With the advancements of Universal Search becoming more and more prevalent, all site owners need to be sure that they are making their sites as sticky as possible. Google wants sites that are the “total package” in their index and if you’re missing a piece of the pie you might find your rankings dropping as early as the first part of 2009.

I posted a quick Video Blogging 101 on my personal blog about some easy ways to get started adding video to your website. The post gives you a quick look at what programs I used, how I made the video, and where I uploaded it.

Content is a huge part of the web, but when you can give your audience another medium to digest all of your information then you’re making your site more substantial.

Besides video, what are some other methods that you’ve implemented to keep your site sticky?

When it comes to development of any kind, a complete specifications worksheet or statement of work is one of the most important considerations. Surprisingly, creating that document or even a discussion of one is often glossed over when an application/feature has been developed before or does not appear to be ground breaking or difficult. This can lead to serious problems when a project gets farther down the line because of misunderstandings between the parties involved.

Any application that involves programming logic has the potential of growing larger than anticipated if not thought out completely before even one line of code is written. Even developing features as seemingly simple as contact forms can lead to problems if everyone (developer, administrator, account rep, client) does not have a written out and signed-off specification sheet. Issues of “scope creep” often happen if a project is based off ambiguous or nonexistent specifications.

There are a lot of reasons why spec sheets are brief or nonexistent. The additional time needed to create them and the confusing and technical verbiage that may be used in them could affect the negotiation process. Often, clients resist signing off on anything technical if they believe it will pigeonhole them into a corner. These are all valid concerns. However, a complete, understandable, and agreed upon specification sheet remains an instrumental part of any development project. Before proposing or starting a project of any significant size, serious thought should be given to the need and importance of well thought out spec sheets.

Synaptic navigation is the art of presenting the web site user with a custom navigation experience.  Synaptic navigation allows users to follow their own thought process while navigating your site. For example, if a user is looking at a specific product or service and sees a link or call out to related information, there is a chance that they will stay engaged on your site longer.

Usually backed up by linear or traditional navigation and robust search capabilities, synaptic navigation is a departure from directing users down a specific path to what you think they are looking for. The challenge is for designers and developers to think about all the ways content can link to itself throughout the site.

Most web sites attempt to follow the three click rule. If users can’t find what they need within three clicks, they will most likely move on to your competitor’s site. Users are becoming more savvy and want to build a relationship with you on their own terms. Synaptic navigation is one way to do this. Another way is through using PURLs (personalized urls). In the world of B2B and B2C, personalized URLs can make a significant impact on your users. We’ll take a look at PURLs in another post.

Creating a new website is always an exciting time for any company. A lot can go into a new website and one aspect that people often over look is the redirection of their old web pages.

Every web page on your site has a unique URL and it’s very easy to change the structure of your website when you go through the process of a re-design. If you don’t take proper redirection into account you can end up with many 404 (page not found) error pages. Error pages are very unprofessional and can often confuse the user so much that they will leave your website.

For example, xyz.com decides to re-design their website:

Their old about page is:xyz.com/about

On the new site they want the about page to say company: xyz.com/company

If you don’t setup a 301 redirect, when a user goes to xyz.com/about they will get a 404 error page.

Why is this even important?

You might think that this is insignificant in the grand scheme of your web presence, but it is actually a huge mistake that a lot of companies make.

Any time a user has chosen to bookmark a page on your site, if you don’t redirect them to the new page they get a 404 error and leave your site.

Inbound links are one of THE MOST IMPORTANT aspects of your web campaign and if you don’t set up 301 redirects then you will lose all of your old links when you launch your new site.

Alternatively, you could take the time to find all of your inbound links, contact every single website and ask them to update the links to your site, but depending on how long your site has been online and how many links you already have, that could take months.

Quick Solution

If by chance you have a huge database site with thousands of pages and can’t take the time to do proper 301 redirects then you can at least create a custom 404 page.

A custom 404 page will often be a copy of one of your interior pages that will include your navigation. You can also include a little bit of information about why they’ve come across a page that no longer exists.

A 404 page supplied by the server looks like this:

As you can see this page doesn’t give much help to the user about where they are or where there trying to go.

This is a custom 404 error page from this site:

From this page you can see that the URL the user tried is no longer available on this site and since you know that you’re in the wrong place you can use the navigation to try and get to where you’re going. This page at least matches our site and doesn’t confuse the user to much. Here is what the full error page looks like.

The Best Solution

301 redirects are the best way to handle movement of pages both for your users and your search engine optimization. Unlike a custom 404 error page, a 301 redirect will pass link juice to your new page.

The method of your 301 redirect is going to depend on your server. Most servers are either going to be an Apache or Microsoft server. If you use an Apache server, 301 redirects are a piece of cake. Just create a .htaccess file if you don’t already have one and write a few lines of code. If you use a Microsoft server, 301’s are possible but a lot more time consuming.

Here are a few links to help you out with both Apache 301 redirects and Microsoft 301 redirects.