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Birds Eye View of HTTP
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Small Business Q & A: Does Your Website Induce Seizures?
Q: We promote our web site in all our ad campaigns, but according to my website statistics program, we are getting very few visitors who click past the first page. The site has a cool Flash intro page that the designer said would impress visitors, but it doesn't seem to be working. What can we do to get people to spend more time on the site? -- Christopher O.
A: The first thing you should do, Christopher, is find that designer and beat the living Flash out of him. It won't increase the time visitors spend on your website, but it will make you feel better after you've read this column.
What your designer thought would appeal to visitors is probably the very thing that is driving them away. A Flash introduction page (Macromedia Flash is a software program used to create animations for Web pages) may seem "cool" to you, but from a website visitor's point of view, they can be about as appealing as sitting in the front row of a Pokemon movie with four hundred screaming six year olds (and here comes the segue, folks).
In December, 1997, during an episode of Pokemon, the popular Japanese TV cartoon that has spawned everything from movies to action figures to lunch boxes, a scene featured a rocket explosion that flashed red and blue lights in rapid succession. After the episode, over 600 children were taken to hospitals complaining of seizures, blurred vision, headaches, dizziness, and nausea. Any adult who has ever been exposed to Pokemon for more than two seconds can understand the nausea, but the seizures at first baffled doctors. Scientists ultimately came to attribute the mass reaction to "photosensitive seizures," which are brought on by exposure to certain visual stimuli like rapidly flashing lights on a TV screen. Remember when your mom told you not to sit so close to the TV or you'd ruin your eyes? Turns out she knew what she was talking about. Who knew?
The event caused such concern that Japanese broadcasters and health officials met to discuss ways to prevent future occurrences of bad-cartoon induced illnesses. They established guidelines for the broadcast of flashing images: no image may flicker faster than three times per second; flashing images should be displayed for no more than two seconds; and stripes, whorls, and concentric circles should not take up the largest portion of a TV screen.
It's my humble opinion that these rules should apply to websites as well. I've been in the Internet design business for nearly a decade and I have been witness to numerous websites that could induce photosensitive seizures in blind moles. It sounds like your website might be suffering from a similar ailment.
If visitor's are not clicking past your fancy Flash intro page, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that therein lies your problem. Remove the Flash intro page for a few weeks to see if your website's click-through rate improves and the number of page views increase. "Click-through rate" refers to the number of visitors who click links on your homepage to go
deeper into your site. "Page views" refers to the overall number of web pages that were viewed by visitors. If click-through and page view rates improve, you'll know that the Flash intro was your problem.
Here are a few other things you can do to make sure your site offers visitors a pleasant - and seizure free - browsing experience.
Sit In The Visitor's Chair The best way to make sure your website is as user friendly as it can be, is to sit down at a computer and approach your site from a typical visitor's point of view. Try to imagine that you are seeing the site for the first time. If you are unable to do this, have a friend who has never seen the site click around and offer comments while you take notes.
Have your friend assess the following points: Is the site appealing to the eye? Are the colors pleasing and complimentary? Is the site easy to navigate? Are the topical categories and subcategories in logical order? Is it easy to find what you're looking for? Does the site have a search engine to make finding things easier? Is every feature of the site less than two or three clicks away? If the answer to any or all of these points is no, you have some work to do.
Don't Dictate Technology One sure fire way to repel web site visitors is to require that they have special browser plug-ins or 3rd party add-on browser software installed to view your site. Dictating that the user download and install software is not your place and users will resent you (and your business) for it. Visiting your site should be an effortless pleasure, not a technological chore.
Don't Make Them Wait If your homepage takes longer than 20 seconds to download (appear in the visitor's browser) you are losing visitors, period. Gratuitous animation, large graphics, poorly formatted HTML, bad page layout, and a number of other factors can increase download time. You might have the greatest web site in the world, but if it takes ten minutes to download no one will ever see it.
The lessons to be learned, then, are threefold. One: a website should be designed to satisfy the visitor's needs, not to pacify the site designer's ego.
Two: visitors to a business website are not there to be awed and entertained. They are there looking for information, and unless you give it to them quickly and effortlessly, they will go elsewhere to get it.
And Three: for better mental and physical health avoid Pokemon at all costs.
Here's to your success.
Tim Knox tim@dropshipwholesale.net For information on starting your own online or eBay business, visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
About the Author
Tim Knox as the president and CEO of two successful technology companies: B2Secure Inc., a Web-based hiring management software company; and Digital Graphiti Inc., a software development company. Tim is also the founder of dropshipwholesale.net, an ebusiness dedicated to the success of online entrepreneurs. http://www.dropshipwholesale.net http://www.smallbusinessqa.com
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Tucows Downloads - Download Freeware and Shareware Software |
Download freeware, shareware, and demos. Maintains over 45000 software titles that are tested, rated, reviewed and ready to download. |
www.tucows.com |
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Free Software Downloads and Software Reviews - Download.com |
Download shareware, freeware and Demo software for PC, Mac, Linux, and Handhelds categorized into categories, plus software reviews. |
www.download.com |
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Computer software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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en.wikipedia.org |
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Shareware.com - Search for shareware programs and free software ... |
Search for shareware programs from more than a dozen downloadable software directories. |
www.shareware.com |
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Jumbo: Free & Shareware MP3 files, Games, Screen Savers & Computer ... |
Source of free and shareware computer programs and utilities for PC and Mac. Evaluate software and read product reviews. Download games and screen savers. |
www.jumbo.com |
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Computer Software in the Yahoo! Directory |
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dir.yahoo.com |
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IEEE Software |
IEEE Computer Society's magazine covering all aspects of software, including software engineering. |
www.computer.org |
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Free Downloads on ZDNet | Shareware, Trialware, Evaluation Software |
ZDNet's Software Directory is the Web's largest library of software downloads. Covering software for Windows, Mac, and Mobile systems, ZDNet's Software ... |
downloads.zdnet.com |
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FSF - The Free Software Foundation |
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Apple - Software |
Software products for your digital life. ... The perfect addition for professional review. QuickTime Broadcaster. Encoding software for live events. ... |
www.apple.com |
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Open Directory - Computers: Software |
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dmoz.org |
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freshmeat.net: Welcome to freshmeat.net |
About: The Web browser is probably the most frequently used software today, ... Web professionals can use the software for functional testing and regression ... |
freshmeat.net |
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Software - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF) |
Listing of the GNU software packages. |
www.gnu.org |
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Sun Software |
Get enterprise-class software--Solaris 10 OS, the Java Enterprise System, ... Sun Java StorageTek Software reduces cost and complexity with a single, ... |
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Internet Real Estate.com -- owns and operates a portfolio of the ... |
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Joel on Software |
A weblog by Joel Spolsky, a programmer working in New York City, about software and software companies. |
www.joelonsoftware.com |
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Amazon.com Software: Computer & video games, business, accounting ... |
Online shopping for computer & video games, business & office productivity software, software from Microsoft, Apple, Adobe & more; accounting, antivirus, ... |
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IBM Software - Home Page |
IBM home page for all of its software products, including Lotus and Tivoli, with keyword search, category browse and AZ product names. |
www.ibm.com |
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Opera web browser: Homepage |
Copyright © 2006 Opera Software ASA. All rights reserved. Skip navigation. Opera Software ... Copyright Opera Software ASA . All rights reserved. ... |
www.opera.com |
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Google Directory - Computers > Software |
Search only in Software Search the Web ... Software Categorized by Letter: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ... |
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