Webpage Design for Program Marketing
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Linked Quotes about various subjects
MAKING YOUR PAGE
See Do-it-yourself page
Resources for Webpage Designers or
Charles Kelly's How to Make a Successful ESL/EFL Teacher's Web Page
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Curious but true: Not everyone finds producing strings of code a joyful creative project. Hounded by the demands of life's necessities- jobs, raising children, cooking- normal people who want to set up Web sites may have no urge to learn a new language, even a (relatively) simple programming language. What can these poor unfortunates do? Not to worry...There are a slew of programs that enable the masses to produce fine-looking Web pages without ever having to form strings of foreign-looking, acronym-strewn sentences that use Martian punctuation....WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) HTML editors offer the comfort of constructing Web pages using familiar building blocks: graphics and plain text. While users paste images, type text, and create effects such as frames, hyperlinks, and banners, HTML editors integrate the necessary code beneath the graphical user interface....
-Jon Halpin, easy Internet
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A byte shaved is bandwidth saved. -Charles Kelly, Quick 'n' Easy HTML File Reducer.
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METATAGS
Use plurals for your keywords. Search engines will process both the singular and plural form, repeating both is not necessary. Avoid 'word stuffing' or excessive repetition, in the keywords section of your tags which may cause your search engine to penalize your site's placement. Construct your keyword list with commas separating the words. When determining your list be sure to think like you potential customer or visitor. What terms would they use to find a site with the content, products or services your site offers? A good method to determine your keywords is to brainstorm at least 50 words then narrow down and focus on your content. Do not exceed the 200 character limit. Trying for under 150 is even better.
-Search Engine Tips, Website Garage, Netscape Net Center
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For keywords, list from the most important word the least. Start with the one word you think people will type in to find your website. (Remember to offer various ways of spelling your top keywords if there are several.) Note: - (The "keyphrases" meta tag is rarely used anymore. It's part of the "old" way of building meta tags. The thinking used to be that people typed in more then (sic) one word, ie. groupings and phrases. Webmasters forsaw this and wanted a way to make their page come up when a phrase was entered. Today, with the elimination of commas, engines can combine all keywords into an infinite array of possible combinations. Therefore, the keyphrase option is no longer necessary. Using it will not hurt as long as you keep within the proper amount of keyword density. Your title tag needs keywords in it too!
Note: - Today, title tags are still critical to rank. Avoid using "hype" words, marketing language and "Welcome to". Directories can refuse submissions with "hype" words. Since most directories list alphabetically (I know, it's unfair!), it's wise to begin the title tag with a word that begins with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet. Using symbols in the beginning of the title tag, another "old" trick, is considered SPAM now. Even more important is to pack as many of your top keywords as possible into your title tag. Don't go past 63 characters.
-Kimberly Kopp Krause, How to Construct Meta Tags: Carefully chosen keywords help people find your website.
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PUTTING IT UP
To have a website (when you don't have access to a server), you need:
1) a registrar to reserve the site name
2) a nameserver to "find" the site name when someone tries to go there
3) a virtual host that links the site name to a real HTML page
4) a real host that stores the physical HTML page
5) optionally, efforts to get the page listed on search engines (and other "marketing")
There are dozens of organizations who will play any or all of these roles for hugely varying prices -- in most cases, #3 and #4 are not even separate roles.
If one's site is to be commercial, then before long it will pay to buy a real hosting service that plays #3 and #4 at once (WITHOUT any need for URL redirection); they would be responsible for handling heavy traffic in a timely fashion. They would probably also handle your registration/nameserver (#1/#2), and supply the service of registering your site (#5) with any search engine that will listen :), and doing the meta-tag drill. The price of all this can vary wildly from maybe $50 or $75 a *month* on up.
Here's the other down side of the cheapie route (aside from potentially poor traffic handling). The URL redirection is great for a single-page web site, but if your site will have multiple pages, you have to do some funky stuff in the HTML to deal with navigation around the site. This is because the browser is showing your domain name address in the address field, and not your physical HTML locations. As you know, the BACK button works pretty weirdly and rather unsatisfactorily in a Frames environment, usually because people DON'T take these precautions. So in a stealth redirection environment, you have to consider offering a good navigation bar (and maybe BACK hyperlinks in the page itself) that's identical on each page, and you have to make creative use of the "target=" option in HTML anchors, to make navigation among your pages behave intuitively. In a hyperlink, "target=" can be used to pop up a new browser window, or "take over" a browser window from a frame, and so on.
-Dawn Amos, personal communcation
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WEBPAGE DESIGN
Note: See other linked quotes on webpage design
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The internet has staggering promise, but it looks like a research project from the institute for the aesthetically challenged. 25 years from now it will be a great design. -Bran Ferrin, co-founder, Applied Minds, in Wired Magazine, 1-2001, p. 183.
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The fundamental failure of most graphic, product, architectural and even urban design is its insistence on serving the God of Looking-Good rather than the God of Being-Good. -Richard Saul Wurman, in Wired Magazine, 1-2001, p. 183.
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... students value consistency and direct, concise text...users are not always going to take time to read about the "hows" and "whys" of information. Most of the time, students want information "just in time, just for me". Our challenge is to meet user needs without sacrificing valuable information that we need to impart. We should strive to make information-seeking as seamless as possible...
-Lucretia McCully, Case Study: Student Use of a Library Web Page
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Some consequences of ignoring standards are obvious: the most basic consequence is that you will restrict access to your site. How much business sense does it make to limit your audience to only a fraction of those who wish be a part of it? For a business site, denying access to even small portions of a target audience can make a big difference to your profit margin...
-Web Standards Project, What are Web standards and why should I use them?
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HTML wasn't designed with desktop publishing requirements in mind, and so anything to get precise layout in standard HTML is going to be a kludge, and until HTML 4 is widely deployed you'll either have to kludge it or insist that your audience uses a browser that implements much of HTML 4 such as the latest release of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
-A. Richmond Page Layout, Margins, Indenting, and Columns. Web Authoring and Design, Internet.com.
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Select a typeface font for your body copy that is easy to read, such as Arial or Times. Make it at least 12 pt. Be aware that text size generally appears larger on a PC than on a Mac.
Background images. First-generation web sites often include an organization's logo - or some repeating design - in the background of the page. Busy e-commerce sites have gotten rid of this idea, but you still notice it often on the sites of smaller companies or nonprofit organizations. Do your visitors a favor and get rid of background graphics as quickly as you can. They are distracting and often take too long to download. Furthermore, the lines and colors of the background graphic can compete with your type, making it very difficult to read the body text.
For much the same reason, avoid using black or a dark color as a background.We work with a number of architectural firms and furniture manufacturers who love the design sophistication of black. On the web (as in print), a black background with white type is extremely hard to read, especially for multiple paragraphs of body copy set in a small type size. On the other hand, for headings or section dividers, light-colored type on a dark-colored bar can be a simple, effective way to add interest to a page.
There's another problem with using white type on a black screen background. When you print the page, it often comes out blank. This occurs because many browsers have a default setting to print background colors as white. (Don't change this setting because it saves ink!) The result can be a white page with white type.
Never, ever, make your users scroll horizontally. This could make them repeatedly scroll left and right just to read a full line of type. Instead, limit your content to a screen width of about 590 pixels, which will not require horizontal scrolling on any computer monitor. (Remember, various people have their screens set to various resolutions, affecting how much content will be visible on their screen without scrolling. -J. Lehrer, J. and S. Marberry, Too Hard to Read? (2000, Aug. 30)
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FLASH & SHOCKWAVE
About 99% of the time, the presence of Flash on a website constitutes a usability disease. Although there are rare occurrences of good Flash design (it even adds value on occasion), the use of Flash typically lowers usability. In most cases, we would be better off if these multimedia objects were removed.
Flash tends to degrade websites for three reasons: it encourages design abuse, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction principles, and it distracts attention from the site's core value.
-Jakob Nielson, Alertbox 10-29-00
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COMPUTER TRENDS
The Internet doubles every year and has done so ever since it was founded. Currently, the Web grows even faster (doubling every four months or so), though this higher growth rate will have to slow down eventually since the Web is a subset of the Internet and thus cannot outgrow it. In comparison, computers double in power approximately every 18 months, following Moore's Law.
-Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox 4/96
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...2.1 billion unique, publicly available pages exist on the Internet...the Internet is growing at an explosive rate of more than 7 million pages each day, indicating that it will double in size by early 2001. Cyveillance further projects that the Internet's highest rate of growth is still to come. -Diane Perlman, Cyveillance, 7/10/00
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...the United States' dominance online is fading. The Computer Industry Almanac reports that in 1995, North Americans accounted for 69% of the online population at 31 million users. Today, North America accounts for less than half of the Web population with only 43% of the world's users. In 2005, the Computer Industry Almanac predicts that North America's 232 million users will account for only 30% of the world's online population. Western Europe's 214 million, in comparison, will contribute 28% of the world's users.
-PC Almanac, Who's Going Online? Closing The Demographic Gaps
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The number of Internet users in the Asia Pacific region is expected to increase by 72 percent this year to 72 million, according to a new study.
Research firm Gartner Group further predicts that the number of web user in the region will reach 188 million by 2004. Japan, the region's largest Internet market, is expected to increase its online population from 17.4 million last year to 64.5 million in 2004. Gartner highlighted China, India, and South Korea as potentially large markets in the future.
-NUA Internet Surveys, Jan. 8, 2001
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There's a movement afoot to put URLs out to pasture. The RealNames Internet Keywords system aims to replace the tedious URL format with a simpler, more intuitive system using real names...RealNames Corp. claims its brainchild can enhance and improve the search experience by increasing the relevance of information a query delivers, immediately linking you with the information you seek...The Internet keywords system is now the default in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 browser, and search engisnes such as Altavista, Looksmart, and Infoseek have partnered with RealNames to use the Internet Keywords system.
-Easy Internet, Fall 2000, Yahoo Internet Life Magazine
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WIRELESS
Early on, wireless was criticized for offering information but not the ability to act on it. Now wireless stock trading is becoming routine. Sprint users can not only look up a movie's time but buy a ticket as well, and, by next summer, reserve a bucket of popcorn, too...However, having a mobile Web experience that rivals a wired one might still be a decade away, according to Craig Mathias of the Farpoint Group, an advisory firm specializing in the wireless industry. -Rita Ciolli, "Consumers connecting as wireless hooking up with the Web," Chicago Tribune, 10-19-2000, Sec. 8, p. 12.
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Bruce Ryon, vice president of Media Metrix's new-media group...said that the widespread use of the wireless Web in Asia and Europe does not offer a model of what is likely to happen in the United States....the relative expense of wireless browsing means that North Americans "will not use it for killing time, like people in Europe do." -Ian Austen, "Web users discover they're on different pages when they go wireless," New York Times News Service, Chicago Tribune, 10-19-2000, Sec. 8, p. 22.
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Mobile internet will be big once we get better devices...don't spend screen space on navigation features except for the most necessary ones. With less space for navigation, it becomes more important to stick to standard conventions for where to go and how to explain the options. -Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox 7/23/00
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IMPORTANT THINGS STUDENTS CONSIDER WHEN GOING OVERSEAS
(those who planned to attend college)
1. academic qualifications of teachers
2. quality of the academic program
3. IEP's relationship w/college or univ.
4. safety of city
5. class size
6. availability of TOEFL prep.
7. availability of conditional admission
8. fast response of IEP to request
9. reputation of IEP
10. cost of IEP
(those who did not plan to attend college)
1. quality of academic program
2. class size
3. safety of city
4. academic qualifications of teachers
5. reputation of the IEP
6. program is located in the USA
7. fast response of IEP to request
8. number of levels of instruction
9. cost of study
10. length of course
NOT IMPORTANT:
IEP is member of AAIEP, UCIEP
videos
diversity of student body
weather
-Schmidt & Simon (1995). Student recruitment from the perspective of current IEP students, Presentation at TESOL '95, Long Beach CA
photo (Spider Web) by Jim Leverett
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