwidth is getting near the maximum always apply for some extra bandwidth for the next month. A spike in visitor traffic will put you over your limit. Your hosting company will do one of two things if you exceed your allocated bandwidth:

1. Return a 509 Status Error:
   
2. Continue to serve up your website, but charge you for all the extra bandwidth.

Obviously, none of these are ideal. You don’t want your website to be inaccessible and you don’t want to be charged for extra bandwidth. These costs are often more expensive than choosing a more expensive hosting plan with increased bandwidth.

Linux or Microsoft Hosting?

Unless you need any specific Microsoft-only features, such as ASP, choose Linux hosting. Linux hosting is cheaper and more widely available.

Search For A Host

There are many great websites to search for your ideal webhost. Bear in mind that no website will list every webhost, so a good look around is well worth your time.

Here is a list of websites to start your search:

• FindMyHosting.com
• HostSearch
• Web Hosting Search

Be careful when using search websites. These are often affiliates of the hosts they are promoting. Always decide for yourself if a host is suitable, don’t rely on recommendations from these sites.

Case Study – WebCards

1and1 is pleased to offer a product range specifically for the UK

When looking for a web host for one of my projects, WebCards, one of the hosts I looked at was a very popular one, 1and1.

They have sites for UK and US customers separately.

When compiling the list of features, one of the special requirements I had was the use of the crontab. This is a feature that executes a command at a specified time. Looking at the 1and1.com US website, I found a package at a rate of $9.99 US per month, which is roughly £5 GB. This had the use of crontab and good bandwidth and disk space allowance. When I went to the order page I received the following message:

On visiting the UK website, I found the cheapest package that offered crontab access at £14.99 GB per month. This is roughly equivalent to $29 US. This is almost triple the cost of the package offered to their US customers. Incredibly, the US package also included more disk space and bandwidth.

So beware of companies that only offer specific packages to customers in certain countries.

Brand your site and grab your domain name

Choosing a domain name is tricky. If you are an established company your choice of domain names should be limited to something similar to your company name. Not only is this a good search engine optimisation strategy but it will make it easier for people to find your website if they know your company name. Ideally, people should be able to know what your site is about from the domain name. If you have spent time creating a brand name you should take advantage of this.

You should think about the offline world when you choose your domain name too. Not everybody communicates by email. If one of your visitors told his friends that he has just played the best online game at “great games dot com” would he be sending people to your website www.great-gamez.com or that of your competitor www.greatgames.com.
Remember to think about punctuation and spelling.

Should I Use .com or .net?

There is a lot of disagreement on how much effect the top level domain extension (or TLD, the .com, .net, .org, or .co.uk part) has on your website. It seems to be more of a trust factor rather than anything else. It is generally thought that search engines don’t rank a site based on the extension, but will give more authority to links with certain extensions. A website with a .gov extension will be more trusted than a .info website.

Basically, for a commercial site choose a .com, .co.uk, .com.au or the similar extension for your country.

Search For Your Chosen Domain

If you are not sure how to find out if your domain name is available, this guide will show you how to search.

DomainTools is the best place to go for your domain name searches. Find the site at www.domaintools.com.

DomainTools homepage

On the home page click “Domain Search” and enter your chose name.

Results of domain search

This image shows the results page.

The highlighted box on the left lists the domain you have searched for and some similar variations. The middle box shows whether each name is available. The DomainTools website currently lists .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .us extensions. The box on the right shows the key to the symbols used.
This is an excellent tool as it shows you whether a domain name is registered, and whether there is a site there or not, parked or redirected or on hold. If a domain name has been registered and there is no website residing there, the owner will usually be willing to sell it. Domain names are often registered in an attempt to make money from people who may be interested in using that domain name in the future.

A white circle means the domain name is available. A globe icon means the domain name has been registered and there is an active website at that location. A red circle with either a “P” icon or a white backslash means the domain has been registered but there is no active website there.

If your Domain is Available

You can register your domains directly from the site by clicking on the white circles for the names you wish to register. It is recommended that you keep a note of which domains are available and register them through your chosen registrar.

If your Domain is not Available

DomainTools gives you a list of related domain names below the one you have searched for. If any of these suggestions are suitable, make a note of them and register them through your chosen registrar. If you cannot find any suitable domains, it’s time for a rethink. Go back to the beginning and start searching for another domain.

Register Your Domain

It really is not an exaggeration to say that a good domain name is essential. But even choosing a suitable registrar can be tricky. Prices vary significantly, despite the fact that each company is offering the same basic service. ICANN maintains a list of accredited registrars on their website. Bear in mind that some organisations, such as Google, are accredited but do not offer a registration service. It is speculated that Google wants access to DNS information, but they have not been clear about what they plan to do. Unscrupulous companies will charge you a fortune for basic services such as forwarding your domain to another website or changing your email (DX) records. You also need to make sure that your host won’t steal your domain name when it expires without notifying you. Such examples are extreme, but they do happen.

Since you only need to renew your domain every year at most, going with a well known, established host such as the ones listed below is highly recommended.

Current Prices

The table above shows some of the best known registrars but there are thousands of companies. Don’t take the list to be a recommendation but shop around and see what is best for you.

Unscrupulous Practices

Domain Front Running

An issue that has become more significant in the last year is the issue of domain front running. This occurs when you are looking for a suitable domain name and somebody quickly registers all the domains you are searching for. This is usually performed by unscrupulous individuals who will then hold your domain “for ransom” until you pay for the privilege of taking back the domain. Network Solutions caused a storm when they were discovered to be “holding” domain names searched for on their website for five days. The domain name was available to register through Network Solutions, but other registrars showed it as registered. For this reason, when you are looking for available domain names, never search through a registrar. Always search from a command line tool or from a website dedicated to domain management, such as domaintools.com.

Domain Tasting

Domain tasting refers to registering a domain name and cancelling it within five days. This is ICANN’s “add grace period”, where the registrar can receive a full refund of their fees. The purpose of this practice, as you might suspect, is money. Somebody registers a domain, adds Google AdSense for Domains to the page and waits to see if it monetises. The process is repeated tens of thousands of times. Any domains that don’t make any money are cancelled within the five day grace period. This process is popular on domains similar to popular websites, often with simple spelling mistakes. ICANN is currently in the process of stopping domain tasting and hopes to have it implemented some time this year.

Domain Kiting

Another method for squeezing more money out of domains is the practice of domain kiting. A domain name is registered and monetised with Google Adsense. Before the five day grace period ends, the domain is cancelled and then re-registered, meaning it is never actually paid for. Google has recently stated that they will stop this practice by analysing if a domain has recently been deleted and re-registered. If this happens too often they will be banned from the program.