Knowing that visitors spend most of their time on sites besides BWI, I decided to do a little research on those sites, and see what my visitors would expect to find. Using Technorati, and a few other sources, I took a look at over a dozen top blogs. What I was looking for was common traits that I believe are expected to be found on a website regardless of their function or fashion. Continue reading »
Apr 272009
Here is a good general rule when making a blog post. Limit the number of pictures you include on it. Unless your post is titled something like “Top Ten Pictures of…” you should really avoid using too many images in just one post.
Top Blog Posts
I spent some of the weekend looking for good traits of a blog post using my sites stats, and the popular posts listed on some of the most popular blogs on the net today. Here is what I found. Avoid using more than one image in your post.
Adding a picture to your post does seem like a good idea. Most of the popular posts I found had at least one. Nine out of the ten most popular posts on this site had exactly one picture. Looking at the other bloggers, pictures did seem essential, but finding a popular post with more than three images was pushing your luck. Sure their are plenty out there with more than three, but I am looking at the top posts out there.
Reduce The Bounce
Images do draw a crowd, but they don’t neccessarily reduce the bounce. Because I am only able to use my own sites for statistics on the bounce rate I can not say this for everyone, but it seemed pretty clear that the number of images in a post directly correlates to the number of bounced visitors. Meaning, the more images in the post, the higher the bounce.
Using this and another blog I have for the statistics I looked for posts with over 100 views. Looking at the ones with the least bounce rate the best posts had no pictures at all, and a high percentage of the remaining had just one picture. Note to self, use just one pic.
Jan 242009
It’s 2009, and the U.S. economy has its hands full in rebounding back to normal, and being that one of the most primary concerns for this country is money, financial themed websites are popping up all over the place. It’s time to consolidate, time to save, time to lower your interest rates. I found one site, BillEater.com where I instantly loved the layout.
If it were my site I would change the size of that square Google ad they have, but there was something about the layout that I just liked. It was clean, nice colors cordination, great flow, and easy to read. I wanted to be on the site, and I don’t even really care for the topic of how to save money. It was a blog format, but they didn’t use the typical canned template that a million others have used. It was unique to them. Great way to seperate yourself from the others.
Besides being a blog with money saving tips they had a forum, calculators, and even a store. A store? Yep, they sell products that can save you money at home, like low wattage lightbulbs, and just little things like that. Unique site, and I found one article that was pretty good about ways to save money – 10 ideas.
Dec 052008
It’s Friday, and it’s time for some site feedback. If you are new to Best Web Image, and the Site Feedback Posts, it’s about giving some feedback on the site listed below. The best way to improve a site is listening to visitor feedback!
Today’s Site: Slices-of-Life.com 
Description: Slices of Life is your daily reminder blog about why we like it here on the big planet earth.
Visitor Feedback: Please take the time to look at their site, and let them know what you think by making comments on this post below. Positive and negative comments are welcome, but comments like “it sucks†or “it’s nice†have no value because you don’t say why.
Your Site: If you want your site to get posted here let me know. Just make sure to include your email, the url, and why you think I should pick your site. It’s free, just not everyone is going to get picked.
Oct 102008
One of my first jobs as a webmaster was to build a series of intranet sites for Applied Materials. I had already been building sites for a few years at that time, but never had a task as large as this one. I built the sites, gave a few some makeovers, and was given one final request before my contract came to an end. Can you create a way for us to input new content without knowing how to build a web page? I was asked to design my exit plan.
Content Management Systems
One of the great things about blogs, content management is what they excel at. Experience in building a website? Hardly, my Mom could manage one. Actually, she’s pretty good with a computer though. I mean even my Dad could manage one. Blogs and websites are different though, and most business sites are not made in a blog format. They do however, need to make the occasionally changes, and add content to their sites. This is where CMS (Content Management Systems) kicks in.
CMS gives the site owner and/or the webmaster the ability to add or change the content of a website without having to change a whole website. Why code a whole new page when all you want to do is add an “About Us” page or something like that. Why pay a webmaster to change the date on your home page when you could do it yourself in ten seconds? Why buy web designing software to do those changes when it could be done from an online control panel? The advantages are time and money, time and money. Every site should be designed with CMS in mind, and if it’s not, your just asking for pain in the future.
Who Offers CMS?
Any good webmaster or web design company should from the start. What if you already have a website? Depending on the site, it should be easy enough to convert. When I was doing it for Applied Materials, I had the unfortunate luck of converting a site with over 1,000 pages, with what I think had just as many authors. So, it’s not always easy.
Though I am not looking to take on any CMS projects myself these days, I know of one company, Toronto Website Design, that I am sure would be more than willing to take it on. Here is a direct link to the (Removed link 11/17/2008, page removed) Systems page. Make your site do the work, not you.
Oct 092008
Calling all webmasters! There’s a new webmasters forum in town, Webmaster Serve. There are always new webmaster forums being created, but I think this one has a fighting chance. Webmaster Serve was created by the same guys that brought you UKWF, a popular webmaster forum run in the UK.
Forum Categories
The main forum categories cover search engines, design and development, and site hosting. The also have a marketplace where other webmasters can buy and sell everything from advertisements to an entire website. In regards to their search engine category they introduced a new (new to most webmaster forums) sub category covering SEO Marketing. Most forums just talk about how to optimize for a particular search engine, and they techniques they use. I believe learning the hows and whys of SEO Marketing is a better starting point.
More Than a Forum
They also have a webmaster blog of the recent goings ons that effect us webmasters, and a bunch of cool webmasters tools that are free to use. The tools are mostly pre-written code that you can slap in your site to do things like create rollovers, generate meta tags, or site maps.
Will It Succeed?
I think it will. Starting a forum, like I have said many time before, is a tough business, especially a webmaster forum. These guys have done it before though, so I believe they have the know how. They have also limited the number of categories, and sub-categories. This is key in maintaining the appearance of activity. Nobody like to visit a ghost town. One other big plus in their favor? It’s not green…
Oct 072008
Learn more, read more, you have probably seen it a million times. Those little links that allow you to read additional information. Those little links are great, and if you are not using them already, now may be the time to start.
An Example
Here is a classic example of the “Learn More” link being used well, Business Process Improvement. It’s a link to Lombardi’s Products page. Their services (Business Process Management) are neat upon themselves. BPM is one of the many things my wife specializes in.
If you look at their products page though, you will find that all of their headings have just a small bit of information followed by the “Learn More” links. Why not put the information there to begin with? Well if you are a SEO person you could probably come up with a bunch of reasons, but if you forget that stuff, there is a better reason. It’s hard to get people to read your content.
Getting Them to Read
Back in May, Jakob Nielsen released a report that found only about 28% of your content is read, and that is was really more like 20%. Scary thought if you own a blog, and like to rant. Another study made by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services back in 2006 found that, you are pretty much wasting your time writing a paragraph longer than six sentences. Headers, paragraph breaks, and division of content is imperative in maintaining the visitors attention. Visitors skim, and they do this by looking for the easy read.
Learn More, Keep it Simple
Knowing this you can find the beauty of using links like “Learn More”. By using them, you are able to increase the options for your visitors in hope you can display something they like while at the same time, giving them the option to read more when they find their gold. It’s the “Keep it simple” technique, and gives true meaning to the term “Less is more.”
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