Do visitors leave YOUR site feeling confused?Written by Tony Murtagh
I recently spent a little time surfing web looking at general web marketing and promotion sites and was somewhat surprised at how many were making what I consider, basic design mistakes. How many of following apply to YOUR site?Difficult to see from top half of page (ie, that part that first comes into view in my browser window) exactly what it is that site is meant to be promoting. - if it is not clear from what can be seen in browser window average visitor will move on. - some sites were so full of banners, news headlines and various other links that it was impossible to know what they were offering. Some were in fact offering marketing services, some provision of news services, while others were even offering web design services - no thank you! At top of your home page should be a headline/paragraph which answers visitors most important question "What's in it for me?" What is this site offering that will improve my business? Make my life easier? Earn me some money? Provide answer to my question? Loads slowly - if visitors have to wait too long for site to download, chances are that they will close page and move on. If you must have lots of graphics on your site, use a gif optimisation tool. Flash presentations - they are great if you are doing an offline presentation to a captive audience, or if your visitors are coming to your site for a specific reason - but if you are hoping to catch casual visitor, don't bother - or at least offer them opportunity to be able to skip presentation.
| | Putting Sound on your Web Site - Part 2Written by John Rickey
In prior article I discussed fact that MIDI is best choice when adding background music to autoplay on your web site. Choruses of favourite songs can be looped to play while images and text are loading. MIDI is best choice as it takes up very little space on your web space(2-7k bytes). Other types of sound files that are useful on web sites are MP3, au, wave, real audio(.ra) to name a few. These are not practical as background sounds due to their large file size but do have some unique features that make them useful .MP3 MP3(Moving Picture Experts Group1Layer3 Audio) is a type of sound file used to compress large sound files. The most common use of MP3 files is to compress a CD album. A complete CD album can be compressed into a file size of 50MB. This has sparked a great deal of illegal copying on web as people can copy Cd albums into a MP3 and send it to others on web. Nevertheless, a good use for MP3 is as a 'download' on a web site. If you have an audio speech or song album you want people to listen to, MP3 is way to go. Many musicians put their songs as wave files on their sites for download which take just too long to download. A typical song might take 35-50MB in wave form but saved as an MP3 would take only 3-5 MB. The amazing thing about this type of compression is that it replicates quality of wave file as well. However, even though a song in MP3 format takes only 3-5MB in file size, it still may take 15-20 minutes to download for most people on a 28.8 modem line. Although with faster lines this is becoming best way to give downloads of music. There is a faster way to broadcast your songs that will play a large sound file almost immediately . This is Streaming Audio File (.ra). Many web sites wisely give visitor a choice between a streaming audio or a MP3 download. Real Audio There are many types of streaming audio on web but Real Audio seems to be most popular. A Real Audio file will play in seconds. The reason for this is that real audio file plays as it downloads. This is true of even a very large audio file. The quality of real audio file can be poor though on slower modem rates (28.8). It is excellent for talking but not for showing off a musicians album unless you are using a faster line. In which case sound quality is quite acceptable. Many radio stations keep archives of broadcasts so visitor can go back to programs to hear a certain person talk. Sometimes when there is net congestion a real audio file will cut out and then come back which can be frustrating to a listener if net congestion continues. The other problem with real audio is that it can cost web owner to use it. Anyone using real audio can go to someone owning a real server. They are given a text file on their server(.ram) that connects to real server. This in turn connects to real audio file(.ra). Most real servers charge about 5$ to$40 US/month depending on amount of space you need. This same process can be done on your own server if it is configured correctly. This is obviously cheaper but you will need large amounts of space for ra files. Many of real audio options are not available on your own server also. Real Audio Files compress well but still take up a large amount of space if you're putting albums etc on your web space. Many servers that offer free space limit amount of streaming audio files on their server. There are many competitor's software available for streaming audio but Real Audio seems to be most popular. Some you might look at are Playstream, Beatnik, Quicktime and Windows Media Technology.
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