Intros inhibit website users to access the information they were looking for. In addition they convey the impression that the website owners place more importance on the design than on the offer of information or solutions to their customers. A website needs to instantly communicate what it is about and what a user can expect to find. The website must also take account of the little time available to the website user. It should be noted that users spend in average only 2 minutes on a website.
An intro page to allow language or regional choice is unnecessary, as there is a possibility to identify this automatically.
Javascript intros for re-directing and configuration purposes are also discouraged, even though users hardly notice them, as they have an impact on search engines and accessibility. Nowadays there are better alternatives to be used server-side.
Please note that you may not be able to see an intro page, depending on language settings, IP address and other user criteria. The intro page may, however, show for other users, and it is available for search engines, spiders and bots.
Source:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
Further information:
http://www.kundennutzen.ch/intros.php
http://nitzsche.info/de.pub-2-vorschaltseiten.php
The site possibly uses an intro page.
A text in upper case reduces the reading speed by approx. 10%. The single words of the text are not easily recognised by the eye, and the whole text blurs into a block. A text in upper case is perceived as aggressive, amateurish, childish and unprofessional. Use upper case only for short titles.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger.
Compare also with Schriver, Karen in Dynamics in Document Design, page 274:
"When text is set in all capital letters, reading speed is slowed about 13 to 20 percent. Reading speed is optimal when uppercase and lowercase letters are used. When extra emphasis is needed, bold has been found to be a better cue than uppercase."
The tested website contains little text in upper case.
Keywords allow internal and external search crawlers to find content for interested users. Keywords should be chosen from the language and vocabulary of the web user to describe the page content as closely as possible. .
The use of precise and meaningful keywords is still an advantage, even though the importance of the keywords has dramatically decreased for external crawlers. Internal crawlers can still trust your keywords and improve your website search feature.
Source and further information:
"Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen/Hoa Loranger
http://www.essex.ac.uk/wag/searchguide/search2.aspx
The tested website does not use any keywords.
A table based layout carries many disadvantages if compared to a purely CSS layout. A CSS layout improves both accessibility and performance.
Further information:
A detailed article by Douglas Bowman can be found onhttp://www.stopdesign.com/articles/throwing_tables/.
Hint for webmasters: Be sure that when embedding third party content, e.g. with iFrame, there are no layout tables included.
On the tested website there are many tables, which most probably are also used for the layout.
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A potential hint has been identified.
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A potential hint has been identified.
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A potential hint has been identified.
"According to RFC 2616, Internet HTTP Compression is a method to send, from the Web server, an HTTP response message in compressed format to a requesting Web browser.
HTTP Compression saves transfer data volume and reduces web page load time." As there are some known issues with Internet Explorer 6 you may want to disable compression for IE6.
Source: http://www.http-compression.com/
The website does not use or only partially uses a GZIP or deflate compression for html files.
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A potential hint has been identified.
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A potential hint has been identified.
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A potential hint has been identified.
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A potential hint has been identified.
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A potential hint has been identified.