Now, I work by the hour as well as the project, so I don’t have any problem with helping her out. Dealing with product images for a web site is an ongoing challenge for small businesses, particularly craft oriented business where the product and the pictures are produced by the owner. Her question (and I’ve seen it before with several clients of my own), raises several issues.

What does web-ready mean?

Yikes! This baby picture is huge!

All of us have received those baby pictures in our email where the image is so large, it takes 5 minutes to open and all you see is a giant eye. This is how the image came off the camera. Different cameras produce different size pictures, the more megapixels, the bigger the image. The primary purpose for these giant images is so you can print them. Print likes high resolution. Web images need to be at a lower resolution and as small as file size as you can manage. No one want to wait 5 minutes for your pictures to download on your site. So, web ready means pictures that have been cropped to the size that will be used on the web page and “saved for web” at the low resolution of 72ppi (pixels per inch) – the resolution that your computer monitor is. Size is determined by pixels; a rule of thumb might me that thumbnails are not bigger then 150 px in either direction, “medium” images no bigger than 300 px and “large” no bigger than 800 px. Most websites are between 750 and 1024 px wide.

Photoshop is the most commonly used program to get an image web-ready, but it’s lighter version Elements, Gimp and my favorite little share-ware program Irfanview all have the ability to help you re-size images. For more information on resolution, file management and other image related web topics you can check out my article Creating Graphics for the Web.

Find Those Images!

Along with getting the images web-ready by sizing them correctly, paying attention to how the files are named and described will go a long way to optimizing your site for search engines.

Titles – no one knows what dsc0012.jpg is but everyone will know what sparkly-butterfly-barrette.jpg is. Naming your images to match what they are or what your customer might be searching for will go a long way to helping them find you.

“Alt tags” – along with the file title, every web image has the opportunity to have an alt tag or alternate description attached to it. This serves 2 purposes; for those who don’t have the image, (cell, screen readers) they know what it’s supposed to be and like above it helps the searchers find you. Use keyword rich descriptions in your alt tags. If you’re handing off the images to a designer, give them the image descriptions along with your regular page copy.

DYI

If you are running your own craft based business and taking product pictures is going to be an essential and ongoing part of your business, then I really do recommend finding a class or tutor and investing in a decent camera and software. Of course, you can hire a photographer to do all of this for you, but if saving money in the long term is your goal, making the up front investment and learning to take and edit your product images yourself will save you real money when it comes time to have your site built and updated.

Like with most things it all comes back to time and money and how much your time is worth. If you spend 20 hours doing something I could do in 5, was it worth it? Many people only look at what something costs, but don’t factor in what their own time is worth.

I’m not a real advocate of doing everything yourself when it comes to web design. After all, I’d like to have enough clients to pay my bills, I’d rather have my car serviced by someone who has been trained and really knows what they’re doing and if you’re running your own business, that should be where your expertise lies. I do think however that understanding enough about how images and files are prepared for the web so that you can talk intelligently to a designer and even do some of the repetitive work yourself is a good thing.

Further Resources

The Secrets to Optimizing Your Site for Image Search

How to Create Better Graphics for the Web

Creating Graphics for the Web

Glossary of Web Terms

Usability & Navigation

Make sure it works

I was on a beauty product site the other day and they had a questionnaire to determine which line of their products would be best for me. I actually spent over 3 minutes filling this form out, only to find out that the submit button was broken and did not work. I never got the information I was looking for and was frustrated enough to find the contact page and let them know. I never got a reply and I’m very unlikely to re-visit this site or buy the products now.

Be vigilant about is broken links and have someone test your site regularly, especially to external links that are not in your control. Nothing screams unprofessional site like links that go to Page Not Found. Any time you change anything, it’s always good practice to test for this. You can check your site right now with this tool. http://validator.w3.org/checklink

If it’s not ready, don’t put it out there

Say NO to "under-construction"

I strongly encourage forethought and planning in site design, but that doesn’t mean promising links or info that is not ready yet. If the content for the page is not ready, then don’t put it in the navigation. How many times have you seen COMING SOON! only to come back a week or month later and have whatever was coming still not there? Design the navigation so that adding pages later is no big deal, but “under construction” and “coming soon” are  just not cool.

If Mom can’t figure it out, it doesn’t make sense

When I first designed my own site, I did some very artsy things with my navigation. Instead of the straight choices across the top or side that you see almost universally, I embedded the links into the header art. I showed this site to my Mom and despite the fact that the giant leaves to the right had Portfolio and Contact written on them, she didn’t know that was where she was supposed to click until I showed her. Oh. Eventually I got around to changing my navigation to something more conventional. Maybe not as cool, but if your audience can’t make sense of it, what’s the point?

For more on this, check out the Mom test video.

Is it easy to use?

We’ve all been in sites where how to get to the next step, refine the search or figure out the shipping before buying was just not apparent. User testing, (this is a great place to use your Mom again), is critical. Even small companies can enlist family and friend help. This is where you really want to find someone who is not you or your designer. If it’s not easy to use, the chances of repeat visits, otherwise know as business, are slim.

Engagement & Conversion

Engaging your audience and converting them to sales are the holy grail for e-commerce sites. Once you’ve got the structure making sense and working, making your site attractive to your target audience is next.

Know your audience

Know the audience you're designing for

Design elements

Why are quote and buy buttons often large and hot colors? Because they work. Why is navigation across the top or on the side? Because that is where we expect it to be. Your site can be your own without being so unconventional that nobody knows what you’re offering or how to get more

Call to action example

information. All e-commerce sites and even those that are just service businesses should have some kind of “Call to Action” on as many pages as possible. What that is depends on what you want your audience to do, but if you want them to get a quote, or sign up for a newsletter or search or buy, makes those actions obvious and don’t be afraid to test different methods.

Customer Service

OK, this seems like a no-brainer, but it bears repeating. If you’re selling something, at some point you will have to deal with your customers.

• Don’t surprise them, be up front about things like shipping costs
• Don’t make them search for a way to contact you
• Make returns and other policies obvious

If you are selling your own products, make sure this process is completely tested as well. The system that works is one that can handle the exceptions well. Very few people will talk about an uneventful order, everyone will complain about a bad one.

Sell your Credibility

Belong to a chamber of commerce, a trade association, have a profile on Linked In or a fan page on Facebook? Tell the world about it. Not only does bring credibility to you and the services you offer, but it has the added bonus of adding more SEO to your site. Do you see what’s happening at bottom of this page?

Test it, track it

Google analytics

How do you know what pages on your site are being visited? How do you know how long they are staying on a page? How do you know if your customers are bailing in the middle of a sale? How do you know that you really need to make sure that your site works in IE6?  How do you set up A-B testing to see which landing page works better? One word: ANALYTICS. Google analytics is free to install. There is no excuse for any site and particularly an e-commerce site to not have the tracking code installed. Business is all about measured results. This is where it starts.

Further Resources

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-new-rules-for-successful-ecommerce-websites

http://www.site-reference.com/articles/Internet-Marketing/Building-eCommerce-Websites-That-Work.html

http://reach.dzone.com/articles/10-key-practices

http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-design/current-style.php

http://www.lakeshorebranding.com/company/blog/simple-ppc-tip-increasing-conversions-with-a-shiny-button/

http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-use-google-analytics-for-beginners

http://www.newfangled.com/how_to_use_google_analytics

For the small business owner the over whelming amount of information on these subjects can be intimidating, so let’s start with a small primer and understand why you should care.

Social Media – This includes things you’ve probably heard of like Facebook and Twitter, but almost anything online that you can contribute to (like YouTube or Wikipedia) counts. Most mere mortals use this kind of thing for personal enjoyment, but the growing thinking is that this is the new way to communicate and sell to your customers. 20 somethings have never used a phone book, they look it up online. And it’s not just 20 somethings anymore, the biggest growing segment on Facebook right now is boomer aged women. If you watch television on demand or like I do on the Internet, then your exposure to commercials is way down. But if I know my local business and connect with them on Linked In or Facebook, then I know what they are up to. Then as the theory goes, the friends of my friends also know what they are up to and the potential for a new customer is born. Small business competes with large on a more even playing field.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization is the holy grail of getting on the first page or 2 of Google. Not when someone searches for your business name, but when a complete stranger searches for the product or service that you provide. There are many ways to make this happen for your site and there are many experts out there that specialize just in this. This is where content has to be king. Pictures and art have a definite place in telling your story, but as far as the search engines are concerned, words are what they understand.

A really beautiful site that has just the right fonts and colors is just the beginning. If the content is not optimized so that people searching for your product or service can find you, then that’s all your site is – pretty. Most people build a site hoping to increase sales in some fashion. If that’s what you want, then your budget for the project needs to be more than just the design and coding. Without careful content planning and a marketing strategy that includes making it personal with social media and making sure that the search engines find you – no one will come.

Am I an expert in all this? Hardly, but I can direct you to some people who are. I’m the one who makes it all work and look good. But I am learning more all the time and trying to participate more regularly myself. (Which by the way is probably my next article – this stuff is time consuming, how do you manage it?) Adding recent and relevant content is something that Google loves too, one of the reasons we’re becoming a world of bloggers. So, I’ve done my bit, so help me out and do yours. Let your friends know about me and post this on Facebook or tweet it on Twitter for me will you? I’ll do the same for you.

If your business doesn