June 16, 2004
In
This Issue:
1. Common Practices in Web Design
2. In the News - Yahoo counters Gmail
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - Building a Better Site Menu
5. Wrapping It Up
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Common Practices in Web Design
In the world of web design, there are very few rules. (There
are lots of opinions, but few rules!) As a web user, you know there
are many different ways to build a web site, and you probably like
some better than others. For example, you may prefer Amazon's tabbed
menu navigation at the top of their site over another online store
that offers navigation down the left side of the screen.
Whether you're a business owner or a web developer, when it comes
time to design (or redesign) a web site, you'll have to decide
things like what style of navigation to use and where to place
it; how to classify the products and/or services you offer (also
known as "information architecture"); how wide to develop
your pages, and so on. These are the primary "design practices" of
site development, and your decisions will have a great impact on
how user-friendly your finished site is. A user-friendly site is
bound to be more successful than a hard-to-use competing site.
I write all this to point you toward an interesting web site
called Web Design Practices developed by Heidi Adkisson of Seattle's
Blink
Interactive Architects. It's a site "devoted to helping designers
understand what design practices are currently in use on the Web
-- and aims to gather research about the usability of commonly-employed
design practices."
WDP aims to reveal what practices are being used most commonly
on the web. The data, at this point, is focused on e-commerce
sites, but can inform web site owners outside the e-commerce
arena, too.
You can learn, for example, that of 75 e-commerce sites studied,
89% put their global navigation (i.e., their main menu) at the
top of the page, and only 11% put it on the left side of the
page. You can learn what percentage of sites rely on HTML text
links
for main navigation (as opposed to graphical buttons), and similar
things about basic design elements.
As Heidi writes on the site, "common practice does not necessarily
equate with best practice." WDP won't tell you what's right
for your site and your customers, but it will help you learn what
other sites are doing so you can make better decisions about your
own web site.
Web Design Practices
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In The News
Yahoo! countered Google's Gmail service this week with an upgrade
of its own email offerings, including doubling the storage space
Gmail offers -- but at a price. While the free Gmail service includes
1GB of storage for your email, Yahoo's premium service will now
include 2GB of storage for $19.99 per month. Yahoo's free email
was also upgraded, but still offers only 100mb of storage -- one-tenth
what Gmail offers.
The email battle is just one aspect of the larger overall war
Google and Yahoo are waging -- a fight that Microsoft is expected
to enter
soon with the launch of its own search engine. Microsoft, of
course, offers free email via its Hotmail service. These email
services
are considered important by search engines because they're a
way to create user loyalty. More email users means (theoretically)
more users for your search engine ... and that, in turn, means
more people seeing the paid ads on your search results pages
...
which means more advertisers wanting to spend money. So, all
of the search engines will continue to offer services that attract
users and keep them. Yahoo and Microsoft are way ahead in this
game, and Google is trying to catch up. Gmail is one step in
that
direction, and you can be sure there will be more to come.
The question of how successful Google will be as it tries to
diversify its offerings and create stronger relationships with
its users
is one that many people are discussing and debating now. S&P
analyst Scott Kessler wrote this last week:
"Although we foresee a successful near-term future for
Google, we aren't as convinced as some other observers about
its long-term
prospects as it ventures beyond its core competency of search
--
and faces increasing competition."
Here's the full article with Kessler's comments:
Google: What lies beyond search?
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More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Are blogs ready for prime-time?
June 16, 2004 - eMarketer
Far from being young kids with little money in their pockets
and lots of time on their hands, the survey found that blog readers
are older and richer than many people suppose.
Is your search marketing campaign lopsided?
June 14, 2004 - ClickZ.com
SEM campaigns must target both the natural and paid components
of the search results page to reach the entire search engine
user audience.
The art and science of an effective link building campaign
June 09, 2004 - Search Engine Watch
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
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This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
We're working on a structure for our web site and we know what
content we want to include, but the sections of the site will
be pretty diverse with a variety of content under each main section.
Does it matter what names we use for each section of the site?
Is it okay to have one page about both our Products and Services
and just call the link "Products and Services", or
is that too long?
Patricia
Hi Patricia -- Whether or not it's too long really depends on
how much space your design allows for each link in your main
site navigation
menu. Only you can answer that as you work on the design. But,
to answer the other question in your email -- Yes, it definitely
does matter what names you use for your links.
Google, in particular, is very big on analyzing links and the
names of links. The name of a link is called the "anchor text".
Google believes that the anchor text of a link is a strong indication
of what the page the link points to is about. So, if you link to
your Products and Services page with the phrase "Products & Services",
you're telling Google the page is about "Products & Services".
That may be accurate and even user-friendly, but there's a more
search engine-friendly way to do it.
Here's how: Be as descriptive and precise as you can. In your
case, I would separate Products and Services. Give each its own
page
in your web site structure. Then, in your menu of links, refer
to the Products page as "Blue Widgets" (I'm using a generic
example since I don't know what your business is.) and your Services
page as "Widget Repair" (or whatever your exact service
is). Your customers won't do a Google search for the phrase "Products & Services",
but they might search for "blue widgets" or "widget
repair". Be as specific as you can so you can tell the search
engines what each page on your site is about, and match your page
names and content to the terms people use when searching. (Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
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Wrapping it Up
Thanks for the feedback on last week's mini-article about page
titles, glad to hear it was helpful. We'll keep doing more pieces
like that in upcoming newsletters about the basics of building
better user-friendly and SE-friendly web sites. I think the Q&A
above fits in with that theme, and maybe we'll expand on ways to
build a better site navigation menu in a future newsletter. As
always, don't hesitate to send in questions or ideas.
See you next week! Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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