When building your website, should you concentrate on content or site graphics (the artwork, the
banners, the product photos, the bells and whistles)?
Ideally, if you are trying to gain business or sell something, content is the most important
factor. You need to make sure people know immediately what you are offering, and how it will
help them - what is in it for the customer. If they can read it and understand it as soon as they
glance at your site, then you reach your goal.
Adding the extras to your site may or may not be a good option. Graphics and colors tend to take too much time
to load up, and people tend to click away if they have to wait more than 5-10 seconds. You might want
to add some color in places, but not too much, or soften the white background. You might want to add
navigation buttons, but perhaps not many photos or banners. It will depend on what you are promoting. If
you are selling a product, then you should have a photo, or as many photos to show that are needed so people
can see what it is about, and can do.
Any time you add graphics or photos or color, make sure to compress them prior to adding them to the
site. Make them as compact as possible without losing important quality. You can use compression tools
to check both your site loading time (see below), and to compress graphics. Try to keep the entire site
at a 25-35 K size. Look for your site file in the computer and right click your mouse on it, then look at
properties on the menu. On the properties you will see the file size.
As you are adding content to your site, do concentrate on using keywords so that people will be able to
find your site on a search. Don't use them in any unnatural way - use them only in sentences that will
sound "natural" when saying or speaking them.
Keep tweaking your site after you've uploaded it - you can compare it to the competition and
keep working on yours - make it search friendly and customer friendly. Once you get your site
optimized for the customer, it will go a long way in getting customers to come back, and to buy or
use what you offer.
