In recent years, with the worldwide spread of broadband internet access, it has become increasingly common for site designers to disregard the load time of their websites. Sites have swelled to unwieldy size, and it has become increasingly uncommon for webmasters to pay attention to the load time of their site. But with the advent of mobile web browsing, it is once again important to consider your site’s load time and different methods to reduce how long a site takes to appear on a device, such as a Blackberry or an iPhone. Its worth noting, however that efficiency never became less important; people just paid less attention to it. One of the simplest ways to decrease your sites load time is to optimize your pictures for the web.

It may seem like a simple step, but by reducing the overall quality of the images that likely take up most of the space on your website, you can take a big dent out of load times. This is because most image editors save pictures in the highest quality by default. But there isn’t a large difference between a high quality picture and one that has been reduced in size by reducing the quality. The key is to use an image processor and select the options save for web, or optimize for web. You will then be prompted to set a number of levels. If you are experienced with image manipulation, you can tweak specific settings, but a general user should pay attention to the quality slider. You should not overwrite the original version of the file, but rather save the new file to a different folder. Compare the two, and you will notice that there are subtle differences between the larger file and the smaller one, depending on what level of quality you selected. Higher than 60-70 % is difficult to notice, but below that isn’t advisable.

A fairly substantial amount of an image’s size is related to the level of quality, so your images will now be much smaller and easier to download. By optimizing, your site is going to load faster, especially for users connecting via cell phone networks, DSL, and those still using dialup. There are a number of other improvements you can make for your site’s efficiency, but this is by far one of the easiest.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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You may have heard of Cuil, the latest website to be granted the title Google-Killer. With all the attention given to the search engine giant Google over the last couple years, it is often wondered aloud, who will be the next Google? While its impossible to say whether another company can catch lightening in a bottle in the unique (and profitable) way Google did, every year there are scores of competitors that are suggested as the next Google-Killer, unsurprisingly, you likely haven’t heard of many of these because they didn’t last. So what makes the latest competitor to get media attention a contender? Cuil seeks to build on some of Google’s most successful features, of course without infringing on Google’s trademarks, but is laying claim to indexing a far larger number of sites in its search, roughly 120 Billion websites.

The company has developed the software to use fewer computers to index more content, and this alone may give them an advantage against their larger competitor. As well, the site was founded by an alumnus of Google itself. Backed with enough capital to try to take Google down, the site has officially launched.

As a first impression, I have to say I immediately disliked Cuil. Clearly the site is Google inspired, and to that degree it may be similarity that bothers me. The designers learned from the failure of Yahoo! and others to take down Google, clearly when it comes to search people prefer minimalist design. The site is a stark black, sporting only a logo and a search box, along with a few token links and the text “Search 121,617,892,992 web pages.” Unfortunately the design is off center, the text box seems small for the screen, and the site itself doesn’t evoke the same familiar feeling as Google. This is, of course, just my opinion of the site layout, which could easily be changed substantially over the next couple months. On to searches!

Unfortunately my dislike of the search engine only grew when I entered my first search. I started with an easy one, searching for the musicians Belle & Sebastian. Whereas Google returns, in this order, their official site, their Wikipedia article, their Myspace page, and their Last.fm page, Cuil’s first two entries are the same, the American and British versions of the artists’ home page. A significant number of the first page results were subpages from their site, subpages from wikipedia, and sites not in English. Even worse, rather than displaying a list of results, the search engine displays results laid out across the screen, without actually ranking them.

The site introduces an interesting feature, allowing you to try your search within specific categories, but really I was so frustrated with the layout by this time that I had completely lost interest in the search engine. Obviously, this is just my opinion, but the site designers need to rethink their method for displaying results. There is a reason Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and others all display an ordered list, its easier for our brains to process information that is grouped and ordered. By displaying the equivalent of a desk strewn with results, Cuil creates major visual whiplash for this reviewer. Conceptually, their goal seems admirable, expand the search base, and provide a more informative look at the site before navigating to it. Unfortunately, the problem with Google isn’t really that search results don’t give you enough information.

In the end, Cuil represents an interesting concept wrapped in an unfortunate implementation. While the idea of adding more pages to a search engine seems admirable, I worry that they focused too much on this aspect of their engine. They seem to have made some major assumptions about how people process information that are flat out wrong, and frankly that worries me. The site may meet the needs of others, but I didn’t see anything worth switching for in my brief encounter.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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In the quest to court big search engines, many webmasters may overlook what is arguably the most important part of any website: the quality of your copy. Copy writing is an important part of any business, and it’s essential to building a successful website. After all, your site is how you communicate with your clients, so you have to ensure that you are using the best possible approach. Developing good copy takes time, editing, and is best done with more than one person. Having at least two people go over every word of your site is essential to catching harder to miss mistakes, so always have at least one person edit your writing.

When writing for your website, it is easy to focus too heavily on keywords for SEO; you have to ensure that each page of your site gets its point across. Each page is there for a reason, so make sure that a reader can immediately tell what information the page will provide them. You should also include useful and descriptive entries in your meta tags, because this information is what is shown to users searching for your site on Google.

You should be aware by now, but due to the breadth of the internet, it is likely you are in direct competition with more than a few web sites. Your site should make a specific effort to address what makes your product unique, superior, or otherwise the best choice for your customers. You have to address the issue of competition, because otherwise you won’t stand out. List what you see as your signature features, and highlight your product’s superiority at certain tasks compared to the competition. Its all about selling your product.

You should not, however, forget about Search Engine Optimization, while it often gets overemphasized, it is still important. The key is, you must make your keywords a natural part of your copy, incorporating them seamlessly into sentences, descriptions, and html titles. Use title tags wisely, they are given more weight as keywords, so take advantage of this. The key is to make your SEO invisible, its there, but the customer just reads through it, because it feels natural. This approach means you get the best of both worlds, great copy for your customers, and a good search engine rank for your site.

Finally, you have to remember to make clear what you want your customer to do and how. If you want them to read your blog and leave a comment, indicate that on your site, make sure the comment button is large and instruct the reader to post a comment if they are interested. If you are selling something, tell the reader its time to buy, there’s never been a better time, etc. and make sure your buy button is large and easy to find. By focusing your writing on your reader, not Google, you will get much better results from your site.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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