Tips

Flash is fantastic. It can make your page jump out at the viewer, engage them with motion and sound, extend your browsing experience into something truly unique. Why, in a world where Flash is available on 99% of computers, bother with an HTML alternate?

As mentioned above, Google doesn't read meta tags. Meta tags are hidden areas of text designed for search engines (or other programs) to read. In the nineties, we'd add a robust set of keywords to each page, in the hopes of increasing our ranking with search engines. The technique was quickly abused, and one would often see pages with the same keyword listed thousands of times, or every possible combination of descriptive words included within. This weighed down sites, confused search engines, and ultimately made search engines less useful.

Google's PageRank™ system ignores keywords altogether, instead focusing on page text, and crucially, incoming links. The time you'd spend adjusting keywords is much better spent on getting other sites to link to you, and increasing the amount of informative text on each page.

Why are car dealers so pushy? Because they can be. Your license or keys are with their manager, they know you've come in to buy, and that it's hard to leave.

On the Internet, the exit is always a click away. Techniques that restrict or frustrate the user will immediately drive them to a competitor. Because Google, and other leading search engines, use incoming referrals to your site, a user-unfriendly, unhelpful site will quickly become unpopular — and thus, effectively invisible to your target audience.

1. Match your browsing experience to audience expectations.
   
2. Make contact information accessible from every page. It's generally expected to be top right.
   
3. Make sure every top-tier page is available from every page. Especially the home page. The home page shouldn't be linked from the home page (think about it; it's just silly)
   
4. Make the most commonly accessed information accessible first.
   
5. For sites above 10-15 pages, make sure there's a search feature.
   

Maybe you've heard the buzz about memetics? If you have, it's a good example of memetics in action. If you haven't, memetics is the study of how ideas replicate. The key unit of information, according to this theory, is the meme, an analog to the gene in biology. Memes which are more fit to replicate are those that get passed from person to person, and therefore, some ideas spread faster than others through human communication.

How well does your idea spread? How well does your site spread? A great way to increase hits to your page is to focus purely on how your page spreads from viewer to viewer. Such a motion will surely increase its page ranking. In such a manner, even a small site can blossom to a well travelled destination. Consider the following techniques:

1. Provide free information about your industry, geared toward your target audience. This can quickly result in greater numbers of hits, especially if the information is hard to find elsewhere, and gets posted to personal websites and internet discussion threads.
   
2. Create an online assessment quiz. For a travel agency, it might find your perfect vacation type. For a new book in a series, it might liken you to one of the characters. For a financial product, it might calculate return on investment. Give the user the ability to send his own results to another person, and to invite friends to take the quiz.
   
3. Humor. If you've ever been sent a strange, funny, or annoying flash animation through email, you know the power of this technique. If the joke is good enough, and the animation clever enough, it might end up being sent from user to user, raising consciousness of your site and drawing potential customers. Probably not a good technique for funeral homes, though.
   
4. Interactive educational material. Flashcards, timelines, maps, charts, or tutorial animations can all attract visitors and referrers.
   
5. Games. A simple memory quiz or a complex shoot-em-up might be just the diversion that brings someone to your site.

I considered putting this under "Be Good", but it bears extra repetition:

Do NOT start your website with a blank screen and a flash intro.

There was a time for the Flash intro. There was also a time for the Macarena.

Consider how your user has found you: They're sitting in front of the computer, either at work or at home, and they are looking for information about your product or service. They did a search, or found your name from a friend, and now they're either typing in your URL or clicking on a link. Do they want a black screen with a slow fade-in on your logo, and music, or an intuitive and immediately available menu of the services and information you can provide?

That said, it's possible to give the user an enjoyable and immersive experience once the menu is available. Make introductory animation or multimedia available AFTER the menu has loaded. Once they're presented with your contact info and your menu, they'll have the option of waiting through your animation, or going directly to the target of their search.