Turbo-charge your website’s performance June 2, 2010 No Comments
A while ago I discussed how you could benefit from making use of caching to speed up page load times. Today I’ll discuss some more easy ways to speed your whole site up.
Try and consolidate files into a single file where possible. This mainly applies to Javascript and CSS files. Many people load at least 3 or so Javascript files on their sites, so reducing this to a single file will reduce the number of HTTP requests that the browser has to make. CSS is often split across multiple files too. If at all possible, try and merge the files.
CSS3 – New opportunities in website design May 26, 2010 No Comments
When CSS first came about, it liberated websites from their dull tabular layouts. Today CSS3 is still pushing boundaries by adding more and more ways for web designers to style their websites without resorting to excessive images and hacks.
Some elements of the new CSS specification may not seem particularly useful at first, but as you use more and more of it, new ideas for website layouts that simply weren’t possible before can now come to life.
Why do you need to backup? May 20, 2010 No Comments
Back up routines are important for anyone working on a computer never mind businesses. When working with computers it’s all too easy to forget about backing up your work. There are hundreds of ways you can lose data such as power surges, data corruption, accidental deletion, the list is endless. Read the rest of this entry »
Things to consider when choosing a quality domain name May 13, 2010 No Comments
Many people rush into buying a domain before taking a step back and thinking about the quality of the domain. Just becuase its available doesnt mean you should snatch it. Read the rest of this entry »
Tim’s top tips for a user-friendly site April 29, 2010 No Comments
One of the most common things I spot day to day is sites that turn off visitors. Nobody wants to see how talented your flash designer is or navigate through over-complex navigation or tab systems. Visitors are looking for answers and your site needs to be geared towards delivery in order to retain the visitor.
The key to retaining visitors is to deliver your content in a clean and well-structured manner.
Data Data Data April 15, 2010 No Comments
As a techie at redsauce.com I just love data. Data can mean new pages, it can mean new categories or it can underline the need for new products.
9 times out of 10 data will show an opportunity to fatten your site with new content. Whether it’s market data from external sources e.g market trends, product trends, competitor analysis, there is always benefit in putting in some elbow grease to see where the opportunities are.
Read the rest of this entry »
To cache or not to cache? April 14, 2010 No Comments
Sometimes there are certain pages on your site that you don’t want caching by the search engines for whatever reason. Today I’ll discuss a few ways in which you can achieve this without harming your site’s SEO efforts.
Firstly, why might you want to ‘hide’ certain pages from the Google index anyway? The main reason is to avoid duplicated content. Sometimes there will be pages that your visitors will find highly useful, for example a page which lists articles relating to a certain tag. If this page were to be cached it would be likely to contain duplicated content from elsewhere on the site. Other pages that you may not want to be cached would be login pages, restricted areas of your site etc.
Fixing CSS issues in IE6 March 31, 2010 No Comments
If you’re a web designer/developer or have dabbled in CSS it’s likely that you have come across problems when dealing with Internet Explorer 6. Although Microsoft are now working towards IE9, about 10% of visitors to websites are still using this decrepit browser.
What’s so bad about IE6? Other than the security issues, IE6 is phenomenally bad at displaying web pages to current web standards. Many newly built sites are shunning IE6, because of the headaches it causes. Although it’s tempting, this isn’t practical. 10% of visitors may not seem like a lot, but this could affect your bottom line quite badly.
Pagination – A beginner’s guide March 24, 2010 No Comments
What the heck is Pagination I hear you cry. Pagination, in the context I am going to discuss is splitting lots of data across multiple pages. For example, you may have a list of 50 products which all appear on one page. By adding pagination, this list of products can be split across 5 pages with 10 products on each for example.
The major benefits of adding pagination to data sets on your site are:
- You can add more pages to your site increasing your authority
- By chunking the data in this way, you make it easier for the user to understand
- You can reduce pageload time and server bandwidth by showing smaller amounts of data
Ensure your site is crawlable March 18, 2010 No Comments
Site architecture is one of the most important things to get right online, Spending money on usability and marketing is a waste if your site cant be seen by Google.
I know this is web basics but if you look around the internet there are many websites including big brands that have sites that are not crawlable. The old hat way of developing dynamic websites is to have selectable categories and a search box so that users can find products using a search query. This architecture is outdated , all pages need to be physically linked to enable the Google spiders to race through your site and pick through all the juicy content.
What else can assist the spiders in indexing?
Correct Robot text – Robot text basically gives the spiders instructions on which pages to crawl and which to not. Insure this is correct
Create an XML site map. An XML site map is a good way of giving Google a map of your whole site architecture, ensuring that no pages are missed in the index.
Ensure that any flash navigation is also linked through HTML. Although some people suggest Google is reading flash with varying success i am a firm believer that flash doesn’t assist speed indexing.
