How's your website, then?

I'm not asking whether it's a good site or not, but what its performance is like. Is it slow to load? Does it have problems with certain web browsers? Occasionally you'll find that code working perfectly on, say Internet Explorer, doesn't work with Firefox. And vice-versa. Any coding problems?

How should I know? Who... who cares? I hear you ask.

Because it's important. You only have seconds -- tenths of seconds, even -- to make an impression on people who come to your site. If the site isn't working, has dead links or some old code that doesn't work and leaves the site with blank areas, you can bet your life those lovely, potential customers will click away at the drop of a pixel. And more than likely they'll be clicking away to the welcoming site of one of your competitors.

Wake up and smell the Mugicha! After reading this post you no longer have any excuses for not knowing. There's a website I often turn to when I want to see how my own site is doing, performance-wise. It makes for uncomfortable reading sometimes, because it doesn't hesitate to tell me stuff I don't particular want to hear -- the site's too heavy, too many images, too many elements, you've failed at life, you're a bad, bad person... et depressing cetera. But it's well worth it.

I have no connection whatsoever with the owners of the site and this isn't an affiliate link, so click in confidence. Here it is:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Put in the full address of your website and have a look at what it says. Pretty eye-opening stuff, eh? You didn't realise it was that bad, did you?!

I'm not particularly interested in contacting the owners of the site to ask for their optimization services, but the results I get when I check my site are very interesting. Useful, too. Oh, and completely free. Check it out.

Web site builders are online tools which anyone can use to build a professional looking Web site without programming and have it hosted instantly. No software to buy, no code to learn, all you need is to be a little Internet savvy and know how to click your mouse.

Most business owners today know that having a web site is an essential component of marketing. In the past, the choices were to hire a professional web designer, hire a local teenager to create a site for mall money, or learn to do it yourself. Often the last two options, which were the least expensive, were how small businesses had to go. The results are often not what businesses need to grow, reach, and impress new potential customers.

If you operate, manage or are the owner of a business, you surely must realize the increase in e-commerce taking place today. Many businesses find themselves searching for the best way to increase their exposure on the internet, and for most a website is the first course of action. As most businesses operate on firm budgets, finding cost effective solutions are usually one of the first thoughts when looking to make new purchases. When it comes to creating a website there are many affordable software programs that can produce professional results. Business software should be capable of handling your needs today and in the future. Business are always changing, adding new products, changing or removing old products, offering specials, having sales, etc. By choosing a business website builder over a professional web designer you will be able to make changes to your website whenever you want to. Another benefit is that you will be avoiding the high costs associated with developing the website and costs for making any necessary changes.

Website Builder tools advantages to you are increased revenue, cost control, caters to the large demand existing for web designing in the SME sector and can increase the client base without adding to your overhead. The advantage that your customers gets is a professional quality website, up and running in minutes and a User friendly and easily customizable interfaces and gives a complete website with all its frills and features and Sleek and attractive professional designs.

As more and more people are starting their own small/home business many are finding that having a website is an important factor to consider. When one starts to consider building a website, especially the novice, many questions arise including.... can I create a website myself or should I hire a professional?

Hiring a professional is a great way to go if you can afford to. Although there are several things to keep in mind: how much will it cost; how much will ongoing maintenance cost; what will changes cost; how long will changes take, etc. As a result, many people opt to build their own website and begin searching for software that can easily help them.

As you start searching for an easy web site builder, there are some factors that you should take into consideration so that your new software will serve you now and the future.

One of the first things to consider is your computer ability. If you despise computers and software and find them confusing and frustrating then building your own website can be quite a task, one that you may not want to finish. However, if you enjoy working with computers and learning new things or if you just have the patience to stick with it, then building a website is within your grasp. If you still feel that you want to build your own site you should choose software that is easy to use and user friendly.

There is quite a variety of easy web site building software on the market today. In addition, some of the software available today is very expensive, geared more for the professional web designer, and come with a huge learning curve.

A very important factor to consider, one that will vastly improve the ease of the program, is whether or not it includes a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG stands for "what you see is what you get" and if you purchase a product with this feature you will be creating your website in an environment similar to a word processor - so if you are comfortable using a word processor creating a website shouldn't be too much for you.

In the past, the options for small businesses to get a site developed have changed dramatically. There are now sophisticated "site builder" tools available to small business owners, bundled with many web hosting packages. By using templates, and a content management system to manage updates to the site, it became easier to set up and maintain a web site, and many development companies have canned this functionality, for a fee. Hosting providers are increasingly offering tools to automate the web site building process, and with good reason. This new option has many benefits, as long as the business owner recognizes that there are trade offs and limitations to getting a web site this way.

One of the biggest attractions for site building tools is the cost. It won't necessarily cost less to get your site this way, but it does provide a way to spread the cost over time.

Many people are concerned with building their own website, fearing boring designs and complexity. However, it is now becoming apparent that there are many custom web site builder software products on the market that promise dynamic layouts, professional templates, and user friendly web design tools. The professional web designers know there are a few more things to know, but sometimes they find some irony in the fact that web developers, in their quest to improve and better the web, have made themselves "optional". Most site building tools today are very robust, making it simple to add forms, searching, maps, guest books, calendars, and a whole variety of elements to a web site. Even better, the hosting company sometimes offers an entire suite of services - the site builder, email marketing, search engine optimization and statistics, all in one package along with the hosting.

So, why would anyone hire a professional? First, the site building tools, though increasingly robust, often lack in design and layout flexibility. For example, they might depend on a standard layout that has a banner across the top, menu down the side. If you want to have your navigation across the top and perhaps a sub banner under it, you might not have that option. Many businesses have already outgrown their first or second site, and want something customized to their business. Since all site builders differ, it is possible that you could want features and functionality within your site which is not available within the system. Still, some site builders support development languages like PHP, making it possible to customize the site with the help of a programmer. Some site builders include ecommerce, but they do not all do it the same way. A few utilize PayPal® - but not credit cards. Some use a proprietary payment processing service and won't accommodate anything else. The bottom line is that it is important to look at sites that were built using the tool you're considering and research all of the features that are included; to be sure that everything you want to do is possible.

There is also a possibility that the service will require you to keep some branding on the site telling people that you used their tool. This is more common with the free site builders - which pay for themselves by putting ads on your site. If your goal is to build a business web site, it's really not worth sacrificing your professional image by getting something free, which screams CHEAP.

A tool can make things happen - but if you don't know what to make happen, it is either a useless tool or a dangerous one. There is a learning curve to knowing how to present information online (called information architecture in the profession), as well as for using the site builder. In other word, the fuller featured the tool; the more there is to learn. If you aren't familiar with color theory, use of typography, information architecture, navigation and interface design, page layout and design, you can potentially make something that will hurt your business more than help it. So, unless you are already computer and web savvy, figuring out all the features within your web hosting and site builder package can be time consuming and frustrating.

Fortunately, there are ways that a small business can take advantage of these new options and still create a functional and professional web site. One way is simply to take the time to research the available tools, and find the one that has the most features and flexibility, meeting your functional requirements. In other words, spend the time to learn the things a seasoned pro would bring to the table. The internet is a massive library of "how to" information, where you can literally teach yourself anything - and with enough time spent, you could potentially learn how to layout information, what colors and fonts work well together, how to conduct your marketing online and optimize the site for search engines.

Another approach would be to hire a professional designer simply to get you "off the ground" by handling the administrative set up of your new site package, creating the look of the site and developing the initial structure. That person could also teach you how to manage the content and make changes by yourself going forward. This middle ground approach ensures that your site benefits your business and makes a good impression. Depending on whether you use an editing tool or a site builder, you may still be able to take advantage of "pay as you go" pricing and the easy content management features of a site builder.

The first step for a small business owner thinking about having a web site needs to be an honest assessment of how much time, money, talent, patience and computer savvy he or she has, with a clear understanding of the available options. Once this is determined, any small business which needs to be online can be.

In addition, most dynamic website building software programs incorporate other useful tools that aid in the construction of a impressive site layout. Many programs include an html editor, text editor, and a WYSIWYG editor, making it easy for the novice or professional to achieve great results. There are many important factors to consider when purchasing an html editor / website builder. On of the most important benefits, in my opinion, is selecting software that can handle your ever growing business, today and in the future.

Page titles

To help obtain high page rankings with search engines, the contents of your page title are one of the most important things that need to be dealt with. The page title is the first amount of information provided to a search engine describing the contents of the page. You should also be aware that the page title provides information about the contents not only to search engines, but to visitors as well. The page title will show up at the top of the browser window. Your page title should include your keywords and should be no longer than 60 characters long. If it is too long, your visitor will only see the first part. An easy way to figure out the length of a page title is to type it into a word processor that contains a word count feature. Since your page title needs to be a certain length, it is important to make the best use of the space, and although some words that are not key, will use up that valuable space, the title itself still needs to make sense. A keyword in your title can be repeated, but having the same words more than two times is not recommended. Compare your page title to others and see what makes their content look appealing enough to catch a potential visitor's eyes. Your page title needs to stand out between the other nine titles on the search engine results page. As you design your site, remember the fact that visitors may be directed to somewhere other than the homepage because the search engine believes it is the best match for a keyword. With this in mind, all pages of your website should be considered unique and have their own title.

Meta tags

For your site to be effective, you need to develop Meta tags. These tags are a site description and a keyword list. It is important to note that not all search engines use these Meta tags. Starting with your home page, you will need to insert two Meta tags. The first is a Meta description sentence and the second is a Meta keyword list. The information you put here is for search engines to use when they review your site. This review process is known as crawling and is done with a program called a spider or robot. The description tag serves two purposes. The spiders search it for keywords and it is also displayed to a surfer as they view search engine results. The information obtained by the spiders is kept in a database that is used when a person types in a query to a search engine. When you create your Meta keyword list, order them from the most relevant to the least. The first part of your list should contain the keywords that best describe your site and are unique enough that when someone does a search, there is not a large amount of competition to go up against. Make sure that all the keywords used in the description tags are again listed. The words at the end of your list are known as wildcards and include synonyms and words that could have been spelled wrong when someone was doing a search. During your Meta tag creation process, do not be afraid to go to other people's websites and see what they have used. Type in the same words you would like to include in your lists and see what the search engines display. This is a very good way to help determine your competition.