OTHER
IMPORTANT SUBJECTS:
WEB
SITE MAINTENANCE
In
addition to tracking your site statistics, you also need to keep track of various
problems that occur on your web site. These would include such things as broken
links, 404 page errors, broken .gif or .jpg images, order form problems, pages
reported as NOT loading, and pages that take too long to load.
We
currently use online resources to assist us in these areas:
Link
Checking:
It's
not uncommon for someone to email you, and tell you that there is a broken link
on your site, without specifying where.
Some
people do take the time to include the non working link pasted into an email,
which is a great help, but most don't. If they have, you can click the link from
right there inside the email, and check it for yourself.
ALWAYS thank anyone who reports a problem on your site immediately, for taking
the time to assist. It only takes a minute, and they deserve a quick thanks.
If
the link works for you that has been reported, you can assume it may have been
a temporary glitch, however, if it definitely is broken, you have to fix it immediately,
unless you are too busy right at that time.
If
you're not able to fix it right then and there, make an ICQ note of it on your
desktop, so you don't forget!
If
you do NOT know where the broken link is, but one has been reported you will have
to go searching for it, however, there is a program you can use to find any broken
links, without having to do so manually.
Two
companies that provide this service are:
http://netmechanic.com
http://websitegarage.netscape.com
I
believe both offer you a free trial, or allow you to use the most basic service
for free, however, if you want their advanced maintenance services, you will have
to pay.
One
resource which we've used at no cost in the past, to check links is http://www.NodeWorks.com
however as with many other services of this nature, it may not be free for too
much longer.
They
regularly check your site for broken links, and email you a report of any problems.
Apparently, while they are in Beta testing, they will monitor 200 links for you,
at no cost, each month.
Another
resource which has come to my attention as something worth checking out is provided
through Link Alarm. http://www.linkalarm.com
In
addition to monitoring your site links, they also monitor bad email addresses
that may exist on your site. They do charge $52.00 US per year at the time I am
writing this.
Two
final resources that are definitely worth checking out are: http://www.htmlworks.com/
http://linktool.com/
Monitoring
password protected areas:
If
someone reports that "There's a broken link on your product download site",
but don't tell you specifically where on the page itself, you can't use an online
service to find it, because the page is probably going to be contained inside
a password protected area.
You
have to search for it manually. If you have a lot of products, and a lot of download
sites, here's a tip to make it easier.
Take
the person's email address that reported the broken link, and see which product
they bought, using the FIND function in Eudora. Then, once you know which product
they bought, you can then visit the associated download page, and quickly click
the links to locate the non working one. You will have to click on each link yourself,
but at least you can determine which page contains the problem.
Reporting
Downtime:
Anytime
your server experiences some downtime, you can register with a service, to inform
you this has occurred. I
believe some of them will actually contact you on the phone, or page you, however
a basic one to use will send you an email, and inform you the server is down.
One
such service is: http://www.NetWhistle.com
Netwhistle.com
watches your website for you, for a monthly fee. If it ever becomes unavailable,
they will send an email to you or your pager gateway with detailed error information.
Naturally
when you register for this service, don't use your actual domain name email address,
since you'll probably not receive the notification until the server's back up
and running again. It's preferable to register with an email address other than
that, but one that you do check numerous times per day.
Another
option, which offers three packages is: http://www.atwatch.com
@watch.com
will visit your site at pre-determined intervals, up to 288 times per day, checking
for downtime. It also provides a multitude of other features. Click the URL above
to read a description of all the features, for each package they offer.
*I've
never used @watch.com however the seem to offer a large amount of features, for
even the least expensive package!
A
third option which seems to be very popular is: http://www.netmechanic.com/monitor.htm
Optimizing
your website images:
Ideally,
the load time for your home page should be very fast. I've heard that if your
site doesn't load in 8 seconds, you will lose 1/3 of your visitors. I'm not sure
how true that is, since I've also heard that figure is 15 seconds. For now, let's
assume that figure will be approximately 10 seconds.
If
the page takes too long to load, there is a large chance the visitor will use
the Back Button, and leave your site, or type in another URL into the address
bar.
Usually
the file size of your actual .html pages isn't the problem. It's the file size
of your images. They need to be optimized.
The smaller the file size, the more
image quality you lose. This is especially true with .JPG images.
How
to optimize your web site images quickly, and easily:
1)
You can use an online service to check the load time of your images, and tell
you which ones should be optimized. The service in our example also optimizes
them for you, and allows you to choose which ones you want to use!
If
you would like to use this option, here's what you do.
Visit: http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/power_user.htm
Once
that page loads, fill in the URL of your site, in the first form field.
For
the second form field, choose what you would like to test. Right now, you might
want to check off only "Load Time Check".
The
third choice is to decide how many pages you want checked. For now, choose 1 page
only.
Leave
sections 4, 5, 6, and 7 blank, then click on TEST NOW for step 8.
Once
you click the Test Now button, a new page will open. It may take a while to load,
as it is performing the test right then and there.
(When
I ran the test while writing this, the top said "Link check" however
it was in fact checking image file size, so don't think a problem has occurred.)
When
the test is done, a new page will load. This will give you the results of how
fast your site takes to load. It will rate you from 1 to 5 stars, and will tell
you the load time. Next to that it says "View a Detailed Report". Click
on that link to view each individual image test.
Each
image will have a blue hyperlink that you can click on. When you click the link,
it takes you to a new page, specifically for that image. On that page you will
find the original image, file size, and load time. One really great benefit is
that right then and there you can choose from a number of already optimized images.
Better
yet, you can hold your mouse button over each optimized image to see the original,
and move the mouse back off, to view the difference between the two.
If
you want to save the optimized ones, simply save them with the original file name,
and then upload them to your server space, to overwrite the older slow loading
ones.
*If
you don't want to use the optimized images they offer you, simply make a note
of which ones you want to reduce, then use an image editing program to optimize
them, or a special program designed specifically for this.
Here
are some other choices:
http://www.spinwave.com
Spinwave.com
provides you with two online services:
• Gif
Cruncher
• JPG
Cruncher
Each
are located online, so you can visit the site, upload your image quickly, then
crunch the file size, and then re-save the image back to your hard drive.
I
believe both types of crunchers are also available in a downloadable program,
which is ideal if you have a large number of images to optimize.
Here
are some online resources you can check out, for both .gif and .jpg images:
http://www.gifwizard.com/
http://www.gifoptimizer.com/
http://www.gifworks.com
http://www.jpegwizard.com/
Here's
a downloadable program that looks pretty good, and apparently does not recompress
your .jpg images, so the quality stays the same!
http://www.jpg.com/products/wizard.html
(The
program is free, unless you want to do batch compressions)
It's far better to optimize each image separately. The same level of compression
may not be right for ALL your .jpg images!
If
you're looking for an inexpensive graphics program to use, to take care of your
optimization, I highly suggest "Paint Shop Pro" by http://www.jasc.com
I've
used it many times simply to compress .jpg images, and when using a setting of
20% for the compression, the results are excellent! A 27 KB file size can be reduced
to 6 KB or 8 KB, and you won't even notice!
Monitoring
your Search Engine Ranking:
Here
are some free, and pay resources that you can use, to monitor where your site
is listed in the Search Engines. You can also have them monitor your competitor's
site URL's, and inform you when changes have been made!
It is very important that you know where your site is ranked, especially if the
majority of your visitors find your site through the major search engines. It's
also important to know when, or if you're suddenly dropped from the engines, since
that can cause you to lose a lot of your traffic!
http://informant.dartmouth.edu/
The
Informant allows you to enter three separate keywords, per account, and monitor
up to five URL's. I use this resource, and have it set to contact me every 3 days,
with a new report.
The
report will include the top 10 for some of the major engines, and will show you
which sites are NEW to the index, or have been updated, and the changes were noticed
by the Search Engine.
http://www.webposition.com
If
you're looking for search engine submission, and monitoring services, then definitely
check out Web Position or Web Position Gold!
http://www.netmechanic.com/powerpack/tracker.htm
For
free, Net Mechanic will monitor your ranking in the Top 15 Engines, and will send
you a report by email once per week. The free service also gives you access to
the "Problem Alert" which tells you if you've been dropped from the
top 40 listings.
Click
the link provided above, then follow the instructions on that page to start your
weekly monitoring.
One
final resource that seems interesting is http://www.spyonit.com
In
addition to monitoring your URL's, it also monitors any mention of your name!
UseNet
Newsgroup Monitoring:
Monitor Usenet
newsgroups for posts that mention your company name, or any other keyword/phrase
that you want to monitor. A free service that provides you with these features
is TracerLock.
Their company
site is located here: http://www.peacefire.org/tracerlock/
