Advice To Newbies

[MamawDenise]

Hi Ive been doing this for quite some time now and have built thousands of sites, one thing i can say to you is keep it simple, don't overdo it especially if your making a ecommerce site its one thing on a personal web page, but on a commerce site where your trying to make money make it as simple as possible, reason being a surfer looking for something will only stay a few seconds for a page to load, if it fails to load or is slow loading they will move on.
and you make nothing.
I see so many new to the business, that load up a page with a ton of images or audio or video files and it takes forever to load.
Keep it Simple and Effective and Make $$$$$

[1andyw]

Your advice is great.

I also see an substantial increase in commercial sites that take forever to load because of banners, etc. A real pain!

What do you see as the cause of this? Where will it lead?

Andy

[MamawDenise]

Broad Band has brought on a lot of that but having said that a large majority of the world is still on dial up and they are or they have to be losing business.

Each and every webmaster for the most part thinks they have to make there site prettier then the next or with more features and its simply just slows the website down.

This business is changing so much and lord only knows what it will bring , the only thing you can do is learn and change with it or get left behind i learn something everyday and am open to new thoughts and new ideas , you have to be willing to do what it takes to get your site or sites where they need to be and generating income.

The days of building a website sticking it on a host and just leaving it are long gone, so many aspects need to be considered and looked at and it just amazes me how many think they are going to be rich over night, yet don't know even basic html let alone optimization , which is the most important aspect of the site or sites themselves.

Ah lol sorry i get a bit big winded and start preaching i have just been at this for a very long time and make very good money doing so, when i started NO one offered me help and i asked so i always told myself that if i ever got to where i could i would offer the help to the people coming in i never got, lol i remember those days.

i had the hardest time figuring out how a banner worked, how could you make that image click able, well I'm way beyond that now, way way beyond.

Denise

[Puckdropper]

If I may interject my own suggestion:

Pay attention to usability experts such as Jakob Nielsen. Jakob Nielsen publishes an annual list if the Top 10 biggest homepage mistakes on his webpage, http://www.useit.com

You might just find the "neat" thing you want to do is on one of his To 10 mistakes list. Opening links in new browser windows, for example.

[searchrentals12]

Great advice MamawDenise Thanks. I need some corespondence for my site. (the one below in my signature) I am building another ecommerce site with css design and php for my forms and login. If I have any questions would you mind if I asked?

[MamawDenise]

No not at all id be happy to do what i can

[tdowd88]

I learned html about a year ago and built my strong foundation all from
HERE. This site gives everything you need to begin as well as tips for newbies. I still use this as a reference from time to time.

[tgreer]

May I make a suggestion? Have you explored the blog section? HTML and Web Design advice and experiences might make a good blog.