Search Engine Optimization SEO Blog » Web Design

Are your visitors Viewers, Readers, or Users?

Joseph Scott — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:09:48 +0000

Do you know the profile of your website visitors? Regular website statistics can provide a lot of information in regard to who is visiting your site. Unfortunately business owners do not have time to give these statistics a proper analysis. This is an essential part of determining exactly who is on your site and how to profit from it. Not knowing can cost you big dollars. It is absolutely critical to have a professional give a true evaluation and determine which way to shift or change the website based on the stats. With all of this taken into consideration it is apparent that hiring a professional web analytics company to gain true perspective on your visitors is a must for any serious business.

Below I have given some insight as to the three categories of web visitors. The dollar signs represent what type of revenue you can expect from each visitor type:

Type 1: The Viewer $ - The viewer type is primarily on the web to be entertained. They like Flash elements, animations, shiny colors, and overall graphic and audio driven sites as appose to text. The viewer type make the fewest online purchases.

Type 2: The Reader $$ - The reader type is more only online to read blogs, articles, forums, and magazine or book like sites. In other words they are using it for free reading material. Reader type visitors do have a higher online purchase rate than the viewer type however, it is unlikely that their purchases will cover your business costs.

Type 3: The User $$$ - The user type should be any business's target market. These users prefer mostly text based, fast loading, direct to the point sites. They want to move through a linear purchase process and find there desired information, product, or service quickly and easily. Any distracting Flash, graphics, unwanted ads, and such will drive this user from your site in an instant and they will never return.

It is possible with traditional web statistics and a professional evaluation of them to develop a primarily user type of visitor profile or audience on your website. For more information call Magnetiks @ (281)362-9855 or visit us at our main site: Magnetiks Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Friendly Flash???

Joseph Scott — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:41:44 +0000

For myself, Flash is a great tool. I am more the "viewer" catagory of website visitor. I love the intensive graphically enhanced sites that have the wow factor integrated. Cool intros, visually stunning headers with slick motion graphics and so on.The big problem with these Flash elements is that currently there are only a few solid ways to have Flash movies indexed by the search engines. Eveything that would normally be indexable is "locked away" in the Flash movie.

There are a few tricks that are emerging that can help solve this problem. While doing some research on this topic I came across a neat way to incorporate seemingly search engine friendly Flash navigation into any webpage. I hope this is somewhat helpful for those who are Flash advocates and plan to continue using it for web projects. Here are some quick tips from for overall good SEO Flash Design.

Key Factors For SEO Flash Design:
+ Clean design
+ Search Engine Optimization
+ Accessibility for a wide variety of browsers, including screen readers and mobile phones
+ Code validation and standards compliance
+ Correct functionality with IE

Follow the link below on tips for SEO friendly Flash:

CLICK HERE FOR SEO FRIENDLY FLASH TIPS

Design Tips - Web Page Layout

Joseph Scott — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:02:49 +0000

Creating a web page layout that keeps consistent across all browsers can be quite a challenge. I was presented with a project this past week that provided me an opportunity to do some experimenting. The results were quite nice. I ended up with a smooth, clean, and consistent layout that appeared identical in Internet Explorer 6 & 7 as well as Firefox!

Some basic steps to follow are:

1. Use table design for your primary layout or main element placement.(This provides a permanent container for all

page elements) Tables were in use from the beginnings of the web and can display in any browser.

2. If using a WYSIWYG editor such as Dreamweaver, be sure to test files live on the server to insure they appear the

same as the local version.

3. Keep your CSS simple. More advanced use of CSS is less friendly to older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6.

4. Always validate your CSS using the W3C tool found @ http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator

5. Use a tool to test your page layout on all browsers. I found one @ http://browsershots.org

The main idea is to keep things as simple as possible. With the marriage of old-school table design and the wonders of CSS it is easy to create a professional web site layout that will keep your visitors coming back.