Title of Site

Jan 242009
 

So you have just hired me to do my basic Usability and Design Analysis. I open up my browser, and then visit your site. What is the first thing that I look at? It’s the title of your site. The title of your site, though often out of site and out of mind, is an extremely valuable part of a website. It’s so important, I have made it a point to check this item first.

titleValuable Assets of a Website Title

One of my favorite things to do when I see “Title Abuse” is to imagine it on a book cover. Would you really put that crazy, long, keyword like list, as the title of your website? Many do. Before you make the mistake yourself though, you should spend a little time thinking about the value of a site or page title. A short quality title does many things.

  • It gives a quick description to users about the page
  • It gives a quick description to search engines
  • A good title makes it easy to find your site within a list of many bookmarked sites
  • It identifies the site within a tab on your browser or on your toolbar menu
  • It’s how the site or page is typically presented on search results or other sites
  • It may additionally offer clues to site navigation

If you use my sample book in the image on the right, “A site feedback usability design seo web hosting search blog review layout flash for Dummies” you can see the title does not mean much. It’s obviously a keyword plug, and if it were put on a book it would look like crap. Well guess what? That’s what it’s worth on a website as well.

A Brief Title Equals a Real Title

Think about some famous book titles for example: “The Stand”, “Catch 22″, or a less fictional books like “HTML for Dummies”. Notice something in common? They are all short. In fact, if you were to search for long book titles on the net you will find that the longest ones are not much longer than seventy characters total. Think there is truth to the fact that SEO experts say to keep your title to a maximum of sixty-five characters? I do. Anything after sixty-five, and it all starts turning to meaningless mush. Write a book or something. A good title will inspire, create curiosity, and define content within, and it will do it quickly. It will also appear more real to a search engine.

Title Says Where?

Titling your home page “Home Page” is descriptive, but it’s worthless in a stack of other bookmarked pages. When creating your title, make sure you think about what it will look like when someone bookmarks the page. This reasoning is also valuable when looking for your site by means of toolbar or tabs in your browser. Imagine having ten tabs open in your browser, and they all said “Home Page”. Title says where? It better, or at least give a very good clue.

What is a Title For?

Well duh. I think you know what a title is for, right? Maybe not. I have done hundreds of analyses, and have seen countless pages tittled in horrible ways, and capitalization? Did anyone graduate high school? Titles are to be capitalized for starters. It is how we identify content. It is similar in context as your name, and in fact is the NAME of the website or website page.

Knowing this leads to a less obvious, but just as important issue. It’s how your site is presented or introduced by others. If you had used the crazy long example I had above, or “Home Page”, others who found your content may choose to link to your site with their own title ideas. That’s fine, but you may not like it if the link was “Crappy Example of Site Title”, and the URL went straight to your home page. Give them a name, a.k.a. title, as an idea to use as the anchor text.

You must also not forget robots. Computers scouring the web for pages. They find your site, they list your site, and they use the title defined in your Meta. Hope you have a good one, because they may keep the cruddy one cached for a long time. Additionally, having a great title can often equal more clicks when your site is in a long list of others. That is a reason alone to come up with a good one. Help others and computers recognize your site for what it is, and give it a proper title. Encouraging action is not a crime against titles. Go for it!

Abused and Ignored

I think one reason titles get abused and ignored, and often at the same time is because we don’t always see them. If they are too long they get cut off, and the really only place you see them in near entirety is in the applications main bar on top. Who looks there? Abuse gets kicked in by those trying to pimp their site out for search engines (oooh, that one extra placement of that keyword will slam dunk this site for #1), and nobody notices or complains. Soon enough, search engines figure it out, people figure it out, and the site dies before it even had time to begin.

What do I do when I start working on a new page? I start by creating a high quality title. That way, I know what I am working on.

Free Usability and Design Analysis

Dec 132008
 

OK. So a while back I started my Site Feedback category. For those of you that don’t know about it, I make a new post every Friday about one of your sites. In the post I request visitors to visit the the site in review, and then offer feedback about it on the post. Website owners value the feedback, and a little bit of free publicity.  I value the posts because it gets a lot of attention from webmasters, my target audience. The most important group though, the ones making the review get nothing though. That’s a problem.

So What’s in It for You the Reviewer?

So in the past I simply hoped that some of you would make some comments on the reviews. I encouraged other webmasters to make comments, and at first it seemed to work. Without my encouragement though, it’s border line dead. Yesterdays post has only received one comment so far, and it was the final straw for me. Something has to be done to get visitors to want to write a review. So here is what I am going to do.

The Prize

So far now on, when a site Feedback post (not including this one) gets TEN unique quality comments, I will give away a free usability and design analysis. This offer will even work on previous posts that have not yet received ten posts. What makes a unique and quality comment? To make a comment unique, I mean the authors website is unique. On the comment form there is a spot to fill in your website url. Make sure you fill this out. It’s the site I will do the analysis on. What defines comment quality? Comments like, “I like it, it’s great” don’t say anything, nor do the offer the webmaster anything to work with. You can say you like/dislike, but you must give an example why. That is what will make it high quality.

When a post gets the ten unique comments I will simply use a random number generator to pick. I will contact you by the email used to submit the comment, and let you know you won. It’s as simple as that. I will also make a comment on the post that a winner has been picked. So if you don’t see my comment about a winner feel free to make a comment. You could still win, even if there is more than ten comments.

Hope to start seeing more of your comments!

Best Mojizu

Dec 012008
 

A little note: This site appears to be down. It has not been working for the past three days so I have removed the link from the content. If you would like to try yourself, here it is: http://www.mojimobile.com/

So you may be thinking right now what the heck is Mojizu? You don’t know? Don’t feel bad, neither did my dictionary. Mojizu.com is a contemporary style character design community.

Moji War

mojiwarSo what do you do in a character design community. At Mojizu, artists submit their work to the site for the world to see. Not the most unusual concept. What makes it better? Moji War. Moji War is where the artists compete amongst themselves for the best work. They are currently on week three of yet another contest, and some of the stuff is pretty cool. Moji War

Moji Community

Now if you into this kind of artwork there is more to this site than battling artists. It is actually a community. There is a blog, an active forum, and profile pages for the artists. Mojizu also offers stuff the the average visitor. You can download free art, screensavers, and misc items. They have a store, with some very cool t-shirts, and even have wall paper for your cell phone.

Cool site, and hope the site gets some more attention. I know the artists like it when they work gets high visibility. What is Mojizu again? It’s a character design community. Submit your work today!

Making It Simple

Oct 082008
 

The owners of www.ofertasdeadsl.net, are trying to provide a simple site with basic information about getting ADSL services. The have a basic layout listing some providers by cost and speed, and also have a few details about the services. What they really need, I think, is a side by side comparison. I also think they need your help in site layout.

Are They Ready Though?

One of the biggest problems I personally have in designing a site is when a client has little content to begin with. I warn clients ahead of time about this concern. In fact, after ten plus years of building sites, I finally made it a personal policy to note even take a client until I am conviced they are ready to go with real direction, real content, and a true understanding what it is they want their site to do. I’ll help them get there, but I won’t start working on the site until I know it’s time.

Maybe It Is

So the owners of www.ofertasdeadsl.net think they are. The have some content, they have some details, and they believe their message is clear. What I thought would be a nice experiment is to put their site up to one of my new favorite sites, Thinkature.com. What I have done is created a whiteboard environment using Thinkatures service in regards to ofertasdeadsl.net.

Let’s see if we can help this site out by working on the whiteboard. I have made the page open to anyone so login or an account is not required. All you have to do is visit the link, give a username (as a chat name), and make any edits you would do.

Can the readers of Best Web Image help improve this site? I hope so!

Here is the link to their whiteboard: http://thinkature.com/workspace/camp185/OfertasDeADSL.net

Free Basic Usability and Design Analysis

Oct 062008
 

It’s Time!

If you are the first one to comment on this post you get a free Basic Usability and Design Analysis for the website of your choice!

In your comment make sure you say “I want a free analysis!”. I will then contact you by using the email in your comment submission. How easy is that?

Thinkature Workspace

Sep 132008
 

Probably the best thing about having an online career is that you can work anywhere in the world. A big set back to it though is that long distance travel may be required to do a face to face. Thinkature is just the site that could help eliminate one of those reasons to require face time. It’s their online workspace.

Thinkature is a Whiteboard

thinkature When working with some of my far away clients site layouts, I often use a method which I simple call the print and fax method. I create a the layout on a private host, send them the link, they print it out, and fax back the changes they would like to see. It works, and it works especially well for the not so tech savy business owners that I often deal with.

Thinkature eliminates the need for that method by creating an online whiteboard that is extremely easy to use. I can create a custom layout initially on Thinkature’s site, and then the client and I can either work together on the layout at a schedule time, or work independently on the layout, changing things as we think of it.

When working together on a project is when the real power kicks in. Besides having a cool whiteboard for us to use as an interface, it supports it with two forms of communications, text chat and voice. Move components while you talk, now here is a nice application. Another cool thing about this service is that you can control who has access. You can do private invite only, or you can make it open to the public. Here is the public workspace for my site: Best Web Image Workspace. Feel free to try it out, I have made this one open to the public.

Cool Way To Work

All I can say about Thinkature is two thumbs up! It’s a very cool way to work with clients, and even just for yourself. Here is a little quote from their site on what you can use it for.

“You can use it to plan your next major product or your next great party. Or you could lay out a new organization chart or the floor plan for your next apartment. You might also gather information about your competitors or your next vacation destination.”

Use it for pretty much anything. I’m just wondering where their ads are. It’s free, free, free!

Parallel Designs

Sep 112008
 

sanantonioDepending on your budget for building a site, an extremely worthwhile venture is to create an alternate layout, or parallel design. The benefits are almost endless, and features on the site quickly expose the good and the bad.

Parallel Design in Action

I recently wrote a post about a Dallas Real Estate website in how it made good use of its home page. Well the same company has another site, San Antonio Real Estate, that is parallel in design, but has clearly made different choices in regards to some of its layout. Most of the same features are there, but they have either selected to remove them or are testing the other with the design. Typically, creating a parallel design would be done before a site goes public, but obviously you could get a great deal more feedback doing it live.

The Benefits

Creating a, or a few alternate site designs can produce some fantastic benefits. When analyzing each layout, and then comparing to another, the good and the bad are quickly recognized. You then have the ability to include those good ideas from say, Site A, and then incorporate them into Site B. Very quickly you now have not one improved design, but two improved designs. After a few rounds of this, the designs should almost merge with only the best ideas shining through. Keep in mind that this isn’t just limited to the simple layout of the site, but all aspects of the site. Things like how a form is handled, or how search results are displayed, everything.

The main advantage of this is the overwhelming time it could save you. Using just one design, time and slow little tests are the only way to improve your site performance. Testing parallel designs will quickly kick out the junk, and bubble sort the best to the top giving you the best web design. It’s usability testing at an almost primal level, and it’s a great way to start your site.

No Budget

If you don’t have a budget to build a multiple designs, or you build your sites yourself it’s not the end of the world. This is where that time you spent doing your market analysis kicks in. When investigating your competitors, don’t just look at their sites, use them. Try their order forms, sign up for the mailing lists, and  take notes on how they run their websites. Follow the money, and follow what ideas you like best. This is what your target market is most likely used to, assuming they have used one of your competitors sites already.

Design For Performance

Aug 182008
 

What do you think? Should you design for user preference or user performance? Most webmasters would say design for user preference. It makes sense at first, designing to what your site users prefer. An example would be using flash for a younger audience. Many prefer flash because it looks cool, it’s interactive, and not boring in design like this text based site. Preference doesn’t equal performance though.

Preference Does Not Equal Performance

If you tested a site that was designed for user preference, I am sure you would find that preference did in fact equal performance, but not entirely. Just because someone likes your site does not mean they will successfully complete your desired visitor action. Looking at it another way, a visitor may not even like your site, but does complete the desired visitor action.

When designing your site or making improvements to your site, think about your objective. Use facts that are improving performance, and not general visitor feedback such as “I like your site, it looks cool.” It’s hard to be cold and calculated, “just the facts, mam”, but why build a site that just looks cool. Best web design should consider performance first, and then build for user preference. Then you will get the best of both worlds.

Asking for Punishment

Aug 042008
 

Today is a good day. I am increasing my sites entropy, and creating a new category. The category is, “Site Surveys”. Usability testing for a site really doesn’t kick in until you start testing your it. When I say “you start testing it” I really mean, “when they start testing it”. One of the best ways you can learn about your visitors is by creating a survey. Survey says what?

So to kick of the site with the first survey I will be asking five basic questions that I have been curious about in regards to this site. Your my readers, tell me what you think.

Survey for Best Web Image

Five quick questions to help improve BestWebimage.com. Take Survey

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