Your business, no
matter the size, can be big on the World Wide Web. You are in a
new medium, where communication is no longer sold by the column
inch. Saltmeadow has created and currently maintains successful
web sites for organizations of all sizes — from local
non-profit and small start-up to huge multi-national
corporation.
Your goals, and your clients' needs, determine the proper
size for your site. A catalogue site, for instance, or a
customer-support site can have scores of pages, while a basic but
still highly effective business site can have as few as
four.
The basic site
Any site designed to
interest and inform the public should have at least the following
pages: a welcome page (usually called a "home" or
"index" page); a services or products page; a clients
and partners page; and a contact page that includes information
about the people who make your business work.
Each of those pages is necessary because your potential clients
want the same chance online that they have in your store or
office: the chance to walk in, look around, and get the feel of
the place and the people who run it.
The reason those pages should not be combined into one long page
is — given current technology — time. The bigger a
page, the longer it takes to appear in your browser window.
Currently, in 2004, more than half of the people on the Internet are
using 56.6 kilobit or slower modems. More than a quarter are
using 33.2Kb or slower modems, which communicate at less than 4.2
kilobytes/second (usually between 1 and 3KB/second, in fact,
depending on site content and traffic). And people online are
impatient: the same client who might wait a minute or two at your
desk or sales counter is not likely to wait, even for 20 seconds,
at your website.
Each of your pages should, at average load speeds, be legible
and scrollable in under 10 seconds from the time it begins
loading, if you wish to keep visitors from leaving. This does not
mean that all images must be viewable in under 10 seconds, but
that the scrollbar must appear to the right of the browser window
within that time limit. Consequently, Saltmeadow keeps all text, scripts,
and other coding — exclusive of images — to less than
15KB per page unless you specify otherwise. And we never allow
large images or redundant coding to hamper navigation on your
site.
The larger site
Your site can grow as
large as you see fit. When you grow it with Saltmeadow, we make
sure it remains easy to read and simple to navigate.
We recommend that any large site incorporate its own search
engine — why make your clients follow four or five links to
get to the information they want? — and when your
Saltmeadow site grows to the point that any of your pages is more
than three clicks away from your home page, we'll give you
your own search engine, for free.
The only limit on size is cost of maintenance. Even a small site
needs to be updated occasionally. And the larger a site becomes,
usually the more often it needs to be modified. At Saltmeadow, we
design a site to be easily updated from its inception, with
versatile and easily editable scripts and SSIs. Nevertheless, a
large site that requires frequent updates also requires dedicated
maintenance. Large companies have their own Information
Technology department. Now you can, too: Saltmeadow.
So how big is small at Saltmeadow?
How big is business with
us? Very big. No matter how many or how few employees you have,
Saltmeadow is your Web designer whenever you decide it's more
cost effective to rent expertise than to hire it. We design and
maintain sites of any size — and we have the talented,
trained and experienced personnel to make sure your site reflects
your professionalism, and your pride.
