What we look for in a site

There are many elements that make up a web site and each needs to be considered to make something that's truly accessible and useful to all your potential visitors. Here's some of the things we believe make up a good site.

Speed, speed, speed, speed. Yes, speed. It's easy to think that the increase in broadband access means that you no longer have to worry about the size of your site or how long it takes to download. This simply isn't true. Ask yourself why broadband is so popular and at least one of your answers should be that it makes surfing faster.

It's true that broadband 'raises the bar' in terms of how big a site can reasonably be, but it's also still true that the smaller your 'footprint' and the faster your site loads, the fewer customers you'll lose in the first five seconds.

That's right, research has shown that the average web user will wait just four seconds for a page to load before clicking away. Even over a broadband connection a page doesn't have to grow too large before that target is missed.

Four seconds is one hell of a target for any site and some need more help than others. You could be losing over 50% of your visitors before they even see your page load.

Accessibility. Flashy graphics, whizzing menus and funky layouts are all very well but how many users actually like that sort of thing? When you use a product at home do you want one that looks good but takes ages to work out, or one that just does the job right the first time?

The answer should be that it depends on the site. Whizzy and flashy may suit a music download site but it almost certainly doesn't suit a tractor sales company site. We'll look at whether your layout, navigation and menu structures are appropriate and easy to use.

Compatibility. Browser compatibility has always been an issue and it remains so today. Although it's largely a two-horse race between Internet Explorer and Firefox, these browsers behave very differently and now with IE7 rolling out there's really a third horse coming up the inside rail.

Does your site work well in the top three? We'll look at compatibility and what needs to change to ensure you're not showing a poor face to a percentage of the planet.