Website Analyst Newsletter
Meeting Your Needs With Excellence
Issue Number 1
December 1999
Editor: Lucian Millis, editor@website-analyst.co.il
Publisher: Website Analyst http://www.website-analyst.co.il/
Website Analyst offers free website evaluation, ratings,
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IN THIS ISSUE
1. Happy New Year!
2. Make It Visitor Friendly! by David G. Bancroft, USA
3. Domain Names
4. Links of Interest
5. Pick Of The Month (Internet Brothers)
6. Subscription Management
7. Contact Information
1. Happy New Year!
Welcome to all our subscribers. We thank you warmly for your
support and wish you and yours, a warm and safe holiday
season. Happy New Year and a perfect start into the next
millennium!
Until next time
L.Millis
2. Make It Visitor Friendly! by David G. Bancroft, USA
You probably think that your site is visitor friendly.
But is it friendly enough?
Think about all the sites that you have visited over the
last week or month that left you with a nice feeling of
being able to go anywhere within the site without becoming
confused or just losing your patience.
Now . . . that is what I call visitor friendly sites.
And while it is very critical on how content is worded and
presented along with the use of supportive graphics to
further illustrate the intended message, poor navigation
can truly make a good message site come up considerably
short of being visitor friendly.
Remember . . . never assume your target audience is made up
of technical wizards or mind readers who just love a
challenge to figure out what a site is really all about.
Making it easy for visitors to find what they are looking
for is fundamental in the reinforcement of a concise and
compelling mission statement and commercial message.
Navigation buttons and text links . . . need to be very
visible and easily read with images having alt text tags
that describe the purpose of the link. They can be listed
under a header or down the side (preferably the left
column). And while a pull down menu for site navigation
might be necessary when there are too many key pages,do not
forget that a site map and table of contents should be
incorporated with a noticeable link.
Whether your site is based on frames or no frames . . . the
bottom of each page should have at least key text menu links
that allow the visitor an option to continue with your
site's presentation and possibly another reason to purchase.
It makes no sense to have anyone hit the "back" button or
scroll up to locate menu links. (It is your choice to offer
a "break out of frames" option.)
Don't forget . . . that a "contact" or e-mail link needs to
be a part of the menu or navigation bar including at the
bottom of each page. It is very difficult to be completely
visitor friendly if one has difficulty locating the link
that allows a visitor to communicate with your company.
Of course . . . you need to do what is necessary to attract
the target audience to your site so they can find out how
visitor friendly it is!
About the Author
David is President of FOCUS Associates (www.focusa.com),
a business and marketing consulting firm, and developer of
its award-winning, 300-plus page web site which includes the
popular micro site, AWARD SITES! - Ratings, Listings, and
Promote (http://www.awardsites.com/).
Note:Before you may use "Make It Visitor Friendly!" you must
first obtain permission from the Author.
3. Domain Names
You can now register domain names up to 67 characters in
length, including the ".com" or ".net" or ".org" extensions.
No longer will you be limited to the previous 23 character
domain names!
TIP: You'll bring much more traffic to your website, if your
domain name cleverly includes your most important keyword or
keyphrase.
4. Links of Interest
F-Secure Computer Virus Info Center
The database is updated several times a week.
http://www.DataFellows.com/virus-info/
Free Website Analysis!
GIF Wizard sifts through entire websites, single URLs, or
even graphics on local or networked hard disks, returning
detailed reports on potential size savings.
http://www.gifwizard.com/
Free Form Processor
Improve the effectiveness of your website !
Response-O-Matic lets you design your forms any way you
want, asking your visitors as many questions as you like.
The form submissions are emailed to you every time a visitor
to your website submits a form. User-friendly and a fairly
quick remedy to the need for forms! Wonderful service!
http://www.response-o-matic.com/
TIP: ToggleBot! - A New Search Engine on the Web!
Now offering over 10 million searchable web documents.
http://www.togglebot.com/
5. Pick Of The Month
Internet Brothers: Helpware for the Cybercommunity
Excellent site dedicated to assisting web newcomers make
their presence felt. Offering helpware tips and tutorials
about HTML and DHTML, graphics editing, layout and design,
digital photography, desktop publishing, web site promotion,
and a wealth of other topics.
http://internetbrothers.com