InsideOut Solutions

So you got a slick new website three years ago and want to know how it has aged.  Does it keep up with your competitors who just got a brand new site?  There are a few places you can check the status of the technology on your site.

The first would be the WC3 validator.  The WC3 is the global standard setter for the internet.  All standards that web browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome follow are set by the WC3.  WC3 stands for World Wide Web Consortium.  The validator can be found here:  http://validator.w3.org/  Just put your web address in there.  While the results will mostly only be useful for web developers and designers, it is still a great place to start.  Errors in red are bad.  Warnings in yellow are not great, but shouldn’t be too big a deal.

If you have more than a handful of errors, you will see a reduction in load times and possibly Google Pagerank as well.  While errors you have today may not have been considered errors three years ago, they are not anymore and should be fixed to improve your site performance.  Contact your web developer and show them your results.

Another great way to test your site is to see how fast it loads.  The tool found here: http://loads.in/ lets you put in your website URL and see how long it takes to load.  Page load times affect bounce rates and conversion rates as well as your Google Pagerank.  Google wants to reward you for having a site that loads quickly.  Things like large images and large slideshow Flash files can negatively affect your page loads.  This tool is great because it shows you how a site will look while it loads at certain intervals.  You can also change what country and web browser you want to have the site load time checked in.  A load time under 4 seconds is great.  Under 8 and you are doing okay.  Above that and you should look into the reasons why.

These are two great tools to gauge the relative age of your site and see what you could improve on from a technical perspective.  Neither of these tools care about what your site “looks” like, just speed and coding method.  With the new HTML5 and CSS3 becoming more widespread, now is the time to update the functionality of your site to meet the current standards.

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The web is growing fast, and new tools and techniques are being used all the time. When it comes to what’s online, it only takes a few years for what was once new, to become outdated. So how can you tell if your website needs a checkup?

How wide is your site?

The average screen size today is larger than it was five years ago. This means that if your site was built in 2006, there’s probably some unused screen real estate you could take advantage of now.
If your site can be widened, this means that there could be room for larger photos. Plus, you might be able to sport a nice multi-column layout that’s not too cramped; these sidebars can be a great place to post positive reviews or quotes, as well as call-to-action buttons.

Does your site have a “table-based” layout?

Once upon a time, it was common practice to build a site using a “table-based” structure. This was a great way to control the layout of your site – you could control columns as you would in a spreadsheet. However, this is not the way modern sites should work. Why? Those sorts of layouts are much more difficult to maintain over time since a lot more code goes into building the layout. More code means longer page load times – something that search engines now take into consideration when ranking a website. Lastly, it’s not correct syntactically, meaning that tables should be used for “tabular data” like comparison charts, or the sort of information you might put into a spreadsheet.

Are your main links image-based or text-based?

Did you know that there are only a handful of internet or “web-friendly” fonts? With current technology, we can expand that number, but in the past, the only way to use a non-standard font was to save your text as an image. This might seem pretty harmless because humans can still read it even though it’s an image of text. But here’s the problem: search engines aren’t human. Granted, search engines seem to be getting smarter all the time, but there’s still a limit to what they can “read”. If your text, and especially important links, were created as images the search engines can’t “read” what your pages or links are about, which may reduce the link’s relevance and ranking.

Does your site depend on Flash?

There’s no denying that Flash animation, when done well, is very eye-catching. But there are some things to consider, for example, Google’s relatively new site preview ability (that magnifying glass next to some of your search results). Google will attempt to get a snapshot of your site so visitors can quickly tell if this is what they’re looking for. But it can’t (at least not yet) capture Flash. Instead, it’ll replace what should be Flash with a gray block and a puzzle piece. Secondly, the ever-present iDevices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) do not support Flash. Fortunately, many effects that were once only possible with Flash can now be mimicked using other methods like JavaScript. For example, simple features, such as a header slideshow or photo galleries, are implemented easily in JavaScript. These two websites use JavaScript to make their slideshow run: Inn and Spa at Cedar Falls and the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Guild

How can you tell where your site stands?

If you’re not sure how your site measures up to the modern standard, and if you’re interested in finding out, contact InsideOut Solutions at info@insideout.com to request a free report. In a week or less, we’ll review your site and let you know how it stands, and what steps you can take to bring it up to date. Please write “Website Standards Review” in the subject line of your email request.

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InsideOut Solutions is pleased to announce the launch of another website, Grays Harbor Washington has a new tourism website and blog. This new site helps to showcase the variety of attractions in and around Grays Harbor county. There are very few places in the world where you can stick your toe in the Pacific Ocean one hour, and the next hour, be in the lush rain forest. We at InsideOut Solutions enjoy working to bring the best of what a place has to offer to the community by combining beauty, form and function. Our talented team consists of top notch designers, coders and idea driven individuals, creating fabulous websites is what we love to do! The new Grays Harbor tourism website was designed around WordPress, we of-course make the fully functional customized design and then built it around WordPress which enables the user to make quick additions to their new site. With WordPress, the user will be able to manage their website with a single login and make blog posts, add photos, text, pages and much more…all with an easy to use interface. If you are interested in a new website in which you can utilize the power of WordPress for your CMS give us a call, our friendly staff can help you explore your options. Contact Us:

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What a difference a new website makes.  We recently launched a new website for the Bright Morning Inn of Davis West Virginia.  Susan has been a long time client of InsideOut Solutions and took the plunge this year to develop a new site.

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