What To Include

There are a couple of things that might be a good idea to include on your site no matter what it is about. There are also some things that you should try to avoid.

Comprehensive Content

When you consider your site good, it's not finished, not even closed. It should be the best! Why should someone stop by at your site if there is someone who is providing the same thing but better. Make your site the best for your subject area. Depth of content and real quality information is usually the most important parts in making a comprehensive site.

Title

What you choose as a title on your different pages is more important. There are various of reasons for this. A page which is bookmarked will use the title, a search engine will use your title in their search lists, etc. So it's not a good idea to call your first page 'Welcome', because it doesn't say anything about your site. Also, a search engine's spider usually get more documents than just your title page, therefore it might be a good idea to include the name of your site or company name on every page you have. Do also make sure that the title really tells the visitor what is on the page, a title should make sense even if taken out of context.

On Every Page

Some things are often a must to include on every page of your site. This is because users don't like to "search" for your e-mail address, for example, if thay cannot find it immediately they'd rather skip it. When accessing your site from a search engine it's not always your title page which will appear, therefore not everyone reading your site will know what you wrote on the title page. Here are some things that might be a good idea to include on all your pages:

• Author of page/Webmaster
• E-Mail address
• Business or Organization
• The name of your site
• Link to your title page
• Links to major sections of your site.
• Date of last update
• Copyright notice

At your site maybe not everything is necessary to include, this list is just some ideas of what might be needed.

Different Versions

Depending on your site you can provide different versions to use. If you know you have users with lots of different web browsers you can have one frame and one non-frame version of your site. If you've got lots of graphics, provide a high and low bandwidth version.Think what might be annoying for some users but liked by others and you'll come up with reasons to have different versions.

Avoid Unfinished Pages

Never put something online if it's not finished. Nothing is more annoying than getting to a page which just has a "Under Construction" sign. If you must put an unfinished page online then at least try to include something that might be useful. Writing the asumed date it will be finished might also be a good idea.

Last updated 970626