Win a Copy of Website Optimization

Website OptimizationRead ‘em… we have FIVE copies of Andy King’s Website Optimization for the winning! We’re celebrating our mother ship’s 8th blog birthday and our own five year birthday (something like that). Check out the book’s companion site.

About the book: “Years ago, an “optimized” website merely loaded fast and worked on most browsers. Today, websites need to do much more if businesses are to thrive: they need to attract, interact with, and persuade customers. Website Optimization offers the advice of leading experts in both online marketing and site performance techniques to help you maximize targeted traffic, rev-up responsiveness, and increase sales.”

How to win:

  1. Link to www.csscollection.com and leave a comment / trackback here pointing to your link.

  2. Post a comment with a website optimization tip.

  3. Post a question about website optimization or web design in general.

  4. Answer a reader question.

You have until July 15 (the book’s official release date) to do any of the four. Random.org will select the five winners.

Monday, June 16th | News

Comments

  1. One tip: have a sitemap. Build a sitemap of your site and link it from homepage. The search engine will get it right away.

    Claudiu | June 16th, 2008 at 8:38 am | Permalink

  2. Put your Javascript code at the bottom of your page, just before the closing body tag. This tip has several benefinits, like preventing the user from seeing those “white screens of death”, better page loading usability, better download parallelization, etc.
    And, as a side bonus, you can be sure that your code will only run after all the DOM has already been loaded without the need to use an external script for monitoring it.

    Daniel Anderson Tiecher | June 16th, 2008 at 10:57 am | Permalink

  3. Use really clean and clear urls, the people seen and read as you type, and can’t understand where is it.

    Rubén Rojas | June 16th, 2008 at 10:04 pm | Permalink

  4. For each page, write unique tags and include target keywords in the tag.

    Deborah | June 17th, 2008 at 1:47 pm | Permalink

  5. Whoops! Looks like my title tag code was removed in the previous comment. Here’s the advice, without the code:

    For each page, write unique < title > tags and include target keywords in the tag.

    Deborah | June 17th, 2008 at 1:48 pm | Permalink

  6. Always remember that content is king and make it keyword rich!

    Paige | June 24th, 2008 at 8:29 am | Permalink

  7. Paige is right, content is king. Content is what draws users. They don’t come for the pretty design. They don’t come for the cool flash programs. They don’t come to waste time. They come for information. To consume, play, download, purchase, learn, use, share. But they have lots of options. You must know your shit.

    Julia | June 24th, 2008 at 9:27 am | Permalink

  8. As a non-pro, I’ve found it immensely useful to be clear on what I want, find someone who understands what I want, and then pay them to implement it. Everyone should specialize in something; I believe I’ll specialize in finding specialists! (To loosely quote WC Fields “Everyone should believe in something; I believe I’ll have a drink”…)

    Mary McD | June 24th, 2008 at 10:16 am | Permalink

  9. My question(s):
    What’s the best way to ensure cross-browser compatibility?
    I’ve heard recently that IE doesn’t play well with divs that have both specific width and padding. There’s also the double float margin… Some of these things can be addressed when planning your site and some might need conditional stylesheets. Are conditional stylesheets the way to go? Is there a good resource that you know of that lists the issues one needs to think about when designing and coding a site?

    kristarella | June 28th, 2008 at 9:39 pm | Permalink

  10. Thanks for very interesting article.

    Boszkowo | July 9th, 2008 at 3:55 pm | Permalink

  11. Interesting to think of the term optimization as web site effectiveness, instead of speed or code efficiency.

    I am currently focusing on “optimizing” the web forms I design (In a perfect world I would eliminate them as much as possible). My tip or recommendation is to study the work of Luke Wroblewski ( http://www.lukew.com/resources/web_form_design.asp ). And then conduct as much end user testing as possible with a few different approaches to determine the optimal method.

    Joe Mako | July 9th, 2008 at 4:40 pm | Permalink

  12. Use “alt” text for images.

    Deborah | July 9th, 2008 at 7:39 pm | Permalink

  13. thank you….

    kiralık vinç | July 10th, 2008 at 8:05 am | Permalink

  14. I’ve always wanted to know if on alt and title atributes I have to use coded chars like á or I can simply use á.

    Thanks!

    Cayo Medeiros | July 14th, 2008 at 2:59 pm | Permalink

  15. Tip:
    Don’t ever forget to give customized titles to each page! The title of the page is one of the most important aspects in SEO.

    Thanks for the opportunity!

    Marta Simone | July 14th, 2008 at 7:48 pm | Permalink

  16. Website optimization tip:
    Always define the Document Type Definitions (DTD) of the webpages that you make so that the browser don’t go into the quirks mode.

    Samara Varella | July 15th, 2008 at 8:43 am | Permalink

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