Megan — Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:05:00 +0000

Well, as a Canadian, I would like to know if you can send your product to me before I get to the order form - preferably before I get to the site at all. There are way too many e-commerce sites that only offer their products or services in the US but don't tell you that until you get to the order form.

About biographical information - do you mean profiles of the VP's and stuff? Nobody really cares except the people being profiled, their friends, and maybe prospective employees preparing for an interview. Of course, the VP's are the ones in charge and it may not be possible to convince them that it's not necessary.

Another thing - watch your download speeds. Sure, high speed access is becoming more common, but it's still not the norm.

Mountain WorldWide — Wed, 09 Feb 2000 22:54:00 +0000

It's also a good idea to keep as much of the content in the first fold as possible(including the navigation menu) so the visitor doesn't have to scroll to find information. Making your web pages short and to the point allow the visitor find information quickly without having to tunnel through mountains of information that do not pertain to them.

Similarly, it is important to keep the number of times a visitor must "click" to a minimum. The more links a visitor must click on to find what he/she wants, the more visitors your web site will lose. Many sources estimate that for each click it takes to find information or a product, you lose 1/2 of your audience. So it is important organize your site in a way that allows visitors to find information in the fewest clicks possible.

What are your opinions on:

*Including biographical information
*When should sites give shipping information

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Mountain WorldWide
SE Optimization, Banner & Opt-In Email Advertising, Media Planning, and more...

[This message has been edited by Mountain WorldWide (edited 09 February 2000).]

Megan — Tue, 08 Feb 2000 15:31:00 +0000

I just thought of more. I good site needs to be compatible on as many browsers, platforms, and screen resolutions as possible. No site should be "best viewed with Browser X/at Resolution Y" - nobody's going to switch broswers or change their screen resolution just to look at your page. Splash pages are totally uselss in most cases (unless you're providing some sort of viewing option like frames/no frames or flash/html)

Megan — Tue, 08 Feb 2000 14:58:00 +0000

Every Website Needs

content that is useful
a purpose
an organized navigational structure and a menu on every page
a title and good logo
colours that match, nice looking graphics, catchy domain name are all good to have as well

No Website Needs

any looping animation
frames, especially more than two on a page
"useless junk" - guestbooks, polls that don't relate to the site content etc.
annoying stuff like background music and pop-up windows

I agree with the things that Justin mentioned as well.

Justin S — Tue, 08 Feb 2000 13:45:00 +0000

For me I think a company professional if their site is. Graphics, design, layout, and maybe some flash multimedia. Oh yeah, content is thrown in there also Somewhere...

I don't find sites professional when:

1) ...All their graphics are cheesy clip art.
2) ...They have lots of ads. If your a company making money then you don't need ads.
3) ...They use FrontPage.
4) ...Their graphics are outdated.
5) ...They have no real content.

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Mountain WorldWide — Tue, 08 Feb 2000 08:20:00 +0000

Here's a topic where everyone's opinion is important and you don't have to go and wait for a site to load. In your opinion, what are the most important points of a web site...and what are things that web sites could do without.

Make a list of as many as you like of each. This should benefit us all.

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Mountain WorldWide
SE Optimization, Banner & Opt-In Email Advertising, Media Planning, and more...