More and more people are realising the importance of Web Usability and the benefits it can bring. A quick search on Google will yield thousands of examples.

My aim for this article is not to explain usability in detail or explain it’s need and importance, rather I’m going to present some very interesting statistics of how users use a website depending on various factors.

All the stats should be self-explanatory…

*These statistics have been gathered from various sources outlined below.

Success Rates and Experience

Average Time Spent on the homepage

You only have minimum time to get the message across otherwise you will lose your visitor. Apple probably do it the best:

Page Views by the Screenful

Homepage vs. Interior Pages

Scrolling by Page Type

Most Hated Advertising Techniques

Browser Statistics (March 2002-2010)

All web developers will be glad to see IE6 on the decrease however approx 9% of users still use IE6 so if your an online business, it’s vital to have your website working with IE6.

JavaScript Statistics (January 2000-2008)

Display Resolution (January 2000-2010)

Colour Depth

Sources:

• Book: Prioritizing Web Usability
• Web: W3Schools

There’s now over a billion people online around the world, and 78% of that one billion do not speak English as a first language (Internetworldstats.com), so if you’re launching a website that’s just going to be in English, it’s worth taking into account that you’re only going to be reaching out to 22% of your potential audience.

This is especially relevant if your website is in the business of selling, because research has shown that 85% of consumers won’t buy a product from a website if they can’t access information in their own language (Common Sense Advisory, 2006). So if you’re planning to branch out with localised multilingual sites, it’s worth taking a few factors into account before you get started.

Every cultural group has its own particular cultural quirks, its own particular consumer behaviour and its own aesthetic sensibility, and this has been proven to relay into website design and e-commerce. Psychology professors Denise Park of the University of Illinois and Michael W. Chee of the SingHealth Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory in Singapore conducted research in 2007 on the ways in which Asian and American subjects processed information. Using cognitive tests and Magnetic Resonance Imaging they proved that the Asian subjects tended to pay more attention to the context, or background, of images, while the American subjects paid more attention the central or dominant feature of the image.

How does this apply to website design, you may ask? Well, it means if you’re designing a website for an American audience, you’ll want to get straight to the point, but if you’re designing a site for the Chinese market, you might want to focus more on your imagery, background and the overall message your site is sending out.

When you’re looking at building a basic site which can then be translated into a series of localised domains for different markets, it’s a good idea to consider all of your different markets and what they’ll each require before starting out. Here are a few tips that might save you a lot of time and hassle down the road.

Top Level Domains

First things first, get yourself an in-country Top Level Domain (TLD) for each target market – not only will it make you look more reputable to the customers, but it will also help with boosting your rankings with the in-country search engines.

Design

You need a design that is going to have strong branding and be instantly recognisable to link all of your localised sites together, but also flexible enough to cope with the different aesthetic demands of each different cultural group.

For instance, you might use more imagery and colour in your sites for Asian markets, while your European sites might be more minimalist, with navigation via drop down menus rather than via on-screen gifs.

Keeping your navigation bars horizontal should save you some headaches when it comes to switching between right-to-left and left-to-right languages, and remember that different character sets will mean changing your line widths and heights.

Colour

Colour is a crucial point – it can signify a lot, and can mean very different things in different countries. For instance, in the west, green is generally the colour of nature and the environment, but it’s also a special colour in Islam.

Don’t mess up like telecom company Orange did when launching in Northern Ireland and choose a colour inextricably linked with religion and conflict. If you’re after a safe and happy medium, green or blue backgrounds with black or white text have been shown to be the most universally approved.

Font

Keep it simple – Times New Roman, Arial or Verdana are generally considered the least offensive to the eye.

Imagery

Remember that your imagery will need to change between localised sites – your Indian customers don’t care to see a bunch of photos of Russian people enjoying your product, and vice versa; customers need to be able to relate directly to the product.

As always, when designing across cultures, sensitivity is key – if you’re making a site for a conservative culture, steer away from all indecent imagery. Many cultures will find certain imagery more offensive that others.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will save you plenty of hassle by allowing table-less design and by keeping your content separate from your design – absolutely essential if you’re planning to change the language of your content between each local site.

You don’t want to have to go redesigning every page from scratch. CSS also allows for smaller file sizes, which is handy for fast page-loading.

Unicode

If you’re switching your text between half a dozen languages, you’re going to need a flexible character encoding tool. Luckily Unicode UTF-8 provides exactly that, with a unique code for every character in over 90 languages, so whether you’re called upon to switch text into simplified Chinese characters or to add in a few German ‘Eszett’ symbols (ß), you’ll be covered.

Flash

Try and avoid Flash (and Java) wherever possible – not only will Flash files slow down your page load times (which is no good for countries without high speed internet, not to mention that it’s now believed that Google has made page-load times a factor in its rankings algorithm), but text embedded in Flash files is also invisible to search engine bots, meaning it’s useless for your SEO strategy.

Translate

Perhaps most important of all – make sure that your content is correct. Web users are a savvy lot, especially when it comes to buying online, and if your copy contains spelling mistakes, or uses odd phrasing, or just feels ‘off’, then it’s unlikely you’re going to convince the customer that you’re a reliable retailer.

As tempting as it might be to save money by sticking a Google Translate widget on each page, automatic translation devices have no feel for the subtleties or the rhythm of a language – to do it properly you need to get a professional translator working into their language to translate your copy and make sure that it’s culturally appropriate for the target market.

This is especially true for your SEO keywords – the direct English translation is not always the most popular search term – a quick spot of research on a keyword search tool such as Google Adwords will help you to figure out which keywords to use prominently in your copy.

Over the course of this year, I have worked with hundreds of websites and have seen some great first page Google rankings for them. However there are those few sites which didn’t rank too well until some minor changes were implement. Such small changes that most people would consider them to be worthless. In my opinion, priceless.

Note: This Article isn’t for the beginner in SEO. If you’re new to SEO, then head over to Web Designer Wall and read their SEO Guide for Designers.

Throughout this post, I’m going to use Just Search (http://www.justsearching.co.uk) as an example.

Many of you will wonder why I choose the company Just Search. Well, these guys must know the Google Search Engine quite well; Just Search is the highest ranking company in Google UK for the term SEO:

Brief History of Just Search

Just Search was founded in 2003 and has developed into the leading Search Engine Marketing Company in the United Kingdom. They gained themselves first page listings for many SEO related keywords and have also gained first page results for their clients.

Just Search was recently acquired by Get Updated – A Swedish Internet Marketing company who operate in Sweden, UK, US, France and Germany.

Their clients include the likes of Sports Direct.

Lesser known SEO Ranking Factors

1. Order of Keywords in the <title> tag

It has been noted from the SEO world that the positioning of the keywords in the <title> tag is important and sometimes is the missing factor to rank on page 1 of Google.

Other points to note involving the <title> tag:

• Try to keep this unique throughout the site
• Shouldn’t be too short or too long
• Some SEO experts consider the <title> tag to be one of the major factors Search engines look at to rank a site
• Google SERPs display about 65 characters from the title tag
• Place your most important Keyword at the beginning

Examples - Just Search:

• http://www.justsearching.co.uk/
  Just Search » Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) » Internet Marketing (10 words/58 chars)
• http://www.justsearching.co.uk/web_analytics.html:
  Just Search » Intelligent Web Analytics » Internet Marketing Solutions (10 words/61 chars)
• http://www.justsearching.co.uk/pay_per_click.html
  Just Search » Pay-Per-Click Advertising » Internet Marketing Solutions (9 words/62 chars)
• http://www.justsearching.co.uk/seo-agencies.html
  Just Search » Become a Just Search reseller » Internet Marketing Solutions (12 words/63 chars)

About 62 character and 10 words seems to be very good for the <title>. (A maximum of 90 characters is recommended).

2. Placement of the <h1> tag in a page

The <h1> tag should relatively be placed somewhere high in the HTML code and physically prominent on a page.

Example - Just Search:

Now this is a nifty trick! The <h1> seems to appear below the <h2>’s however if you look at the source code of the page or display the page with CSS switched off, you’ll see the <h1> in actual fact appears before the <h2>’s. (Uses a large CSS margin).

3. Number of IP address changes

Search engines take note of the IP address of the site, the number of times it changes and how often it changes. If the IP address of a site changes frequently, then this will lead to a loss of trust in your site and potentially a loss of rankings.

By submitting and verifying your site in Yahoo Site Explorer, you can get to know the IP history of a domain.

4. Google can read basic JavaScript Links

Using basic JavaScript to display links so Page Rank will be preserved for other pages doesn’t work anymore. Google can read and follow basic JavaScript links.

One option is to use some complex JavaScript to encrypt links from the Search Engines.

5. How often a page changes affects SEO

Changing the contents of a page in large chunks frequently can lead to search engines loosing trust in your site. This only applies to content that generally stays untouched (such as an About page or Welcome text).

Example - Just Search:

All the content on the Just Search homepage is static and seems to remain untouched with the exception of the two blog feeds above the footer.

6. Page Download Speed / Content to Code Ratio

A theory amongst top SEO’s is that the page download speed is going to become (or already is!) a ranking factor for sites. One proof of this is the fact the Google and Yahoo have both released a Firefox addon to measure the page download speed:

Google Page Speed
Yahoo! YSlow for Firebug

I personally haven’t used both in much detail but I am aware Google’s Page Speed optimises the images and CSS for you automatically!

• Stick to minimum code
• Keep CSS and JavaScript files external
• Avoid using HTML <table> tags unless you have to

Just Search have a good tool to measure the code to content ratio of any page.

Example - Just Search:

Running the Just Search homepage through their code to content tool:

Seems like Just Search are doing fairly good here!

7. Social Media

Social media is really kicking off like it has never been and there is so much information that can be gather using social media. Due to this, many SEO’s think social media will become a major ranking factor in the near future.

It has recently been noted in the SEO world that if a fresh story/page on a website gets very popular, Google will rank it high for a short period.

(There was a recent story on the Guardian website regarding BBC & SEO that gained a lo of popularity in a short time span and so was ranking at position 11 in Google for the search phrase “SEO” for a short period!!)

Example - Just Search:

Just search have some nifty looking web 2.0 Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn icons:

And on their blog, a Sphinn and TweetMeme button:

8. Contextual Backlinks have more value than standalone ones

A link to your site that appears within a related paragraph is better than a link on it’s own.

Example - Just Search:

Well, the link in this post to Just Search is a good contextual link!!

9. First Anchor text only

If there are two links pointing to the same page on your website, then Google will only value the first Anchor text. If you nofollow the first, then Google will use the second.

Example - Just Search:

The first and second link to http://www.justsearching.co.uk/seo.html is:

Learn more about SEO

More on Search Engine Optimisation

Google will place more relevance on the first and thus the Keyword SEO

10. Geo-location of the host

A site hosted in the UK trying to rank high in Google France would be better hosted in the UK.

Four situations can arise:

We assume you want to rank for Google UK

1. TLD of a URL is the same as the country where a site is hosted
   a .uk domain hosted in the UK
2. TLD is right but the Geo-location of host is different
   a .uk domain hosted in Germany
3. TLD is different and the Geo-location of host is right
   a .de domain hosted in UK
4. Both TLD and Geo-location of host is different
   a .cn domain hosted in China

Google places more importance on the TLD than the host.

If you are looking to rank in the UK then a .uk domain is highly recommended. If the TLD is right, the host is not too important but still recommended.

If you don’t have the TLD but the host is right then you should ideally get a new domain otherwise register on Google Webmaster Tools and set the Geo-location of your site to the country you wish to rank for.

For situation 4, the best solution is to purchase a new domain and move host’s to the UK.

Example - Just Search:

Flagfox is a Firefox plugin that shows the country where the host is located.

We can see Just Search have a .uk domain hosted in the UK:

11. Position of text/links on a site

Keywords that appear in the sidebar and footer have less value than those appearing in the main body and centre of the site. So if you want to rank for a particular keyword, be sure it appears high in the centre and primary sections of your page!

Example - Just Search:

Just Search have some very good content at the outset of the site:

Conclusion

The best time to begin SEO is before even a site has been designed.

We can see from the Just Search website, the design of a site is important in terms of SEO.:

• Where is the content going to be placed?
• Social Media icons?
• <h1>/<h2> tags?
• Location Blog Feed?

These are just some of the questions to ask when it comes to designing a new site.

Then comes the development of the new site:

• Are you going to use a CMS? Ensure it fulfilled all your SEO requirements
• Content to Code ratio
• SEO friendly URLs
• Make sure the test site doesn’t get indexed!
  (Disallow: /)
• No hidden text in any form (such as black text on black background!)
• Avoid keyword stuffed alt tags

Then the ongoing, continuous, SEO:

• Unique <title>’s and Meta Descriptions throughout site?
• one <h1> on every page?
• Duplicate content?
• Quality Backlinks?
• Updated XML Sitemaps?

The 11 items mentioned above are not known to many and take time to master but once perfected, results will be great!

Bonus

Here’s an RSS icon I designed in Illustrator just for fun:

Download: Illustrator | PDF (vector) | JPG

Use it however you like. Although do let me know what you think of it and if you would like more!!!

Daily, we see blog posts written on WordPress Themes that 327 people have featured, 974 people have linked to 34,883 times. I’m sure you get the idea!

Well, it may seem we’re doing the same!!?! No, we’re not. Here, we are featuring 16 themes and plugins that can be applied to your WordPress admin interface to improve functionality and usability! We all know the standard look and features of the WordPress admin interface and it can be good to spice it up a little. With the following, you can do just that!

16 Awesome WordPress Admin Themes and Plugins

Fluency Admin 2.1

For WordPress 2.8.x

WP Tiger Administration

For WordPress 2.0.x

JS Style

For WordPress 1.5.3 – 2.0.3

Leopard Admin

Compatible up to: 2.5

WPhone

Requires WordPress Version: 2.1 or higher

Phone / Mobile Admin

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.2.2 or higher
• Compatible up to: 2.3

Baltic Amber

Ability to change colour scheme (even randomising it!).

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.5 or higher
• Compatible up to: 2.6

Planet X7

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.1
• Compatible up to: 2.3

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu

Requires WordPress Version: 2.8 or higher

Lighter Menus

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.5 or higher
• Compatible up to: 2.6.5

Retro Dashboard

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.5 or higher
• Compatible up to: 2.5.1

Simple Tags

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.3 or higher
• Compatible up to: 2.8

WordPress Admin Bar

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher
• Compatible up to: 2.8

Admin Management xtended (Scroll down for English version)

The plugin requires Wordpress 2.5+, supports 2.6 and 2.7 (from plugin version 2.0).

Allows you to edit certain post/page properties without going into them.

Pop Menus for WP-Admin

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.7 or higher
• Compatible up to: 2.8.3

Custom Login Page

• Requires WordPress Version: 2.0.2 or higher
• Compatible up to: 2.8

This post is primarily aimed at Freelancers however will be just as useful for those working in the web design industry who speak to clients on a daily basis.

What is it?

Web conferencing allows anyone, anywhere to instantly share their desktop and ideas online with other users simultaneously.

• Real time collaboration (Including mouse and Keyboard sharing)
• Synchronise live presentations, webpage’s and whiteboard
• Educate and train (Very useful for showing clients how to user their new CMS etc)
• Record and playback your webcast
• Host live seminars

Why use web conferencing?

List below will vary depending on the app.

• Become more productive
• Save money on travelling costs
• Save time
• No hassle
• Browser based (No installation required)
• Suitable for a 2 person meeting or a 200 people meeting
• Generally FREE for up to 20 users forever
• Quite cheap for premium service
• “The next best this to meeting in person” – Abode.

8 Web Conferencing/Meeting Apps for Freelancers for Real-time Collaboration

DimDim

Yugma

VYEW

Cisco webex

VIA3

GoToMeeting

Microsoft Office Live Meeting

OK… This is probably not in the budget of most freelancers however if you have the full Microsoft Office Suite then you can probably do some bargaining with Microsoft…

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro

Pricey. But if you’re a big time freelancer, this is probably the one for you.

Conclusion

Some of the above are awesome products. The free limitations are more than enough for freelancers and most web design agencies also.

By making full use of them, you clients will no doubt be impressed. Not only this, but you’ll save a huge amount of time throughout the year. I’ve been in the situation of a 2 hour phone call explaining how to use the basics of Wordpress will I could have done this in under an hour using web conferencing!

What are the factors that increase the monetary value of your website? This is what I’m going to discuss here.
You may have tried a hundred times and failed or your very first site may have sold for a very high price?

If you’re not earning from your site and maintaining it is costly, then it’s very important to ensure you are able to sell your site for an amount which would reflect the time spent on it. This is because maintaining a popular site can go beyond ones budget and lead to the site going down and many months of hard work following closely behind.

The Domain Name

This is very important. The better the domain, the greater the value of your site. A good domain name on its own is worth a lot (such as toys.com which the company Toys ‘R’ Us recently bought for $5.1 million).

• Age
  An older domain name which has a history adds lots of value from both SEO and monetary value.
• Length
  Generally the shorter domain name is worth more than a long one. There are many reasons for this which I won’t go through in this post to stick to the current topic. The only cases where a long domain name is worth lots is where you have a perfect keyword/brand/name match such as:
  • http://www.mobilephones.com
    A perfect Keyword match – Such a keyword is searched very frequently and brings the industry millions of pounds a year.
  • http://www.justsearch.co.uk
    A perfect match to the company name.
• TLD
  .com is best. .net and .org follow behind .com. Country specific TLD’s will be valued in their country such as the .co.uk for the UK.
• Simplicity
  Is the domain simple to remember and type? (Such as www.bing.com).
• Page Rank
  The higher the Page Rank (PR), the greater the value of the domain.
• Alexa/Compete Rank
  Higher Rank = Higher Value

Number of RSS Subscribers/Twitter followers

Basically, if  you have a couple of thousand subscribers to your site and 10,000+ Twitter followers then that tells a person your site is very popular and liked by hundreds of thousands of people. Thus, gaining lots of loyal visitors who return often.

One important point to note: A site can have 100,000 useless Twitter followers. What’s important is the number of genuine (and thus quality) followers.

Social Media

• Has your site been featured on the front page of Digg? Delicious? Design Float? etc.
• Is your site discussed on other sites and forums?
• Number of Bookmarks via Delicious?
• How often is your site retweeted?
• number of tweets per post

Number/Quality of updates over the last few months

The more updates your site has had over the last few months will very likely add value to your site. However, this only applies if they’re quality updates and have been very popular.

Google Rankings

• Is your site ranking on page 1 of Google (even better – Number 1) for its main Keyword(s)?
• If so, is the Keyword Popular? A site ranking well for “Photoshop Tutorials” will be more valuable than a site ranking for “Photoshop Text Tutorials” simply because the former is searched much more that the latter.

The Design

A great looking site (such as www.webdesignerwall.com) will add thousands…

Ads and Income

Does your site have a source of income (through ads and sponsors etc.)?

Number of Registered Members

If your site hosts a community/forum, then the number of registered members is a very important factor. If you have a couple of thousand followers, this can potentially increase the value of your site by thousands.

Newsletter/Email subscribers

Gaining high number registered newsletter subscribers is very difficult. Users are more reluctant to give their email address than to subscribe to an RSS Feed and so to have a large amount of email subscribers shows you and your site is a trusted one.

Number of unique visits/page views

This is probably the first thing a potential buyer will want to see and is the biggest selling point of a site.

If a site has a low number of monthly unique visits, then it will probably be the first and last thing a potential buyer will look at. Sometimes, just this will be enough to put a price tag of hundreds of thousands of pounds on your site. (The buyout of YouTube is a good example)

CMS Powered?

If your site is very well organised and built using a modern framework (PHP, ASP/X etc.) and CMS (Wordpress, Drupal, Magento etc.) then it will attract a lot more people and increase the base value of your site quite a bit.

The reason for this is that most people are not masters of PHP, ASP/X and the different CMS’s out there! If you built your site using pure OOP (or no OOP at all!) then it will be very difficult for someone to become fully conversant with the code. By using popular packages such as Wordpress, the buyer will have the peace of mind due to the very large community out there.

The Industry

The bottom line is that some Industries are worth more than others. Two sites may be equal in all factors except the industry.

For example:

A website on Photoshop tutorials will generally be worth more than a site on a site about cups…

Running costs

• Is your site expensive to run?
• Do your ads and sponsors bring in enough to cover hosting costs?
• Do you advertise anywhere elsewhere? If so, how much?
  If this is a high figure then the value of your site will be lower.

SEO/Social Media Optimised?

• Is your site optimised for the three major search engines?
• Have you registered your website on all the social media sites relating to your industry?

Original files

• Do you have the original PSD’s and template files for your site, logo etc.

If you have a record of all changes to your site/emails/documents/registrant certificates etc. then it would earn the trust of many potential buyers and thus you can add another zero to the price… OK, maybe not another zero but definitely a good amount!

History/Email’s documented?

Is the history of the site recorded in detail (such as previous hosts, etc.)? If so, then this would also add lots of value to the site.

Competitions/featured

A site that has won many competitions (especially the difficult ones) will have its value increased considerably. Similarly, if the site has been featured on other (good quality, authoritative) sites will return a similar benefit.

Offline Recognition

As soon as your site is recognised offline, you have reached the next level. This is very difficult to attain and can take a good few years of very hard work. However once achieved, will add amazing value to your site.

Some of the places you can be recognised on are:

• Magazines relating to your industry
  E.g.  This site being featured in the UK based Web Designer magazine.
• A national/international newspaper prints an article you wrote on your site
• Your work being featured in museums and events

It all depends on your industry!

Conclusion

The points mentioned above are only some of the major ones. If you gain high marks in all of them, you can be sure your site is worth a fortune and there will be many out there who would be waiting for the sign (for sale) to go up!

However, if your site is worth a high figure, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to leave it anyway!!!

Hope you enjoyed this article. If you think I have missed anything, be sure to shout out!