Building Web Sites All-in-One For Dummies® (100 page)

You should also document the client's feedback. When you create new content and upload it to the server, send the client an e-mail requesting that she review the changes and comment on them by return e-mail. Print out the e-mail with your client's comments and put it in the client's folder. That's known as CYOP — cover your own posterior.

Handling e-commerce customers

No Web designer in his right mind should take on the task of handling e-commerce customers. After all, taking care of your own clients is a full-time job. However, if you're dealing with a client who did fall off the turnip truck yesterday, she might not have a clue as to how to handle customers. Just because your client's online shop is selling the neatest new gadget since the wheel doesn't mean she'll be able to handle the going when the going gets tough. You can provide value-added services that separate you from your competition if you can give your customer advice on how to deal with her customers.

First and foremost, your client should keep copies of all electronic communication with customers and keep fastidious records. He should meticulously document every sale. Unless your client's product can be downloaded electronically, he will have to deal with shipping. If your client is inexperienced, advise him to develop a relationship with a shipper. This makes it easier to deal with goods damaged in shipment. If your client has a good, working relationship with the shipper, it's easier to resolve damaged goods claims. Whenever we ship something, we err on the side of overkill and package the item so it will survive a 6-foot fall.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing

If you build it, they will not come. And that's the truth. There are more sites on the Web than Carter has little liver pills — in other words, way too many for people to care about the masterpiece you just designed for your client. If your client's site is to succeed, you have to give customers a reason to care, Bunky. Hopefully, your design and your client's content are enough to keep them at the site, but first you need to grab that herd of horses by the scruff of the neck and drag them to water. You can achieve part of the task by optimizing the site for search engines. This brings some of the horses to the pond. To search out the thoroughbreds for their sip of Perrier, though, you have to resort to more esoteric marketing techniques. Search engine optimization, like the proverbial well, is deep. We show you how to optimize your site and present some marketing techniques in the upcoming sections. These are really just the tip of the iceberg. For a heaping plateful of Web site optimization techniques, pick up a copy of
Search Engine Optimization For Dummies,
3rd Edition, by Peter Kent (Wiley).

Optimizing the site for search engines

If you know how to properly optimize a Web site for search engines, you can make a lot of money — in fact, maybe enough money to give up your day job as a Web designer. Many visits to commercial Web sites occur as the result of users typing pertinent keywords in a search engine. Your job as a Web designer is to have your client's site show up at or near the top of the first page of results from a keyword search. We know: easier said than done. Scores of words have been written on optimizing a site for search engines — enough to fill several books. The following are a few tips you can use to optimize your client's site:

•
Test keywords.
Brainstorm with your client and come up with a list of keywords or phrases that you think users enter into search engines to find sites similar to your client's. Test the keywords and phrases in the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! to test your theory. Discard the phrases or keywords that don't bring up sites similar to your client's. If a keyword or phrase brings up the Web site of your client's fiercest competitor, put that keyword at the top of the list.

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Jot down the titles of your client's competitors' Web sites.
Also include those of similar businesses that are in the top 10 percent of a search result using keywords or phrases that customers use to find sites similar to your client's. Use a variation of these titles for your client's Web site.

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Create a keyword-rich title for each page of the Web site.
You can modify the title by changing page properties. Create a unique title with keywords that are likely to be used to find your client's site. A site's
title
is displayed in the search engine's results page. Some designers think that a series of keywords or phrases will get the job done. However, just because the site's title vaults a site near the top of the first page of search results, it won't necessarily drive traffic to the site. In addition to being keyword rich, the title must make sense and give users a reason to click through to the site.

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Make sure that the URLs entice visitors to click through to the site.
For example, which site would you visit if searching for
telephoto lenses?

www.photosuppliesrus.com/products123.asp

www.photosuppliesrus.com/telephotolenses.asp

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Mirror the keywords from your title tag in the alt text of each image on the home page.
Alt text
is displayed in text readers to describe an image. Some browsers also show alt text as a tooltip when the visitors pause the cursor over the image.

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Mirror the keywords from your title page in the text on the home page.
The redundancy of keywords gives the site a higher ranking with search engines.

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Create a text menu at the bottom of the page if your design uses JavaScript for menu navigation links.
Search engine robots have a difficult time following JavaScript links but can easily follow the redundant text links you place at the bottom of the page.

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If possible, include keywords anytime you use a heading style on the home page.

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Add content to the meta tags in the head section of each page's HTML.
The

tag enables you to add a keyword-rich description of the e-commerce site. Limit the description to 250 characters, including spaces; this seems to be the limit that search engine spiders recognize. The

tag enables you to add keywords and key phrases that pertain to sites, such as the one you're creating. You can include up to 255 keywords/key phrases. Enter a comma to separate keywords and key phrases. Remember to mirror the key phrases you include in the