Exit tutorial
 Web Design - Good and Bad Practice |
| Part Four |
| Some Ways To Generate Repeat
Visits To Your Site
Make it large enough to require more than one visit to view the entire site. But make it easy to remember what the visitor has already seen. Change your site often. But make it easy for the visitor to figure out what was changed, and when. Make your site a source of reference material - a list, an index, a database. Perhaps allowing the user to search it for a particular topic or item. Make your site the authoritative source on a particular subject. In The World Of The Web, Every Visitor Is Different Remember that there are great variations in the computer platform, display setup, processor and disk speed, connection speed, and the particular browser software being used by each individual visitor to your web site. And the visitors themselves will be different, in every conceivable way. Don't assume that every visitor to your site has the latest hardware and software, a super-speed connection to the Internet, and the eyesight and reflexes of a fifteen year old. There will be a great variation in how your site looks to different users if you rely on fancy HTML tricks and commands. There will be a great variation in how your site looks to different users even if you don't use fancy HTML tricks and commands. You have to decide whether the goal of your site is to impress the "in crowd" with your technical razzle-dazzle, or to make it a site for the enjoyment of everyone. (Note: the "in crowd" is usually very small.) Don't create a site that only a small percentage of your visitors can view properly. As a result of heavy Internet traffic, web pages bloated with gratuitous graphics, older hardware or software, a fair number of folks are surfing the web with the graphics turned off in their browsers. What does your site look like without its graphics? You are going to lose a lot of points if you mention Netscape (or Microsoft), in any way, on the first page that your visitors see. (Unless of course, you're a Netscape employee.) This includes describing your site as "Netscape-enhanced," telling your visitors that your site is only presentable if they have the latest version of Netscape, or pointing to a site where they can download the latest version of Netscape. Think of the message that it sends about you and your site. How does your site look with Lynx? Try it and you'll see how your site looks with a text-only viewer. This may be the only viewer that a Unix user will have, especially in foreign countries. If your site is mainly informational, don't deny access to these potential visitors. And you had better prepare yourself for the invasion of the surfers who will reach your site through add-ons to their TV set, cable box, or plug-in for their game playing machine. These new widgets will have limited capabilities, very much like the earlier versions of the more popular browsers. The major online services have well over 10 million paying customers. Very soon, most of them will have web browsers, but they won't be the very, very latest version of Netscape. Your pages may look very strange to them. The people with money to spend do not have time to fool with getting a SLIP or PPP connection running. And they don't have time to get and tune the latest version of Netscape (when they hear the word "upgrade," they most likely think of moving to the First Class section). They will most likely be using browsers that are integrated into a full-featured online service that provides a single package with news, stock portfolio tracking, and a seamless interface to the Internet and the web. The real point is that if you have a commercial web site, you can keep Netscape around for testing, but make sure it also works with whatever browser is provided by AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy. |