 | Chris Owen
is President and founder of Hubris Communications. Until the opening of Hubris' Wichita office, Mr. Owen was the sole network technician and systems administrator of the company. Hubris Communications is a provider of premium Dial-Up, ADSL, SDSL, Wireless, and dedicated Internet Services. Founded in Garden City, Kansas and doing business since July 1995, Hubris Communications, Inc. serves over 3,200 customers in south central and southwestern Kansas. Chris can be reach at (316) 858-3000 or owenc@hubris.net |
Computers & Software
2002-06-01 17:41:00
How do you add ‘bells & whistles’ to a web site?
Question: Our company web site is very important in our business. We would like to add some new "bells and whistles" so users will find it interesting to come back to our site again. One suggestion is to make it dynamic so the content will change frequently. How would this work? If we do this we are worried about what the performance will be to those that still use 56-Kbps modems. How would we handle this dilemma?
Answer: It is important to remember that dynamic content and "bells and whistles" are not necessarily the same thing and could really actually be at odds with each other. Having dynamic content on a site does not necessarily mean it has to have a lot of "bells and whistles". In fact, "bells and whistles" are often used on web sites to make up for a lack of real content."Bells and whistles" usually take the form of large images, animated images, music or movies. This "eye candy" can make a site more visually appealing but probably do little to actually bring people back to your site. In fact because of the large size (and therefore long download time) for many of these features, "bells and whistles" can often prevent people from returning or cause them to leave the site prematurely. I don't know how many times I've left a site before the main index page even loaded because of the time it took to download and I haven't been on a dialup connection in years.The most important features of a web site are: content, content and content. In the end the content on your site will be more important than the dynamic nature of that content. Unless you run an entertainment site of some nature the most important purpose of your company's site is going to be to provide information about your company and its products or services. It is important not to let the packaging of that information get in the way of the information itself.Yes, people want to see information displayed in a way that is interesting and appealing. However, they also want to be able to navigate the site quickly and find the information they are looking for without having to wait for unnecessarily large images or other items that can actually take away from the information on the site.I often see people offering advice to web designers along the lines of "remember that many people are still accessing your site at 56K".This advice is well intentioned, however it doesn't go far enough. It is important to remember that many people do not have 56K modems and even those that do often are limited to 26K due to their particular phone lines.A quick look at a Wichita dialup pool shows that 23% of people are connecting at less than 30K while only 18% are connecting faster than 50K. I think most people would be amazed that nearly 5% were still using 9600kps modems.Given these type of numbers, it only makes sense to make sure that a web site is designed with these slower connections in mind. That means only using these higher bandwidth features when they make sense. It also means giving people choices to avoid these higher bandwidth parts of the site if they so choose while still providing them the content they came for.
