1. Make it easy for visitors to confirm the accuracy of your information
2. Show that your organization is legitimate by providing details (physical address, photos)
3. Highlight your expertise
4. Convey your trustworthiness
5. Make it easy for visitors to contact you
6. Use a consistent, professional design
7. Your site should be user-friendly and be useful
8. Keep your content updated
9. Use restraint with promotions
10. Avoid all errors (even spelling, broken links)

Adapted from the research of the Stanford University Web Credibility Project .

WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY SITE?

Many website owners contact us about problems with their current website. Typically, you won’t know what’s wrong because it takes years of experience of designing websites to spot website problem areas. Issues usually fall in one of the following components. Note that each component represents a specific skill set. One person or one design firm may excel in several of these components—if a firm has true expertise in all of these areas then they are probably very qualified to develop your website.

1. Ease of Use/User-friendly. How user-friendly is your website? Can visitors find information quickly and complete tasks easily.

2. Organization of Information (Information Architecture). This includes a large number of areas: site structure, information design, layout, and intuitive navigation are just four.

3. Consistency. Consistency is not a separate skill set but it is important for the credibility of your website. There are best practices and guidelines for developing a consistent website—typically taught in an academic institution.

4. Design. Your graphics should be developed by a professional graphic artist with a degree or expertise in "web graphics" (very different than print graphics). Designs by programmers or website designers without academic degrees or web expertise are typically not professional and will affect the credibility of your site.

5. Technology. Technology evolves very quickly on the web but there are always standards and best practices that should be followed. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) www.w3c.org establishes the standards for the web. Tim Berners-Lee, credited as the inventor of the Web, is the W3C Director. The W3C provides tools to website developers to test their pages and make sure their HTML and CSS code is valid. They also determine what is no longer acceptable on the web e.g. HTML <font> tags.

6. Content. Content is the most important part of your website; it should be descriptive (rather than fluff) and prioritized. It should also be formatted for the way visitors actually read on the web.
   • Gerry McGovern writes that many websites fail because the organization thinks they can install some fancy software (content management system) where junior people can just paste up any old content and presto—they’ll have a great website. They are not thinking about the quality and effectiveness of the content because the magic software does all that. Years later when they look at the problems with their website’s content they’ll wonder where it all went wrong. read more about Does Technology Make Managers Lazy

7. Search engine information. There are best practices for developing search engine information; not all website designers have the correct expertise in this area.

8. Accessibility. Accessibility for people with disabilities is required by law on all websites. An example of accessibility is text "behind" an image in the HTML code so a visually impaired person’s computer can read off the description of the image. Basic accessibility can be built into the website during development—so it takes less time to implement. Your site can be fined for not being accessible.

USER-FRIENDLY (Usability)

User-friendly websites are easy to use and intuitive. Your visitors should be able to find information and complete tasks (e.g. filling out a form) quickly and easily. No one want to have to figure out how to use a website—it’s supposed to be self-service. Research shows users prefer simple and distraction-free sites (non-flash).

OWN YOUR URL | DOMAIN NAME

You should register your url or domain name, www.YourOrganization.com, in your name or your organization’s name. Only a few trusted people should know where your domain name is registered and the user name and password. Anyone with this information will have the ability to transfer your domain name or take down your website.

Domain name (www.company.com) owners can protect their privacy (contact information) by purchasing whois privacy at $2/year.

DESIGNING FOR DIFFERENT BROWSERS, MONITORS, PCs AND MACs

Good website designers test the website during development—early stages and again later on—to make sure that the pages they build look identical on different browsers, monitors, and operating systems. Following website standards and implementing best practices should be the foundation of your website.

• Browser examples: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, the new Google Chrome, AOL
• Monitors settings vary from monitor to monitor
• Operating Systems: PCs and MACs

Websites should be developed so that visitors with a low monitor resolution (800 x 600) will be able to see all the graphics and text on the site with little or no horizontal scrolling. A monitor with a medium resolution (1024 x 768) will see more "space" on either side of the graphics and text—this can be white or colored space. A very high resolution (1280 x 1024) or even higher (1600 x 1200) will display a smaller website with even more space on either side.

Some websites with a lot of text are designed so that the text flows across most of the page (like this page).

Recent research indicates that website designers now need to consider designing for even higher monitor resolutions because of the use of large screen monitors.

CONTENT

Content is the heart of your website. Keep your users coming back by providing quality, updated content. Great graphics will not make up for poor content.

Writing good content for your site is crucial for credibility—make sure that updates contain the same quality content as the original content written during development. A website editor (with credentials) can determine what is good content for your site and where/how it should be displayed. A beautiful new site with good content can loose its quality quickly when untrained personnel add content haphazardly.

WEBSITE MAINTENANCE

If you have an HTML website that is updated by a professional webmaster or a website developer and they have quoted you $XX per month to maintain your site—consider a maintenance contract by the hour instead. Some websites may only take a few hours every month or two. If you are paying $500 per month and you only need a few hours of maintenance per month, then you are paying far too much. Additionally, you can ask if maintenance charges can be by the 1/4 hour rather than a minimum of 1/2 hour or 1 hour. Invoices should include dates and work performed so you can track your maintenance.

WRITING FOR THE WEB

Writing for the web is very different than writing for print. We need to be concise on the web. Low monitor resolutions makes it harder for us to read on the web and about 20% slower. Good web writing involves writing for how people search for information. They scan information until they find what they are looking for.

Many websites put up their print content in PDF or Word files; they are considered not user-friendly. Research shows that while PDF files may be good for printing, website visitors prefer to read HTML pages over PDF.

Web writing can also include information for search engines but this does not mean you should stuff your content with keywords.

HOW DOES FLASH AFFECT MY GOOGLE/SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS?

Websites that are built almost entirely of Flash are too complex for search engines to index; this can negatively affect your ranking in search engines.

The rule of thumb is to keep your Flash to a minimum so it does not distract your visitors. Also never use Flash in your buttons for navigating around the site. Flash typically creates accessibility issues for people with disabilities; accessibility is required for all websites by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Read article: www.webconfs.com/optimizing-flash-sites-article-14.php

EMAIL SCAMS AND POSTAL MAIL SOLICITATIONS TO RENEW YOUR DOMAIN NAME OR SUBMIT YOUR WEBSITE TO MULTIPLE SEARCH ENGINES

Report Scams

• Scams by phone: contact FTC, call 877-382-4357
• Scams by postal mail: contact US Postal Inspection Service, call 800-372-8347
• Scams through FAX: contact FCC, call 888-225-5322

When you register your domain name (www.companyname.com), your name, email address, and physical address become public knowledge unless you pay extra for a private registration. You may receive email notices or letters from websites saying that you need to renew your domain name—typically at a much higher price. These notices may appear to be from your own registrar. You can avoid spam and fraud by (1) privately registering your domain name and (2) finding out where your domain name is registered.

Companies that charge high prices to submit your website to hundreds of search engines are not legitimate. Experts in search engine optimization SEO will submit your website to the most important search engines—only a handful of search engines. Ask us if you need help.

See examples of domain scams.

Your actual registrar will send you an email notice once when it is time to renew your name. If your name expires—it is still possible to renew it within a certain time period.
One reputable registrar is www.godaddy.com (about $10/name).

WEBSITE HOSTING

Your website needs to be on server so that anyone can view it on the web. A server is simply a powerful computer. You will pay a monthly or yearly fee to have your website "hosted" on a server. It is important that you select a reputable hosting company that guarantees your website will be up (available on the web) for at least 99.5% of the time. No website is up 100% of the time - even Google and Yahoo are down occasionally. Website hosting fees have decreased over the years. Monthly fees for just HTML sites are approximately $10-$15. If you are being charged $35, make sure that you know what you are getting for the extra fee (monthly website statistics report, 24/7 emergency contact with a real person, etc.). If you have a good website designer they should set you up with reliable website hosting.
Ask us if you need help

You use a browser to view websites on the web (e.g. AOL, Internet Explorer, Firefox). Set your browser’s home page to your website. Then whenever you are surfing the web, you will see whether your website is up when you open your browser. However, note that this will increase the number of visitors to your site (your visit will be counted each time you open your browser).

Use caution with website hosting companies with very low monthly fees ($5). Reliability of your website hosting company takes priority over the cost of hosting.

Your hosting company or website design firm should NOT register your domain name, www.yourcompany.com . You need to own and register this in your own name (scroll down to OWN YOUR URL section below).

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Alert
We have heard that there is a company that is getting contact information from the web and contacting businesses and individuals about purchasing website hosting. They say they are a "Microsoft gold certified partner," however, this certification is not important for website hosting. They come to your place of business or your home and try to sell you website hosting for $400/year. A good national hosting company is currently around $125-$140/year. Professionals in the website business do not meet with you to sell you website hosting—a trusted website designer will typically set you up with good hosting.

Domain name (www.company.com) owners can protect their privacy (contact information) by purchasing whois privacy $2/year.

PRIORITIZING CONTENT

Placement of prioritized content is critical for your visitors—this skill set is typically learned in an information architecture class in an accredited academic institution.

READABILITY

Make sure your pages are easy to read. Research shows that the major activity on the web is reading. Your visitors won’t know if you have great content if they can’t read it. Some factors to consider to increase readability are font size and color, website background, white space, and alignment of text.

CONSISTENT, INTUITIVE NAVIGATION ON EVERY PAGE

One of the hardest parts of developing a website can be the navigation. Your visitors need a consistent navigation and they need to know when they click on a button what they will find on the page.

navigation	navigation that opens into subsections

ABOUT US AND CONTACT US PAGES

Research shows it is important to have an About Us page. Trust and credibility are major issues on the web—with good reason. Nielsen’s research shows that visitors want to know who are the real people behind the website and the history of the organization.
Usability Expert Jakob Nielsen’s research on About Us pages

The Contact Us page is one of the most requested pages on a website. If visitors cannot locate this page or there is no physical address or phone number they can call - they may question whether this is a legitimate organization.

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT CHANGE YOUR PAGE URLs/URIs

The creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, provides insights on file naming and compelling reasons why planning the name of your files and structure of the website (directories/folders) is critical.

From the W3C, the standards organization for the web: http://www.w3.org/TR/chips/#uri
" Tim Berners-Lee points out, When you change a URI on your server, you can never completely tell who will have links to the old URI [URL]. They might have made links from regular Web pages. They might have bookmarked your page. They might have scrawled the URI in the margin of a letter to a friend.." In other words, permanent links are good for your visitors; changes in your page names may result in "page not found" and loss of business."

BRANDING: IDENTITY AND LOGO

If you have a professionally created logo or identity, the design professional should provide you with separate high resolution images for web and print. They should also provide a written style guide for colors for print and web. Print colors use a different palette (pantone) and coated hues will print darker than uncoated. Without a style guide, your printer will have to approximate the colors and the materials could look much different than the original.
Logos on the web are typically located in the upper left corner where tracking studies show visitors first look. The Kilian logo is in a good location and is a good size.

IMAGES

Images should be prepared (optimized) for your website. Resolutions matter on the web.
Pictures A and B below look identical but Picture A is a high resolution print image that contains 2.5 times the number of kilobytes compared to Picture B, a low resolution web image. A web page with Picture A will take longer to load (view) than Picture B. Visitors like fast-loading sites. Keep load time to 10 seconds or less if possible; most visitors won’t wait 60 seconds for a website to load.

A. High resolution for print a whopping 29 kilobytes

B. Low resolution for web only 11 kilobytes

PREPARING YOUR SITE FOR SEARCH ENGINES

Search engine ranking is a very complex process. You may have heard about meta tags but that is only one piece of the puzzle.

Google’s guidelines say you don’t have to hire a SEO service:
"Don’t feel obligated to purchase a search engine optimization service. Some companies claim to ‘guarantee” high ranking for your site in Google’s search results. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site’s flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics in an attempt to fool search engines. Be careful; if your domain is affiliated with one of these deceptive services, it could be banned from our index." from Google

Article: Getting on Google’s front page http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2007/11/04/story27809.asp

There are companies that specialize in increasing your ranking. Read what Google says about search engine optimization (SEO) companies :
"What’s an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?"

Google advises research on SEO companies to avoid the following: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002002970_nwbizbriefs12.html

How people search
Typically, people searching for a dog grooming company will not be searching specifically for your company’s name, "Casey’s Dog Grooming." Searchers will search for the category of business, "Dog Grooming." It is easy to have your website come up in the top rankings in Google under your company name. What is more important, and much more difficult is to get a high ranking in your business category.

Basic search engine strategy:

• A surprisingly large number of websites have incorrect or missing search engine information in the HTML. Many website designers may not be familiar with the guidelines or best practices.
• Submit your website directly to the search engines that really matter (between 5 and 10).
• Write quality content.

Each search engine|index (Yahoo is an index) has their own formula for website ranking. Google, uses a complex algorithm for its PageRank system that tries to rank websites fairly.

You may have heard that all you need to do to improve your website ranking is have other sites link to your website (link popularity). Google only looks at CREDIBLE websites that link to your site. Web rings are NOT credible web links. Link popularity is only one factor in Google’s ranking.

MARKETING YOUR WEBSITE

Building a website is not the same as marketing it. Just submitting your website to search engines and providing search engine information typically will not provide enough exposure to sell a product unless you have a very specialized product/service or you have a highly recognizable name like Coke or Oprah. Marketing strategies will depend on the audience that you are trying to reach and could include advertising in trade journals, newsletters, in print materials or eBay, and pay per click on search engines.

ACCESSIBILITY FOR PEOPLE WITH LOW VISION / BLIND / DISABILITIES - Do I really need it?

Yes, accessibility is required for all websites. Priceline and Ramada Inn were fined about $40,000 for having sites that were difficult to use by blind people.

Minimal accessibility includes writing alt tags. You can see an alt tag in Internet Explorer by putting your mouse over an image and watching a text note pop up. Text readers (JAWS), used by people with disabilities will read all your text and your alt tags for images.

Following accessibility standards can be complex but many websites need only basic accessibility e.g.,

• Images need descriptive text in the code
• Never use the old technology, Frames
• Visitors should be able to increase the size of the text
• Text alternatives for multimedia

Not providing accessibility may cost you money:
Priceline.com and Ramada.com have agreed to make their Web pages easier to navigate for the blind and visually impaired as part of a settlement with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Federal agencies must follow Section 508, a stricter level of accessibility.

SCROLLING

Visitors are used to scrolling down a page (vertical scrolling). However, it is not user-friendly to scroll horizontally across the page. Build your pages so that your content is visible without scrolling horizontally.

PRIVACY POLICY

Websites that collect personal information should provide a privacy policy that includes:

• Information collected and how is it used
• Whether consumers’ information is shared with 3rd parties and whether they have a choice about how their information will be used
• Whether consumers have access to their personal information and whether they can correct errors
• What precautions are used to secure consumers' personal information

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