Common Complaints

• Flashy animation is annoying because it wastes time downloading and can freeze a computer with low memory
• Out of date information earns scorn and derision
• Background music, especially droning techno
• Difficult to find information, such as location and phone number
• Stock photography, people recognize and don’t respect it.
• Amateur photos, amateur photos are characterized by one or more of the following:
  • pixilation – caused by not knowing how to size a photo for the web
  • blurry image – caused by a shaking camera or using a low resolution photo from a cell phone
  • bleached out or murky images – caused by not knowing how to properly light a photograph
  • poor composition (distracting backgrounds, for example)

An Annoying Restaurant Web Site

I’m sure the food at Firefly’s Bar-B-Q is great, but their web site is annoying.

• The splash screen makes for an extra click to get to the information. And the flying insect animation seems juvenile.
• Even though the looping music on the home page has a good beat, I can’t stand listening to it over and over and it’s driving me crazy when I click between this page and other pages, or leave the home page open in the browser.
• Confusing navigation. One menu with drop down sub menus would be easier to follow.

I’m Looking for a Good Restaurant Web Site

I wanted to post an example of a good restaurant web site. After looking for over an hour, I’m going to give up for now. I’ll keep looking and when I find one I’ll post it. In the meantime it’s curious why all the restaurant web sites I looked at are so bad. I believe the core reason is the restaurant business is a tough one. An independent restaurant doesn’t make a huge profit so they might skimp on spending a lot on a web site.

A Better Web Site for a Small Business is Possible

The challenges for any small business that wants a web site are the cost, keeping up with changing trends, and updating information quickly. A good web designer can help you by building your site in affordable stages and guiding you towards results that are professional and usable.

Analysis by Smart Alice Web Design, smart web design for businesses who want a unique and effective presence on the internet.

Copyright 2011, Alice Gebura, All Rights Reserved.

Are you inspired? Pixability, a company that helps small businesses make videos, has the following tips for making your own videos:

1. Get a simple-to-use camera. The Flip camera and Kodak Zi8 are recommended. Make sure the camera allows for easy downloads.
2. It’s the content, baby! What are your best customers passionate about? Tell stories that give your audience the information they are searching for.
3. Shorter is better. Viewers have short attention spans, so don’t squeeze too many messages into one video. Less than two minutes is optimal for the Web.
4. Hold still. Grip the video camera with both hands and keep a stable shot for at least 10 seconds.
5. Lights, camera, action. Turn on all the lights when shooting, and never shoot someone whose back is to the sun. Have your subjects speak loudly, and avoid background noise.
6. Deliver the right message. End with a call to action.

You can read more about Pixability and web videos in the article Claim to frame: Helping businesses polish images published in the Boston Globe on 5/25/10.

Analysis by Smart Alice Web Design, smart web design for businesses who want a unique and effective presence on the internet.

Copyright 2010, Alice Gebura, All Rights Reserved.

Home Page, Web Site of Louis Lortie

Monday, March 1 marks the 200^th anniversary of Frederick Chopin’s birthday.  In honor of one of my favorite composers let’s talk about the web site of pianist Louis Lortie.  For me this web site is the epitome of why we bother to build web sites.  Louis Lortie is a  concert pianist and recording artist.  At his site there is a great depth of information about him, his career and discography, and, most interesting, it showcases his thoughts about music interpretation and its challenges.

Here’s the treasure you’ll find on just one page, Chopin:

• An excerpt from the score of a Chopin Etude
• A series of videos
• A photo of Chopin

The series of short videos showcase  Lortie playing two of the Chopin Etudes (a glorious aural experience) and Lortie, at the piano, talking about his approach to playing the etudes while playing excerpts to illustrate his thoughts.  As each video plays, its title  changes from black to lavender so you can keep track of where you are in the series.  Or, you can click on the one you want to hear.  Great user interface design!  Notice that underneath the video the timer is presented as a musical staff!  Clever design!

Chopin Page, Web Site of Louis Lortie

My only criticism is that the text on the home page is hard to read – a result of using a justified right margin and the italic font with very little line spacing.  The  opacity factor on the font doesn’t help either.

Lortie has created a passionate web site with great depth of information that gives us a window into his soul and the beauty of the music he plays.

Analysis by Smart Alice Web Design, smart web design for businesses who want a unique and effective presence on the internet.

Does it take a search party to find you on the web?

(Photo from the Mel Brooks movie “Young Frankenstein”)

Before computers, how did a local business get noticed? Besides the usual marketing activities, you could  list your business in the yellow pages.  Remember the days when businesses named themselves “AAA Roofing” or “AAA Rent A Car” so they would show up first in their category? These days people won’t usually look for a business or service in the yellow pages.  They look on the web.  So what can you do to make sure your web site shows up high on the list returned by a search?

Make sure your web pages contain critical information

Practice common sense when designing your web site and writing the content. For example, if you own a floral business, it’s unrealistic to expect your business to come up first on a search when there are 28,700,000 other florists out there.   However, a search engine, such as Google, is happy to list you on the first page when:

1. Google recognizes the location of the user doing the search
2. And then matches the search to a business and a zip code.

If you’ve included location and zip code information on your web site, you’ll show up at the top of the list. Including location information is common sense but you’d be surprised how many web sites make people – and Google – dig for it.

Two for one: good writing enhances search

There are more common sense practices to follow that enhance the user interface, impart information, and help people navigate your site:

• Ascertain key phrases to identify your business and message and use them strategically, especially in page titles and headings.
• Write straightforward text and organize it logically.
• Present it with legible, user intuitive typography.

When you follow these common sense rules, you also enhance the ability of a search engine to index your site and promote it.

What is SEO?

A buzz word you hear a lot is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).   SEO is basically doing whatever you can to make sure your web site shows up high on the list returned by a search relevant to your business.  SEO is the common sense practices I’ve just described and anyone who is intelligent and thoughtful can do it as they write, with a little training and practice.

Marketing companies are charging big money under the premise they can employ “magical” SEO techniques to promote your site, but I’m skeptical about what works and how much it’s worth. One thing they can do is pay a search engine to artificially promote your site, but be aware you’ll pay thousands of dollars per month for it.

Who is that man behind the curtain?

I was hired to write web page content for a business I’ll call The Widget Company.   What I wrote was then sent to a 27 year old Vice President of SEO (that was his title, really!) at a high priced marketing firm. (That a 27 year old could be a vice president should be the first tip off something isn’t right.)

To increase the probability the web site would come up first whenever a user typed “widget” on Google or other search engine,  he stuck the word “widget” in front of every possible noun he could, often creating awkward noun strings that impacted readability.  And stuck the word “widget” inside of product names, creating incorrect product names.  He also introduced grammar and spelling errors. For this The Widget Company paid a retainer of several thousand a month.  Does anyone besides me smell a bad deal?

Why is The Widget Company paying for it?  There is one answer – fear.  The management doesn’t understand technology and this creates insecurity.  And, as long as everyone else is doing it, they’re afraid they’ll be left behind if they don’t do it, too.

Frankly I’m skeptical of  paying a bunch of money to SEO salesmen preying on people’s lack of experience with technology.  Common sense, good writing, and strategic marketing along with intelligent web design will boost your visibility.  You don’t have to pay thousands of dollars for an SEO specialist.

Update, Jan. 26, 2010

Four months after I wrote this post, the Boston Globe published an article that echoes my opinion. It includes the quote “Being charged $5,000 a month to manage the SEO process is crazy.” You can read the entire article at In Web world, a successful marketing effort means gaining inside track on searches

Update, March 27, 2011

More info from another Boston Globe article (that borrowed my analogy regarding the yellow pages!): Google analyzes more than 200 factors when ranking web pages and Google tweaks its ranking software 500 times a year!

Commentary by Smart Alice Web Design, smart web design for businesses who want a unique and effective presence on the internet.

Copyright 2011, Alice Gebura, All Rights Reserved.