Technical Considerations

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You've labored for weeks, maybe months, developing that "perfect" website.  And now, you're finally there.  You've viewed and reviewed every page, making sure that aesthetically, every "T" is crossed and "I" is dotted.  You're ready to publish your site! 

Or are you?  Are you absolutely sure it's complete and ready to be viewed by the rest of the world?  What about all the stuff that you can't see?  You know, the stuff that, if done poorly, will give your visitors anxiety attacks.  Before you take the final plunge and turn on the switch, lets make sure that the "behind the scenes" (technical) development is as solid as the "up front" aesthetics.

Where do I Start?

Five of the most important technical aspects of a well designed website are:

• Image Efficiency/Page Size
• Browser Compatibility
• Hyperlink Validity
• HTML Correctness
• Resolution Settings

Image Efficiency/Page Size

How quickly does your home page load on someone else's machine?  How quickly does the rest of your site load?  Does the text load first, and then the images?  The single most probable cause of slow download speeds is GIF/JPEG image size and definition.  

You've probably heard this many, many times, but there is a direct relationship between the length of time it takes a web page to load, and the resulting number of visitors lost.  The below table (from www.webtomorrow.com), makes an attempt at quantifying the effect of "wait time".

As you can see, the longer your visitors wait, the more likely they won't be your visitors. It's definitely in your best interest to do everything possible to minimize this effect.  Some simple guidelines/suggestions are listed below:

• Keep your page size to a maximum of 50Kb. Obviously, the smaller the better, but I think it's a good rule of thumb to max out at 50kb.  The standard modem used today is 56Kb, but there are still a substantial number of web surfers using slower modems.  If nothing else, make sure your home page is as small as possible.  This is typically the first page your visitors see, and we all know the importance of that first impression.
• Use the HTML height and width tags whenever you use graphics.  Doing this will allow browsers to pre-allocate page space for graphics and load the text first.  As a result, your visitors will have meaningful information to view relatively quickly.
• Optimize your graphics.  In most cases, you'll be able to reduce image size with little or no degradation in image quality.  A great place for free image optimization is at www.netmechanic.com. 
• Use the appropriate image format.  The JPEG format should be used for photographs or any images where there are lots of smooth color changes.  The GIF format works best for images with a few distinctive colors, such as buttons and icons. If you have any photographs in a GIF format, changing from GIF to JPEG for photographs should also reduce the size of some of your images, thereby reducing download time.

(For additional information on image optimization, please visit our essay archives and see our series on image optimization.  There are 5 parts to the series (written by Charles Brown of EWM/PSI) and they can be found by typing "Image Optimization" in the archive search engine).

Browser Compatibility

This is a common oversight, especially for newcomers to the website creation arena.  Many web developers view their site's through whichever browser is loaded on their PC and assume that everyone sees their site the same way they do.  This couldn't be further from the truth.  Even viewing the same page through the two most popular browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator will yield very different results. Each of these two popular browsers has their own set of proprietary features that is not recognized or supported by the other.  (I personally learned this the hard way). That's why it's extremely important to view your site through as many browsers as possible before publishing it for the first time.  The least I would recommend doing is having a recent version of both, IE and Netscape on your PC and frequently viewing your site through both of them.  Another option is to use a browser compatibility checker.  A free one can be found at workz.com.

Hyperlink Validity

If your site contains links to other sites, it's very important to periodically test those links and make sure that they all still work.  In today's world, websites come and go very quickly, so never assume that just because it was there today, it will still be there tomorrow.  

If you only have a handful of links, it's easy to check them manually.  However, if your site contains upwards of 40 or 50 links, you may want to consider link validation software.  A good product for this purpose can be found at www.alertbookmarks.com.  Their product (LinkRunner) not only checks your hyperlinks, but also checks banners and FTP.  It's not free, but they do have a trial version.  Also, a site that offers free link validation is workz.com.

HTML Correctness

One of the most common causes of problems associated with viewing a website are HTML errors.  In fact, a subtle HTML error may be the culprit for browser incompatibility.  Unfortunately, many web designers rely on HTML editors such as FrontPage and therefore have limited HTML knowledge and skills.  Even experienced HTML coders can encounter that elusive bug that's harder to find than a needle in a haystack.  

Fortunately, there are HTML validators on the market, some for free, that will find most errors.  A good one can be found at www.htmlvalidator.com.  Not only is it free, but it also comes with very high recommendations.  And, if you like the real-time, internet approach, check out (you guessed it) workz.com and use their freebee.

Resolution Settings

Never, ever design a web page that will require your visitors to scroll horizontally.  Unfortunately, the only way you can guarantee that this won't happen is to check your visitors resolution setting before displaying a page, and then display the version of the page with the most appropriate horizontal width. Another approach would be to design your pages to be viewed at 800x600, a resolution that is acceptable by the vast majority of web surfers.

In Summary

Making a website technically sound doesn't have to be a difficult chore.  Half the battle is knowing what to look for.  If you focus on the above five items, you'll have addressed over 90% of the possible technical problems any site can have.

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