Category Archives: Website Tips

What Is Google Web Fonts?

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For the longest time designers were limited to less than a dozen fonts that could be used safely on the web. If the person visiting the site didn’t have that particular font installed on their computer, another font would be displayed in its place, often negatively altering the appearance. If the developer wanted to use script or a decorative font, the main alternative was to use an image.

Google Web Fonts to the rescue!
Thanks to Google we can now create sites with fonts that people don’t need to have installed on their computers. By linking to a font in Google’s library, we can now choose from hundreds of different options.

Here, for Aviator Event Rentals, we used Google Web Fonts. The three lines of script under the headings “Rentals for All Occasions,” “Event Planning Tools,” and “Picture Gallery” are pulled from Google’s library.Aviator Event Rentals home page

What Does It Mean To Be Mobile-Friendly And What Is The Best Way To Achieve It With Your Site?

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Website visitors are using an increasing variety of devices, from smart phones, net books, and tablets to desktop PCs and home theatre displays. This trend is not going away and it poses a question for web developers, “How can we make the user experience equally good on as many different devices as possible?”

When we ask, “Is a site mobile-friendly?” we don’t mean, “Is the site visible on mobile phones?” What we want to know is, “Does the site offer a good user experience on a small screen?” Many (if not most) websites still require the user to repeatedly zoom in and out in order to navigate on a mobile phone. This does not equate to a good user experience.

There are two ways to address this issue:

The First Option is to build two completely separate websites. The first site would be built specifically for small screens, and this would be the mobile site. The second site would be for larger screens, such as desktop computers. The browser may automatically detect the type of device and deliver the appropriate site, or the user may be invited to visit different addresses depending on the type of device they’re using.

Sometimes the content the user is likely to want or need differs depending on the device being used. It can be advantageous for the mobile version of a site to have fewer options and less depth. Content may be more concise, and the number and size of images may be reduced to lessen bandwidth and download time.

The Second Option is to build a website with a flexible framework that automatically adjusts to fit the user’s screen. This is called Responsive Web Design, and for many, it is the most practical option. By using a fluid layout, a single website can be easy to use regardless of the device.

Fixed Width Layout

This is an illustration of a fixed width layout on a smart phone (left) and desktop monitor (right).

Fluid or Flexible Width Layout

This is an illustration of a fluid or flexible width layout on a smart phone (left) and desktop monitor (right).

Many websites are still built using a fixed width layout. This means that the width of the content is always the same, regardless of the width of the browser window. One sign of a website built this way is when reducing the width of the browser window causes a horizontal scroll bar to appear. With today’s screen size diversity, fluid layouts make more sense. A fluid layout uses relative units to specify the size of each element on a page, and the relative positions are adjusted depending on the size of the display.

If you’d like to learn more about Responsive Web Design, email suzanne@trevellyan.biz or call 518.392.0846.

How To Create An Email Address To Match Your Domain Name Using Google

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The internet has been called the great equalizer because, with a little help, anyone can look good on the web. A well-designed website can make even the smallest entrepreneur look as professional and respectable as the biggest box store.

There are many factors to consider when building your professional image. One of the most basic is the domain name of your email address. (Domain name is the words after the @ sign in an email address, for example @yahoo.com, @aol.com, @gmail.com.)

The examples above are the domains of companies that offer free email service, but if you already have a website, such as mybusinessname.com, then you should have an email address that matches your domain, such as [email protected]

To a web savvy user, an email address using your business domain looks more professional and can positively affect their initial impression. And consider this: every time you send an email, you’re giving the recipient the domain name of your website and encouraging them to visit. That’s free advertising.

If you already own a domain name, you may not have realized it but you can create an email address using your domain name at no additional cost to you. There are plenty of ways to make this happen. The one we recommend is Gmail. Gmail is free and effective, and it comes with some additional business tools that can help you be more organized and productive.

The exact procedure for registering your new email address using your domain name depends on your domain provider and whether or not you already have a Google account.

If you don’t already have an account with Google, start by registering with Google Apps for Business.

If you already have a Google account, here is a link to the instructions that Google provides:

If you’d like to use Gmail with your own domain name but you’d prefer to have someone else handle the registration, just give us a call at 518.392.0846 or email suzanne@trevellyan.biz.

Using Volunteers to Maintain Your Website

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The best websites have one person who is responsible for gathering new content. This person knows how to format text in a compelling way and is familiar with basic marketing principles, web standards and search engine optimization practices. Nonprofits often have an ongoing challenge of finding volunteers for even the simplest task. Finding someone with the technical skills required to effectively maintain a website can be even more difficult.

One alternative we often recommend to finding a single individual to handle the entire project is to split the job into three distinct roles: Editor, Poster and Technical Advisor.

The Editor

  • Responsible for collecting content
  • Always includes the date that it needs to be removed from the site
  • Writes copy exactly as it is to be posted

Necessary qualifications:

  • Good grammar and punctuation
  • Good communication, written and verbal
  • Comfortable and familiar with email and attachments

The Poster

  • Responsible for posting information to the website
  • Keeps track of what information is on the site and when it needs to be removed
  • Confirms when information has been received
  • Provides estimated date/time when the changes will be completed
  • Contacts The Editor with all questions about new content

Necessary qualifications

  • Ideally, the candidate for this position will have experience working with your specific content management system (CMS). This will make the transition as smooth as possible.
  • If this is not possible, the minimum skill set required is a solid understanding of Microsoft Word. This person will need one-on-one training to understand the CMS.

Technical Advisor

  • Answer questions
  • Make more complicated changes to the website such as adding or removing pages, changing navigation or adding plugins
  • Manage software updates

Additional Recommendations

  • Arrange to meet with the Editor and The Poster regularly to review upcoming and past events and to discuss the current state of the website.
  • Make it general practice at the end of every meeting to ask the question, “Is there anything we discussed here today that should be posted on the website? Who will be responsible to passing along this information to The Editor?”
  • Leading up to and following every event, assign one person to be responsible for sending information about that event to The Editor.

Your website is your public face. It is often the first contact someone will have with your organization and it is where they will expect to find the most up-to-date information. Responsibility for its upkeep and maintenance is best given to a team of smart, driven, committed individuals whose skills are suited to the task.

The #1 Single Most Important Thing To Remember About Your Website

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You’ve spent a good deal of time, money and energy creating a website for business. It may’ve been hard work and when you were done, we bet you were ready to throw a party, take a long weekend, and shout, “I can cross that ‘to do’ item off my list now!” However, it is important to note that once the site is built, the job is not done. Good websites need frequent attention and updating. This fact can not be overstated.

The #1 single most important thing to remember is that the website is not the end product. It is simply the vehicle from which you can disseminate information. For a website to work for you requires an ongoing effort that takes planning, attention and consistency.

The best websites have one person whose sole responsibility is to gather information, format it in a compelling way, and then post it with basic marketing principles, web standards and search engine optimization in mind.

This person

  • attends meetings with the sole focus of gathering details to add to the website
  • is known within the organization as the go-to-person for website content
  • is familiar with what your competition is doing online
  • knows what information is currently on the site
  • keeps a log of details that need to be added, expanded, updated, and removed
  • knows where new information will best fit within the structure of the site
  • keeps a watchful eye on web statistics
  • knows what new WordPress plugins are available
  • is familiar with search engine optimization

Your website is your public face. It is often the first contact someone will have with your business or organization and it is where they expect to find the most up-to-date information. It is important that the person responsible for maintaining it be committed to it for the long term. It isn’t a job for a part-time volunteer or a great grand child.

You wouldn’t have your neighbor’s kid act as your full-time salesperson, you wouldn’t mail an outdated brochure, and you wouldn’t use crayons to create your business cards. Your website is all these things and more. It is your company brochure, your calling card and your 24/7 salesperson. Keep your website up-to-date and trust a committed responsible adult to keep it current.

Four Design Tips For Updating Content on Your Website

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If you’ve been assigned the ongoing task of maintaining a website for your company, particularly if you are using a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, here are a few tips that will help you keep the site looking professional.

1. Don’t Treat Your Website Like A Display Ad
Unlike a print ad, a website does not need to grab people’s attention. Users visit a website on purpose. They aren’t trying to read the comics, watch tv, or listen to music, so you don’t need flashing images or noise to draw their attention away from something else. Your website should make the visitor feel comfortable enough to stay a while.

When a user accesses your website, they want to find the information they are looking for quickly. If they begin to feel frustrated, if the site is too complicated or navigation is unclear, they’ll move on. Readability and usability are vitally important.

2. Follow the Design
A designer considers each site element for readability and success at conveying a defined message. Size, font, style, weight, color, and alignment are defined for heading, subhead, body copy, captions, links and more.

When it ‘s time for you to add new content, look at the styles that have been assigned to the different elements. Stick to those rules. Your goal is not to make the new copy jump out at the reader. In fact adding new content that doesn’t follow the overall structure looks less professional and can reflect poorly on your company.

3. Avoid All Caps
Type, above all else, must be readable. Ascenders and descenders of upper and lower case letters help our eyes to identify words. Using all capital letters makes that distinction difficult and visitors to your site are less likely to read all the information you so purposefully prepared.

4. Respond To Comments
Comments are a great way to help gauge the effectiveness of your online efforts. Demonstrate your appreciation to those visitors who left comments by responding to each one individually, answering their questions and thanking them for their business. Prompt attention to all comments is a real-life illustration of your commitment to customer service.

Five Reasons Why Website Updates Are Important

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A website is a great tool. However, even once you have your site up and running, the job is not complete.  Unlike every other form of advertising, websites are never finished. Done right, a website is a work in progress, continually being updated and improved. The websites that work best, the ones that deliver the best results, are constantly being tweaked.

1. New Beats Old
Search engines rank websites with new content higher than websites with old content. Updates should be done on a regular basis, monthly or even weekly.

2. More Frequent Indexing
Search engines send out bots to index web pages. If the bot finds your site hasn’t been updated in a month, another bot may not be sent again for two months. If it still hasn’t been updated, it may wait three months. Regular updates mean your site gets indexed more often and the your site’s contents will be searchable.

3. They Will Come
Posting new content on your website gives customers a reason to return. This can enhance your relationship with them and they may be more likely to use your services more often.

4. Know What They Want
By reviewing your web stats, you’ll learn what information your users find most appealing and where they are coming from. This will help you determine a direction for new content that can draw even more visitors.

5. Ch-ch-ch-changes
Search engines are constantly changing the way they index sites. The factors one directory considers important today may change dramatically tomorrow and every directory is different. Getting the most from your website requires on-going supervision and maintenance.

Maintaining a small website doesn’t require a huge chunk of time, it can take as little as a few hours a month. Outsourcing this task can be a good choice for those who don’t have time to do it themselves. If you’re interested in having us maintain your website, please call 518.392.0846 or email suzanne@trevellyan.biz.

Beware of Fake Domain Renewal Notices

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Clients often contact us after receiving a letter stating that their domain name is about to expire. In common with many scams, the letter often urges you to act immediately. If the notice you receive is not from your registrar, it is not to be trusted.

Fake domain name renewal notices are a scam known as Domain Slamming. Renew with this fake company and you may be transferring the domain name away from your existing provider.

Know Your Registrar
It’s important that you know who holds the registration on your domain name – this company is called the registrar. To be safe, confirm with your registrar that your domain is locked. A locked domain can not be transferred.

How does this fake company know who you are? How did they get your information?

WhoIs
Whois is the master directory for domain name registrations. Unless a domain owner purchases WHOIS privacy, their name and contact details are publicly visible, along with other technical and contact information.

If you receive a domain renewal  notice from a service other than the one you registered with, throw it away. If someone else registered the domain on your behalf, ask them for the name of the registrar that they used.

Understanding Google’s Results Page Template

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Whether you’re searching the web for business or pleasure, understanding the results of your search engine query will help you find what you’re looking for quicker. There are clues in the results that can help you identify which links are most likely to include the information you are seeking. Knowing where to look, what to look for and why the information is presented the way it is can make your searches less frustrating and more productive.

Most Google searches are formatted the same way. The search query box is at the top. Directly below is the statistics bar. Below that, in a pink box and also in a narrow column running down the right side, are paid searches. Below the ads are the organic results.

Above this article you see that I have identified six different elements of a typical Google Results Page. Below you will find details about each in alphabetical order.

Advanced Search
A typical Google search involves typing keywords in the Search Query Box. However, perhaps you have tried a Google search but didn’t find what you were looking for. Google Advance Search lets you tailor your search by using a variety of criteria, such as keywords and location, to narrow down the results.

Natural/Organic Results
Just as a newspaper contains both news copy and advertising, so does Google. And just like in a newspaper, Google attempts to identify which parts are paid advertising and which are to be considered “news”. Google organic results is “the news” and appears based on content, keyword relevancy, and popularity.

Paid Search
Using the newspaper analogy again, Google AdWords is the retail advertising department at Google. While newspapers charge a flat rate based on ad size, Google AdWords fees are calculated based on how many times your ad is clicked. The price of each click is determined through an auction based on the keywords you choose and the popularity of those words.

There are two places on a results page that ads can appear. The most common location is down the right hand column. You will often see ads highlighted in pink, as shown in the illustration above, directly above the organic results. These ads have some combination of high quality score, click-through rate, and price that have qualified them to appear there.

Search Button
Click and go, or just press enter or return on your keyboard.

Search Query Box
The words you type in this box determine what results you get.  For best results, keep your search as simple as possible. Case doesn’t matter and punctuation is usually ignored.

Statistics Bar
The statistics bar is easy to overlook, but if you’re looking to improve the ranking of your site, it is an important number to watch. It is good to know the overall competition for a keyword as it will determine the difficulty of being found using that word. If you are looking to improve the ranking of your website, ideally you would target relevant terms that have as little competition as possible.

Understanding the Details of Google’s Results

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Now that you understand the template used for Google Results pages, let’s look more closely as the details of individual results.

The very first line of each result is set in blue and underlined – it is the title of a web page. The description underneath the title is called a snippet. Under the snippet is the URL of the page, followed by a cached version of that page. If more than two pages from a single site appear in the results, those results will be indented. And if even more results from the page have come up, you will be offered “More Results.”

Above this article you see that I have identified seven different elements of Results. Below you will find details about each in alphabetical order.

Cached
Cache is a snapshot of data which can be accessed at a later time. The next time that information is requested, it can be presented to you quicker. Let’s say that you are viewing a website, going back and forth between pages. Every single time you return to a page, your computer doesn’t have to reach out to the server requesting the information over and over again. It can simply retrieve it from its local cache.

Each time Google’s robots visit a website, they store a copy of that page in Google’s cache. In the event that the page is not working, Google can show the cached page.

Indented Result
When multiple results are found from the same website, the most relevant result is listed first, with other relevant pages indented below.

More Results
Click on this link and you will be presented with a new google search results page limited to that website.

Page Title
In January’s edition of SHOUT! I included an article about the importance of Page Titles. Google generates the Page TItle from the Title tag on the web page. You can see how the words you choose directly affect what appears on the results page. This is also a clickable link to the returned result.

Snippet
A Snippet is a short excerpt of text that describes what you might find on the linked page. This information usually comes from the meta description tag on the web page.

URL of the Result
This is the address of and link to the returned result.