If you’re trying to sell a house, update the kitchen and bathroom. If you’re trying to get people to use your website, do it with these easy upgrades.

1. Most recent blog entry.

Some organizations have a blog, but hide it. An easy way to bring your words closer to your visitors is not only to provide a prominent link to your blog, but to also let the first few entries display on your homepage.

2. Twitter feed.

If you have a Twitter account, you should provide access to it on your website. It’s surprising how many organizations have an account, but you’d never know it by visiting their site. Treat your Twitter updates just like your blog updates, and show the most recent ones on your website.

3. Big Share buttons.

Any time you publish something worth sharing, you should encourage people to do so through e-mail or a social network. Big buttons encouraging people to share do better than small ones.

4. One-click donation.

It’s a pity if you miss out on donations simply because no one can figure out how to donate on your site. Make sure it’s easy to donate by clicking just one link.

5. Search.

If you have more than five pages, include a way to search your website. And make search easy to find. No hiding it in the lower regions of your site.

6. CMS (Content Management System).

If you’re struggling with keeping a mass of single-file pages looking the same, give up and get a CMS. Your visitors will respond to the organization.

7. Call to action links.

Tell people what you want them to do whenever you provide a link on your site. If you want donations, name your donation button “Give.” If you want people to register for your newsletter, call your newsletter link, “Sign up for the newsletter.” People will respond if you make it clear.

8. Home link.

Always, always provide a clearly labeled link that says Home.

9. Feedback form.

If there’s no way for people to respond to you, they won’t. Make it easy with a feedback form.

The best thing you can do for your website is to keep thinking about it. Keep tabs on what people like and what they ask for. Make upgrades on a regular basis, and you’ll notice a difference.

This little gem has been hidden on the main Talance website, but we thought we’d bring it to wider attention. Use this checklist every three months or so to make sure your website is still up to date and healthy.

Site Content

• All links work
• All downloads work
• All forms work
• Contact information on homepage and accessible on every other page
• Addresses organization’s goals
• Has a favicon

Usability

• All images have ALT tags
• Custom 404/page not found page
• Each menu has no more than seven choices
• Home link in navigation
• User-friendly page titles

Readability

• Font size not too small
• Wide margins
• Good use of bullets, subheadings and bold
• No underlines except for hyperlinks
• High contrast text and images

Operation

• Looks OK in most common Web browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera)
• Uses limited Flash to comply with iPhone and iTouch
• Images are sized correctly (i.e., big image not squeezed into small box)
• Colors and images are consistent
• Loads quickly
• Looks OK in different screen resolutions
• Looks OK with various screen color settings
• URLs work without “www”

Security

• Pages requiring SSL access are accessible only via SSL
• No one has access to restricted areas that they shouldn’t have

[Photo credit: On writing well, by picassina, on Flickr]

My digital life has caused me to reevaluate my bookshelves, groaning with books I hardly look at. When my local library posted signs asking for donations, I decided to purge. As I was filling boxes, I found one little gem I haven’t seen in years: William Zinsser’s classic book On Writing Well.

Journalism students know this as required reading in an attempt to learn the principles of cleaning up prose for newsprint. In my years as a journalist, I found it inspiring and refreshing to dip into now and again for advice on how to de-clutter my writing and simplify my words.

As I was thumbing through my copy the other day, I realized that if I replaced “writing” with “creating websites” – especially in the first few chapters – Zinsser’s book is chock full of fantastic advice for anyone looking to plan or maintain their website, whether it be creating design elements, planning pages or writing copy.

The best sites are those that don’t make you think. They’ve been refined so much that you find just what the website owner wants you to find, and you never have to hunt. Few sites suffer from being too simple. That’s exactly what Zinsser preaches in his book.

I recommend you check out a copy of On Writing Well to learn how to write better (useful advice anyway for business documents, blog entries, e-mails and the like), but I’ve taken a few golden nuggets from Zinsser’s book and tweaked them slightly for web building. Follow this advice, and your website will serve you – and your visitors – better.

Considering that about half the people on the Internet find you through some kind of search engine query, it’s vitally important that you show up everywhere you should. Such are the intricacies of search engine optimization.

Improving your SEO is an on-going task, but here are five mistakes you can make to really kill your SEO strategy.

1. Use images for headings

Some people think regular old text is too boring for headings, so they use pictures instead. A major no-no. Search engines like header tags (< h1 >, < h2 >, etc.), so use these instead of graphics. You can always change the style of them through CSS if you don’t like the way they appear.

2. Leave image tags blank

This mistake is incredibly common, but it’s also incredibly easy to fix. Whenever you have an image display on a page, make sure you fill in the so-called “alt tag.” It’s a handy place to stash keywords (search engines figure anything you illustrate is important, so they pay attention), and it helps with overall accessibility.

3. Bad spelling

Search engines are skeptical of crummy spelling. Get a dictionary.

4. Flash only

Flash is, well, flashy, but it’s not incredibly usable. It’s hard for people to navigate, and also hard for search engines to catalog. Provide an HTML alternative so make everybody happy. As an added bonus, anybody using a hand-held device (like an iPhone) will have an easier time reading your site.

5. Ugly URLs

URLs with a string of nonsensical text does nothing for your site. They’re confusing, you can never type them into an address bar and search engines hate them. Instead, make sure you’re using real English in the address. Check out this article’s address for an example.

[This little gem is the text of issue our e-mail newsletter subscribers just received. Want a slice of this foryourself? Sign up now.]

Hi, Friends.

Websites, you know, are never done. They’re as close as you can get to living and breathing for something made of lines of code stored on computers around the globe. Trends change, organizations’ missions change and outside forces change too.

One big outside force recently changed, namely Internet Explorer 8. Any time a Web browser receives a major upgrade, and people are encouraged to switch over, it means that old websites may no longer work properly. Even if you have chosen to let IE8 (which has its own host of problems) drift by without you, not all the people who are coming to your website have.

It’s important to take the time on a regular basis to make sure your website is keeping up with the technology around it. It’s a job that requires regular tending, but we’ve made it easier for you by assembling the Healthy Website Checklist you can follow.

http://talance.com/healthy-website-checklist

Bookmark it or print it out so you remember to keep making sure your website still works.

Of course, keeping websites ship-shape and Bristol fashion is one of our specialties at Talance, so give us a holler (888-810-9109 or use this form) if we can help breathe new life into your website.

Your Internet pal,

Monique

The Rachel Coalition provides services for victims of domestic violence, but its website was limited to a few informational pages and uninspiring design. Here’s how we helped.

»Read more

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Don’t keep this good stuff all to yourself. Click that Forward button and send to a friend.

Most organizations will spend most of their time designing and maintaining their website’s homepage. And that’s fine. You don’t want to neglect what’s there – the majority of your website’s visitors will see this page before any other.

But thanks to the social media functionality that makes it easy to share individual pages, such as to an event you’re putting on or the bio of someone on your site, it’s increasingly likely that a visitor might use Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon or Facebook to sneak in around the homepage.

Make sure you think of every page as a potential entry point for website visitors. This means that you may have to adapt internal pages so they make sense to a visitor. From every page, make sure a visitor

• Can access your menus
• Can easily contact you
• Knows they’re on your site – make every page harmonious with every other one

As a test, choose any page at random, and see if you can flow through your site without thinking too hard. Did you know what to do next? If not, jot down what confused you, and make sure you fix it.

[Photo credit: Adopt a Pet, Live Longer! by sayheypatrick, on Flickr]

You may already have a Donate page on your website where you make it possible (and easy) for people to support you. But how many people click through to your Donate page compared to other pages of your site? I’m willing to make the sad bet it’s not at the top of the list.

Some pages, though, are stars. They consistently receive more visitors than other pages. This might be the Dog of the Week adoption page or your contact information page. People either love or need what’s there, so they come back, day after day.

While you should stay true to the main focus of these pages, start to think of them as a way to reach out to potential donors by putting a call to donate on these busiest pages of your site.

To find which pages pull in the droves, tap your Web analytics service, such as Clicky or Google Analytics. Most have a section that lists the top 10 or more pages in terms of traffic. Pick the top pages from this list and ask people to support there.

It helps if you can elegantly work in the plea for funds with the focus of the page. If it’s the Homeless Dog of the Week page, for instance, you may want to include something like:

“Can’t take Buster home? Support him and his doggy friends by donating $20 right now by clicking here.”

That’s it. Stand back, keep checking your traffic and donation box, and see if your income doesn’t increase. Make sure to come back and tell us how it went.

In preparing for an upcoming presentation on how to create functional websites, and it’s got me thinking about all the dysfunctional sites I’ve seen recently. There’s no single feature that makes a website completely unusable, but there definitely are trends.

Below, divided into three categories, are the chief gaffes you should follow if you really feel like creating a website that doesn’t work.

Market Positioning

Build your website without thinking what you want. “Yes, we need a website!” is a lousy reason for a website, yet it’s the one too many people follow. First, make a list of all your organization’s goals, and then think about how technology might help you meet those goals. Then from that you can start to think about shaping your website around your needs.

Don’t think about who’s looking at the site. If your audience is made of 50-year-old women from the Midwest, why would you create a zippy website built to attract college students? If those people are interested in volunteering, why would you load the homepage with information on grants, staff bios and news releases? Think about what the people coming to your website want or need to see, and then give it to them.

Design

Use lots of clipart. Ooph. Steer clear of crummy clipart. Go for real pictures, even freebie stock photography, rather than goofy cartoon drawings. Check out the Creative Commons images on Flickr or Stock.xchng for good resources.

Include pictures of empty rooms. What’s welcoming about an echo-y chamber? Put some people in there!

Use flashy splash pages. They look like ads and have the same effect. People click off splash screens and never get to the meat inside. It’s like going around with two hats on. The top one doesn’t matter and makes people think you’re nuts.

Use a microscopic font. You know how on TV ads, they put all the stuff they don’t really want you to read, but are required by law to display, in teeny text at the bottom of the screen? It’s because no one can see it, and they ignore it even if they can. Small font does the same thing to your website, but the whole website.

Honestly, tell me how readable this is.

Usability

Shroud donation processes in mystery. Heavens, if people want to give you money, make it easy for them. Here, take this big bright Donate Now! button and put it on your homepage. (Right-click and choose Save As.) A gift from Talance to you.

Glom onto every widget you can find. A real danger with the proliferation of widgets and plug-ins and add-ons is that you have a website that looks like a carnival. All flash, no focus. Choose wisely with anything you add onto your site, and make sure it follows your directive of achieving your goals.

Add 50 items – or even 10 – to your menus. People’s eyes cross when they see more than seven items in a menu, so stick with that magic number.

Put the most important info at the very bottom of the page. People look at the top left of web pages to pick up the most important information. If there’s something you really want people to read, put it up there and not down below.

[Have a question you’d like answered? Use the comments form at the bottom of this page or click here. We’ll review your question before posting (don’t be shy about asking!) and get back to you with a response.]

A reader asks:

I’ve heard from so many places you shouldn’t put anything below the scroll. Is it really OK?

There are so many rules in Web design that you really shouldn’t break. It’s a shame that the Do Not Scroll rule has gotten so much long-standing traction.

Back when we all started designing web pages, we noticed that people tended to look at pages in one glance, and then move on to a different site. The theory was they wouldn’t make the modicum of effort to use the scroll bar to look at the bottom of the page.

This fed the idea of packing as much information at the top of the page as possible, often with nothing at all below. It lead to a raft of websites that could fit on postage stamps, a favorite new refrain of “Keep it above the scroll!” and a deep-seated fear of putting anything on the lower part of the page at all.

Then there came blogs.

Blogs are all about scroll, with the most recent postings at the top of the page and story after story trailing down the page. I’ll bet you, reading this right now, will give this blog a good scroll so you can see what else we’ve written about recently.

Yes, people do tend to look at the upper-left-hand corner of the page more carefully than other places on your website. But it really is OK to put information at the bottom of the page. It’s sure a lot better than fitting everything you can into a postage stamp.

Take a look at these glorious examples of pages that contain loads of information well below the scroll, pulled at random from the Web browsers open on my machine:

From Last.fm

From Oprah.com

From Weather.com

From SlideShare

[Photo credit: "covering the eyes" by Secret Seasons, on Flickr]

Here’s a harsh reality you must face when you’re thinking about the design of your website: nobody likes to look at computer screens.

Yes, we all do it all the time, but that doesn’t change our physiology. Most people suffer from screen fatigue simply because monitors flicker and render an image that’s grainer than print. Think about how many times you’ve gotten a headache from spending too long looking at a computer screen or blinked your dry, irritated and watery eyes. Happens to me almost every day. That’s why I sit by the window; frequent eye breaks.

That’s also why we can’t help scanning websites. Our eyes seek out big fonts, bullet points and images to help us make quick identifications rather than focus on tiny text. It means that sometimes we frequently don’t take in enough information to get the full picture – we just glean what we can quickly.

Good web designers will think about these usability issues when designing a site. Make sure you think about what you need to do to present your site so it’s easiest for people to read.