Posts Tagged ‘website’

Google announced a few months ago that Webpage load speed now has a small bearing on ranking in relation to SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) i.e. it is better to have faster loading Pages. There was quite a vocal reaction to this news by various Webmasters and Web designers.  Google, Bing and Yahoo have always maintained that the best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) activities are those that enhance the Site for visitors. The speed at which a Webpage loads is vitally important to Web-surfers. People don’t like to wait for Pages to load and are likely to visit an alternate and faster Site when experiencing slow Page load speeds.

As noted previously, and blogged by Matt Cutts, the influence on SERPs of speed is very small. The move to highlight the need to reduce page load speeds wherever possible should be welcomed by the average Web surfer who wants a better Online experience. Designers and Webmasters too should not fear the minuscule focus on speed as if they are good in their roles they will already be ensuring that image sizes aren’t unnecessarily large, video is compresses,  caching is enabled where appropriate etc. Minor Website amendments can result in significant speed gains so it is worth spending time consulting with tools such as Yahoo YSlow and Google Page Speed

Page load speed has been part of Google’s competitive advantage since its inception. Web page load speed can also be a competitive advantage for your Site.

Incoming search terms for this article:

• page speed site:eckstein id au

Related posts

• Google Announces new Ranking Factor
• 10 Steps – SPEED up your WebSite
• SEO Objective Setting

The objective of a business Website should be stated in business terms. All too often poor Website designers convince their clients that to get as many unique visitors as possible is the objective of any Website; But, just because many people visit a website doesn’t mean that that is good for the client. What matters is that the needs of the client are being served by their Website and this is usually best measured through defined objectives. For example, suppose I have a Website for my company that sells high price tractors. The primary objective of my Website may be to get two sales leads a week through the Website by visitors filling in the Online enquiry form. Getting several hundred Website visitors per day is largely irrelevant if those visitors aren’t looking to buy a tractor. If I’m getting three visits per day and this is resulting in two Online enquiries per week then my Website is a success. If however I’m getting hundreds of visits a day and none are resulting in sales then my Website is a waste of time and money.

This objective setting (and measurement) process is what often separates the good Website designers from the bad. Good Website designers try to understand their clients’ business objectives and model the Website to help in meeting those objectives. It takes experience, a service culture and business knowledge for the designer to understand and factor in these business objectives. Of course, designing a Website to meet the specific objectives of a client results in a more expensive Website. The investment in a Website however should be seen by clients as an income generating investment where a favourable Return on Investment (ROI) is necessary.  Ultimately you are going to get a better ROI by engaging a good designer that aims to make your Website meet your business objectives.

Related posts

• SEO Objective Setting
• WordPress Reliability with VaultPress
• Word Clouds (and a great Wordle tip)

There are some awesome image tools available on the Web of which many are free to use. More sites are using Word Clouds (also called Word Trees and Word Visualization) as sites such as Wordle become more popular. Below is a visualization created of my Home page with size indicating frequency of use. I can imagine that this sort of visualization may be very useful for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes (e.g. when analyzing competitors Websites using a visualization such as that below is a very simple means of determining the words used on a Webpage).

Wordle tip: Many people ask how to keep phrases and expressions intact with Wordle (i.e. how can words be kept together with Wordle?). Well all that needs be done is enter the ~ (tilde) character between words that need to be kept together e.g. enter Registered~Training~Organization to ensure that Wordle shows this term as a phrase rather than separating the words.

Related posts

• Speed up your Website to keep Visitors
• When to use PNG, GIF or JPG
• SEO Objective Setting

Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame has announced the (beta) release of VaultPress. WordPress and the guys from Automattic are well-known for their very reliable and simple to use software and services (they are responsible for Gravatar, Akismet, PollDaddy and other awesome and usually free Web software and services). VaultPress is likely to add another high quality service to their portfolio.

It’s very early days for VaultPress but here are the basics (not all details have been released by Automattic); Self hosted WordPress Sites may install and activate a VaultPress Plugin. The ValutPress service (WordPress interacts with ValutPress via the Plugin) costs U.S.$15 per month and will monitor the Website for security breaches, backup the database and files and will install security hot-patches automatically. The idea behind VaultPress is to enable high availability and secure self-hosted WordPress Sites with minimal administration and hassle.

This is a very smart move by Matt and the WordPress people; Automattic software is very solid and reliable and people will be happy to pay a nominal amount for added peace of mind.

Related posts

• ValutPress for WordPress gets Rolling
• Oracle likes MySQL – but why?
• Top 10 Free Software

Unfortunately no one image file type is best for all Website needs. The Image type used for images on your Website is dependent on numerous factors of which the prime are; image quality requirements, the content of the image, the number of colours and any size limitations. In general the aim is to have the best quality at the smallest file size; quality is obviously important from the visitor and branding angle whereas size is critical from a load-time and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective. The three image filetypes which all newer browsers handle and which are best for Web image rendering are Portable Network Graphics (.png), Graphics Interchange Format (.gif) and Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg and .jpeg). Bitmap (.bmp) should never be used due to its large file sizes produced. This article is concerned with how to choose the best image format for images on your Website (There are numerous non-format factors which are important is attaining the best quality with the smallest filesize such as ensuring that the dimensions of the image are appropriate however these are not covered in this article).

Which Image File-Type to Use

PNG

PNG has excellent compression, a wide range of transparency and excellent interlacing. PNG was introduced as a replacement for GIF and supports more colours and greater compression among other advancements. PNG does not itself support animation as GIF does and can produce larger file sizes than GIF with limited colour images. PNG provides excellent quality for line art and text images conversely is seldom a better choice than JPG for photographs producing significantly larger filesizes.

GIF

GIF is well suited to blocks of solid colour, line art and text with limited colour and sharp edges. The GIF format was introduced prior to PNG and like PNG is not suitable for photographs. In most situations PNG is preferable to GIF due to the formers greater compression and PNG having a far greater range of usable colours. GIF however does produce smaller file sizes with comparable quality compared to PNG in some situations (such as solid blocks of colour) and is able to render small sized animations.

JPG / JPEG

JPG is best used for photographs and has become the most widely used format for digital photography. JPEG is good with smooth transition of colour such as paintings and photos however is not ideal for situations where multiple edits of the image is required (as JPG loses data every time it is edited). Web images are seldom edited multiple times therefore the lossy characteristics are unlikely to be a deciding factor for Web usage. JPG produces inferior quality images with a larger filesize for line art, text and images with sharp lines such as many logos (PNG and GIF are usually better for these images).

Examples

The examples below illustrate when it may be best to use a particular image format:

Line Art and Text

For line art and text, PNG and GIF will give a smaller filesize with better quality than JPG. The first two columns of the example show that occasionally PNG gives a smaller filesize than GIF and vice-versa.

Photographs

For photos it is almost always preferable to use JPG due to it’s superior photo quality rendering and better compression.

Summary

• For Photographs and highly detailed images use JPG.
• For text, logos and line-art use PNG or GIF.

All newer internet Browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer etc.) fully support all three image filetypes. As there is not speed or quality penalty for using multiple image filetypes on a Webpage it is recommended to use the image type most appropriate to give the best quality at the smallest file size.

Related posts

• Speed up your Website to keep Visitors
• SEO Objective Setting
• Word Clouds (and a great Wordle tip)