Web Critic

So you are now looking at this page and thinking that it’s my website called Web Critic.

In many ways you are right and no doubt you will like or dislike the look and feel of the site. The only error that you can make at this point is thinking that it is a website. It is NOT!

You are only looking at the image of the website. A website is the code and structure that is written behind what you see. Google and all the other search engines rate you on what they see in the code, not the image or anything that you see on your monitor. But if you click on View- Source from the menu bar at the top left of the screen you will see the code…now that’s a website!

Subjective opinions based on image will never be a reliable method to determine the likely success of a web project but there are plenty of people that do…and that’s why 9 out of 10 websites will never bring a commercial success.

Marketing personnel with no practical knowledge of the www really do need to listen to advice and find out about the very large power in a website. It’s not just about image, it’s about words mainly. Image is a given…it’s the  written offer that’s important to a product seeker.

I trebled my turnover in 4 years with just a website. Try and speak with someone who understands web success instead of appreciating pretty images of yourself and your company. Failure is truly ugly.

Call me if you are serious.

Till soon,

TWC

You can send anything you like in the post, by email, by smoke signal or by video. But are they receiving it?

YouTube specifically recommend the MPEG4 format (DivX, Xvid), a common compressed video format at 320×240 resolution with MP3 audio. YouTube deliver video at 200kb/s in Flash Video (.flv) As a guide, this is 40 times smaller than a commercial DVD.

So a short uncompressed video at standard definition is not even close to being suitable for delivery from the web/website…just too large! Nobody has the patience to download 100s of MB of video or tolerate endless buffering, so present it nicely please!

Decision time…you must either scale the video down in a video editing suite like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro and deliver via the web… or if very high quality is essential, use good old disc media.

And then there is the receiving of this information. If it’s a corporate client that’s receiving it, check that they have Flash or Quick Time installed. A high percentage of corporate servers and PCs don’t allow it to be installed so they can’t watch it.

The web is  great for sending many things but please understand and check that the client can receive them. The web still has some way to go!

After all, it’s about them, not you.

Till soon,

TWC

The last bank holiday is over and my coding genius partner is lost in The Lake District… his stag weekend…I hope he has some brain cells left.

Found a site today for care homes for the old. It looks like a great place to be looked after. I suppose it’s the middle aged ‘children’ that have to find and organise care for their elders but the future residents of a home should be able to have a look themselves, Disability access (eg dyspraxia and head stick users) and accessible website for the partially sighted are now the law. Ignore this, lose business and get fined. This applies in both the commercial world for able bodied people and especially where it’s  needed most!

I had this conversation with an online clothes company…they got stuck on why won’t you sell a smart suit to a partially sighted man?

No naming and shaming today…maybe I haven’t got everything right myself. All comments appreciated.

Till soon

TWC