Online Course

Subject: Determining and implementing a theme and a purpose for your site

As I watched the Olympics this year, one sport that grabbed my attention was the Biathlon. This is where an athlete skis for some distance, stops, and has to shoot five consecutive targets. Now these targets are stationary, but the fact that the athlete has just stopped skiing makes hitting them accurately doubly difficult. But just imagine how hard it would be like if those targets were moving!

All those webmasters out there know that running a website is very much like the biathlon. You are running around actually running the business, and then you have to stop and work on maintaining the website. Difficult? Yes. But most of us compound that degree of difficulty by trying to hit moving targets we've created through lack of planning.

What do I mean by this? I mean, that most of us have never sat down and figured out what the purpose for our site is. (To sell a whole bunch of stuff, right?) But are there other purposes that compliment that purpose, like: have we chosen a complimentary theme that runs through our promotion campaign? Or is it a simple hit and miss effort?

Let me talk briefly about my own site so you can see what I mean. When I started, I knew a few things: My purpose was to bring good, quality Christian information and reading material to visitors. The forms this would take were in my novels, in my articles, and in stories from others. (Trust me, it wasn't that concrete at the time, but that was the general idea.)

The theme I chose was peace. My first site designer thought I was crazy to be so adamant about this point, but it paid off. I would get comments about how peaceful my site was to visit. Funny, how I never outright mentioned that theme to any visitor on the site, and yet it came through in my presentation.

To find a theme, I asked myself, "What am I about? What is my business about? What is my writing about? What do I want others to take away from my site?" Once I came up with the theme peace, I then had to implement it.

How did I implement my theme? Colors. I chose the colors I used very carefully. In fact, my second web designer went through several color changes before I was comfortable with the final color's alignment with peace. Second, graphics-my signature graphic is a rose, but not just any rose. It is a secret rose that is a hybrid of the peace rose. You will also notice the dove in the top right corner of every page of my site. That graphic is courtesy of designer #2 who (once he figured out I was serious about this) took the peace idea and found ways to further implement it.

The theme went farther than that, however. In designing my site, it was very important to me that visitors not get frustrated by anything on the site, so I made sure that navigation was straightforward and understandable. I did this by placing navigation bars at the top and bottom of the page. (This is also why I am seriously thinking about changing my guestbook; I've had too many people tell me they couldn't figure out how to use it. To me, that's a problem that goes right back to destroying the theme on my site).

Theme is carried right on over into the content on my site. Designer #1 once posted a how-to-use-an-element-of-the-site link that he had pulled off the 'net. Problem was there were sarcastic references to the intelligence of the visitor imbedded in the FAQ page. I think it was meant to be humorous, but it conflicted with my theme, so it had to go.

I think that it is critical before you do anything further to figure out what target you are trying to hit. Think about your purpose and determine a theme surrounding that. Maybe your site is about athletic shoes, and you want your theme to be speed and agility. Think then, about ways that theme can underlie your site design. Maybe your site is about kid's play equipment. Then think of ways to make the site fun.

This is not an exact science, but as we go forward, having your theme and purpose already set will decrease the amount of time you spend shooting at targets that aren't even there!

Where to Go from Here:

--Surf the web and find sites that have themes and those that don't. What ways do the webmasters who have a theme use it? Where do they stray from that theme?

--Can you guess a site's purpose just by reading the opening copy?

--Examine your own site. What is your theme? Can you surmise your purpose?

--If there isn't a theme or a purpose to your site or if it is poorly executed or thought out, spend some time asking yourself:

· What do I want to give my visitors when they come to my site?
· What do I want them to leave thinking about my site?
· What overall message do I want to convey?
· How could that be better portrayed?

--Look in particular at color, graphics, design elements, and the content offered. Does your site mesh with your theme and purpose? Or are you hitting and missing on a variety of counts?

For the first nine months that my site was online, I was literally stumbling around in the dark. The phrase "beg, steal, or borrow" comes to mind. I read books on Internet Marketing, every article in Time and Money magazine about the subject, bought several magazines off the rack that promised to give me some small nugget of guidance as to what I was doing. I kept my ears to the ground, followed every lead I could rake up, and often found myself overwhelmed and totally frustrated.

Then I found an online marketing course which helped me do a 180. It, too, was overwhelming, but the information was topnotch. What I found though was that even the little toss-off hints greatly changed how I was doing things. One of these hints was the importance of keywords. At the time my approach had been haphazard at best. After reading these manuals, I stopped what I was doing, went back and reassessed my efforts. It took awhile, but here are the three things I concentrated on.

Finding my target audience. Up to this point, I was just hoping that somebody, anybody would come visit my site. I didn't know about qualified visits, nor was my promotion campaign aimed at anyone-it was aimed at everyone, and not making much headway. So, I backtracked and asked myself, "Who is this message most likely to affect?" My answer: Christian women. For good measure, I added Christian men and teens to the list.

Then I asked myself, "What words would I look for in a search engine if I wanted to find my site?" I started listing them: Christian, faith, women, novels, writing, romance, relationships, God, love, inspirational, spiritual, character, fiction…

When I could think of no more, I put this list aside for the time being and began another line of questioning. "What can my site give to a visitor who happens by? What problem can I help solve for them?" You will notice that this question is tied up firmly with purpose and theme as well. I decided one problem facing many of my visitors is a total frustration with the entertainment junk that's on the market today. So I took that "hook," and coupled it with my keywords, added it to my purpose and made sure that it meshed with my theme. That's where I started when I sat down to write my opening page.

A couple last thoughts, the trash entertainment angle was great, but I also wanted to present a positive angle to my site in my online promotions as well. Therefore, in cooperation with that angle, I developed my signature line: "You'll feel better for the experience!" Do you see how this conveys my theme, my purpose, and my hook in one succinct phrase?

Also, many websites focus not on the customer or the visitor but on the website owner. This is a mistake. When I land on a website, I want to know what's there for me. I don't care what you've been a member of or for how many years (at least not as the first words I read on the site) nor do I want to be clonked over the head with Buy This buttons! Give me something first. Tell me what you are going to do for me! One easy way to make sure you are doing this is to count the number of you and your occurrences versus the number of I, me, we and my occurrences in the wording of your opening page. A ratio of 10 you's to 1 my is good. Much more than that, and you are focused on the wrong person. (There is a place for your accomplishments and qualifications, but it's NOT at the top of the first page!)

Where to Go from Here:

In coming lessons we will discuss how to implement the target audience, hooks, and keywords into your various design elements. For now, I want you to spend some time thinking about these things.

--What keywords would you type into a search engine to find your site. Come up with as many as you can, and type them into column 1 of a spreadsheet. Ask your spouse or a trusted friend for their suggestions. Do this more than once as new words will come to you.

--Decide who is your core target audience. This will help you come up with your keywords. What words describe these people? Where might they hang out?

--Ask yourself, "What problem can my site help solve for people who visit? Is there a hook I can use to get them to see how my site can help them solve that problem in a few short words?"

--Finally, I would suggest that now is a good time to brush up on your HTML skills. I know. I know. I had to be dragged there kicking and screaming too. However, it is worth the time spent learning the basics. The site I used to teach myself can be found at www.davesite.com (This is a great site for more than just HTML by the way!). I would suggest getting at least vaguely familiar with HTML as it will make the coming lessons much less painful.

Lesson 4 -- A Little Knowledge, A Lotta Results

Subject: Important Site Design Elements

Okay, this is where the rubber meets the road. Up to this point we've been discussing very esoteric concepts--things most designers and webmasters probably never put a lot of thought into. With this lesson, you'll be glad we've laid some ground work.

On any one webpage there are several design elements that you must make decisions about. An obvious one is graphics. With graphics, remember less is often more. The more graphics you have on a page, the slower it will load, and the more visitors you will lose before they ever even see your page. You must design with 28K modems in mind. These take forever to download graphic-intense pages. Once I tried to download a page that was a solid graphic. Kid you not, it took almost four minutes to see anything at all on this page. (It was a site I really had an interest in researching so I stayed. Not many surfers would be so diligent.) Make sure whatever graphics are on your page are small and load very quickly.

Backgrounds are another source of excruciatingly long load-time pages. Now you may be an artist who just loves the background, and that's fine if you don't mind half of your visitors leaving before they ever view your page. It's up to you, but make that decision wisely.

From a promotional standpoint, one of the most critical design elements is one that most people take for granted: the Title Bar. That's the little blue bar at the very, very top of every computer (or web) page. Many people type in "Mary's Page" or "Christian Corner." These tell me very little or nothing about the site. Worse, however, is that they tell search engines nothing about the site. We will discuss search engines in depth in the next Flight. For now, let me simply say that search engines catalog websites based on different criteria-one of these being the keyword count and one being alphabetically--both of which are affected by the Title Bar.

Therefore, when you write your Title, be aware that many search engines will pull up your Title bar as the link to your site--meaning that this is what potential visitors will read to decide whether to come to your site or not. Also, it is better to start with a word at the beginning of the alphabet for those search engines that catalog alphabetically. Finally, it is important to put as many keywords (logically, please) into your Title as possible.

Confession: except for those sites that use long, unintelligible URL address lines as their Title bar (www.pmq/trigold/zword.htm), the worst Title bar I've ever seen was the one from my first site. It read simply, "Staci Stallings-------------------------------------." (Major face scrunching CRINGE!) Oh, how far I've come. This is the title bar on the home page now: Author of Inspirational Romance, Staci Stallings, on God, relationships, love and writing. Components of this Title Bar are: Author (A--first letter of the alphabet), keywords: Inspirational romance, Author, Staci Stallings, God, relationships, love, writing. A vast improvement over the first one I'd say!

The next design element isn't even one you can see, but it's oh, so very important! It's called a META tag, and basically it's coding imbedded on your site that only the search engines read. There are two Meta tags on each page. One is for keywords, so that the search engine will correctly identify the keywords you want to be listed under. The second is for content. This Meta tag lists a short synopsis of your site that some search engines use as the "description" of your site. (To see the Meta tags on any site, go to the site, click View and Source to see the source code which will contain the Meta tags if they are used.)

A side note is that Meta tags are a good place to reiterate the keywords you use in the copy on your page. Some search engines count each occurrence of a word and tally these to decide how high your site should be placed under each keyword. Example of the keyword Meta tag from my site: <meta name="KeyWords" content="Staci Stallings, inspiration, wholesome romance novel, Christian romance novel, inspirational author, uplifting books">

Example of the content Meta tag from my site: <meta name="Description" content="Uplifting author Staci Stallings offers wholesome Christian romance novels full of inspiration and romantic fun."> For help generating Meta tags for your site, go to www.AddMe.com and click on Meta tag generator.

Another confession, this is one area that I have not given as much attention to as I probably should. Although improved, I see a lot more room for improvement here for me personally. I hope you pick up this ball and do a better job with this one than I have!

Finally, a note about doorway pages. Once your home page is functioning to perfection-the title is right, the META tags written, the promotions humming along--you can then begin to think about various other "doorway pages" on your site. A doorway page can be any page that has a different URL address (i.e. www.stacistallings.com/ vs. www.stacistallings.com/bookshelf.htm ). Each of these doorway pages should be given the same attention as the home page as far as Title, Meta tags, etc. And can then be submitted to search engines as a separate way into the site. Note of caution: Don't use the same Title or Meta Tags on a doorway page as on the home page as this could cause a search engine to throw both pages out. Doorway pages must be designed to stand alone from a search engine point of view. They can then be promoted as the opening page of a site. Thus you can exponentially increase the traffic to your site just by promoting various entry points (much like I did with this Online Course!).

Where to Go from Here:

--Taking into consideration your keywords, write your Title Bar so that it will grab the most attention in a search engine and be catagorized high in those that sort alphabetically.

--Taking into consideration your keywords, write your keyword and content Meta tags.

--Think about other pages on your site that can be used as doorway pages. (Even if you don't tackle this right now, which I don't advise-it's always good to have expansion plans in mind for down the road!)

Lesson 5 -- Doo-dads, Whatnots, and Whoseits I

Subject: Features to consider having on your site

If you've been in webmastering very long, you've heard the jargon. Much of it, I'm convinced, is used to frighten potential webmasters out of the very thought of starting a site! Nonetheless, if you're going to play the game, you have to learn the language. That's where this lesson and the next come in. These two will give you a round of definitions and ideas for things you might consider having on your site and how to use them effectively. Here we go…

An email box-in my opinion this is essential, and references to it should be scattered throughout your site. Every page should have a way to contact you. I have been to countless sites that I wanted to link to, and I could not find a contact person. Also, be sure to keep the email references current. This is sometimes easier said than done, but it is very important. A non-working email address isn't any better than a non-existent one.

A Nav Bar-this is refers to the directions you give for someone to navigate your site. A worst case scenario: you arrive at a site via the webring doorway, and although there are several webrings to choose from, there is no way to get to the home page of the site you're on! As a webmaster this is akin to suicide. Make sure your visitors can get where they want to go from every page otherwise, you've missed the point and probably lost that visitor.

A word about frames-my original site used frames to accomplish the goal of making navigation easy. However, frames will confuse search engines to the point that your entry may just be a garbled mess. Therefore, the suggestion I've heard is to stay away from frames until you are big enough so that the search engines don't matter (easy, right?)

Text links-This is the way I handle the "frames" and "nav bar" question on my current site. My nav bar is a series of text links (i.e. words that form hyperlinks to other pages in the site). For those of you schooled in HTML (you have been working on that, haven't you?), a text link is created like this:
<a href="http://www.stacistallings.com/bookshelf.htm">Bookshelf</a> The reference page is in quotations, be sure to spell it all correctly or this won't work, and the wording that will appear on your web page is between the > and the </a>. This forms the actual link. Then you can give some indication of what's on that page after it.

Banners-I've been fighting these for a week, learning to actually use them correctly on my site. A banner is an image file (a picture) that when someone clicks on it, it takes them somewhere else-either within the site or to another site on the web. Consider it an advanced text link. Actually the HTML incorporates the <a href> wording and an <img> file into one link. A very simplified version is <a href><img></a> . For those non-HTMLer's who are confused, think of the <a href> command like turning on a switch. Everything between it and the time you turn the switch off is what will be a hot hyperlink. The "off switch" is the </a>. So, you turn the switch on <a href>, you give the hyperlink wording or image, and then you turn the switch off </a>. (Sounds incredibly simple, but that </a> has caused me more than one headache!)

There is a special kind of element that I want to talk a little about. It combines several of these ideas into one concept. It didn't take me long surfing the web to find the webrings. Webrings are sites with similar messages which link together via special banners so that a visitor to one can jump from one to the next through a webring banner. These ring banners are images with several text links imbedded into them: Previous Site, Next Site, Random Site, Site List, Join the Ring.

A word of caution on using webrings: The webring does not allow you to link directly to your home page, only to the page where the webring banner appears. This means, as I said earlier, if you have a page dedicated to webrings, and a visitor gets to your site via the ring, you MUST give that visitor a way on the webring page to get to your home page! This is critical and not to be overlooked.

Where to Go from Here:

--Which of these elements do you use on your page? Which would you like to use? Or use more effectively?

--Examine other sites and see how they use these elements.

--Go to either www.webring.com or www.ringsurf.com (the two biggest hosts of webrings), find a ring you are interested in checking out and surf around it for awhile. This is a great way to see what sites similar to yours are doing, and what things to avoid!

--If you need to, go back and review the HTML lessons on text links, hyperlinks, and image insertion. Getting this one will save you a few bottles of aspirin.