How to Improve Your Web Site Presentation

Of course this all depends on whether you have a web site at all. You really should get one if you want to have a real presence on the internet. If you have never tried to produce your own web site pages before, the most basic code in use is HTML, but more and more frequently XHTML and XML are replacing it.  You need to do a basic study of the codes in use about once a year to determine if you need to upgrade to the next level, especially if you want to make your site more easily accessible to viewers. I went into w3.org and looked up some improvements to the code, and found that I would have to radically alter both the header tags, including a clever new way to express the language used; and rearrange my style sheet so that I could use decorative type. The old coding was now far too simple to convey what I wanted, so I inserted the new elements and made up a master file from which to extract the coding in patches instead of typing everything over.

Also, I discovered that many of the sites I work with wanted a close approximation of a buy button for each product. In the case of books, this means I had to break up the pages so that each title had its own page. For Google Book Search, I renamed the html files with the ISBNs where possible, or used the exact or derivation of the title for those without. Each book has its own page with all the buy buttons for each format it is sold in, since I sell several different varieties of ebook format in addition to print. I hope readers are able to find the books through the regular search, and other search engines will not run into problems parsing the code. In theory these fixes make my site more accessible to different browsers, since all browsers assume the language to be UTF-8 unless stated otherwise. I code with ANSI text files, so this is a good way to break through the language barrier.

I also found out that I could return to my old coding habit of not expressing the primary URL by inserting a tag called in the head portion of the html file. This in effect anchors the subdirectories so that one needs only to put a foreward slash "/" before the subdirectory/html or image file designation, and "../" to go back. Also a coding timesaver, since I rarely have time to spend hours copy/pasting the URL all over the place.

Nothing will lose a viewer faster than a slow load [especially true if you have a lot of images on the page] or a hard to navigate site. I try to make all my pages load within ten seconds at the most. For example, I had a lot of drop and dangle earrings set up on one page. I added a few more, and before long the page loaded so slowly [an average of 25 to 120 seconds] that I was forced to break it up into three parts. Remember that images are packed with more data than the pages themselves, so each time your browser has to load a new image it has to "think" about it. This is why you see the page text and layout first and a bunch of "x"s where the images should be. The page should also scroll no more than two pages down, because many people will not scroll all the way to the bottom. If you want to avoid this, place the most important features of the site close to the top. For example, I have a table set up at the top of each page containing all the navigation links. I ! also insert the most important features of the book or product just under it. Anything else can be placed underneath, and those whose interest is caught will be willing to scroll down.

There is also new coding for creating outlines around images [including ovals] and also codes for manipulating text and images. To date I still have not figured out how to make text "wrap" around images but I imagine w3.com has it somewhere. But for now I use tables in abundance to arrange everything on a page so that the minimum amount of space is used. This also has to do with load time. I am also working on making my site audible to the sight-impaired, but that will take a little time and manipulation of code. I may add in descriptive patches for my book covers, perhaps tweak the descriptive blurbs a little, and the code will enable me to add small extracts to the site in text form without using .mp3 files to fill in. Even if they are compressed, mp3 files still take up a lot of bandwidth, so if you only have 5GB to work with you won't waste the space.

I do all this without adding a single bit of javascript. I have read everywhere that not all browsers support javascript, so in the interest of making the site easier to navigate I code only in XHTML. The embed codes for my videos, and the button forms for my shopping cart do not contain javascript. In fact, I have found javascript to be practically useless. So if you do not need to do anything special that requires javascript, I recommend you not use it. Remember that the rule for everything you do is "keep it simple", and that applies to your web site as well.

I have not talked about the arrangement of forms and features. I have seen many sites which employ extremely large type on a glaringly white background, and with patches of yellow. Avoid doing this. You want your site to be a pleasant experience for the viewer, not an attack on their eyeballs. I chose the colors I use because those are the colors I like, and as a reader myself I know which colors cause eyestrain and which catch attention better. I do not use yellow. Ever. Yellow is actually of higher contrast than white, but I also don't use white unless I have to. I also try to delineate between features, but I always express the table border in a lighter or darker color than the background so that people will not confuse item descriptions. I now use a shade of dark blue for a link and violet for the visited link against cool grey (silver). I will not discuss the actual coding here, but if you right-click on any site you can see the code they used in ! a separate window. Some conform to w3 requirements, and some are a mix of styles. The only way to see the code in its correct format is to visit w3.org for yourself. I highly recommend that you do so, as I think that self-education is the best way to learn anything, and if you are serious about your presentations and about marketing your books you will do the same.

About the Author

Theresa M. Moore has over 30 years of experience as a writer. She has an Associate in Arts degree, with a major in Accounting and a minor in Advertising Design. Her work reflects a love for imaginative and speculative fiction, ever with the mission to educate as well as entertain. In addition to works of fiction, Moore also has a keen interest in history, mythology and science, as well as a skeptical interest in the workings of pseudoscience.

http://www.antellus.com/