Friday, January 26, 2007
Why Have A Website?
Most people get a website for their rabbitry to increase their rabbit sales. And that usually works. An attractive website that is easy to navigate and loads quickly on dial-up can be a huge asset. Almost everyone reports that their increased sales pay for the website.
That, in itself, may be enough reason to have a website. But looking further, selling rabbits means making space for future breeding, which could help improve your herd faster. If you have sluggish sales, then you must hold up until you have space - or deal with population explosion problems!
For other people, selling their rabbits is a secondary consideration. For them, their website is about sharing their excitement in their hobbies. Their sites scream, "Lookie at what I've got! Isn't this great!" I like to visit those sites. They pump up my own enthusiasm for our hobby.
Websites are also a way to share information. You can share your own path, what you are learning, and what you experience in your rabbitry. Don't ever feel like you have nothing to share. What seems like common information to you could be an eye-opener to others. And those of us highly addicted to rabbits want to read about every litter born, every leg earned, and every strange color born in your barn.
Other websites are extremely artistic. Their main purpose is to showcase photographs or rabbit-related graphics. There are some sites with horrible pictures of rabbits. When you see them, you just hope that the rabbits look better in person. Other sites have pictures of nice rabbits and/or well posed rabbits. Then there are those with lovely rabbits in gorgeous settings in a color coordinated website. You don't even have to love rabbits to enjoy those sites.
I think that there are several things that can hold your website back from accomplishing your goals:
That, in itself, may be enough reason to have a website. But looking further, selling rabbits means making space for future breeding, which could help improve your herd faster. If you have sluggish sales, then you must hold up until you have space - or deal with population explosion problems!
For other people, selling their rabbits is a secondary consideration. For them, their website is about sharing their excitement in their hobbies. Their sites scream, "Lookie at what I've got! Isn't this great!" I like to visit those sites. They pump up my own enthusiasm for our hobby.
Websites are also a way to share information. You can share your own path, what you are learning, and what you experience in your rabbitry. Don't ever feel like you have nothing to share. What seems like common information to you could be an eye-opener to others. And those of us highly addicted to rabbits want to read about every litter born, every leg earned, and every strange color born in your barn.
Other websites are extremely artistic. Their main purpose is to showcase photographs or rabbit-related graphics. There are some sites with horrible pictures of rabbits. When you see them, you just hope that the rabbits look better in person. Other sites have pictures of nice rabbits and/or well posed rabbits. Then there are those with lovely rabbits in gorgeous settings in a color coordinated website. You don't even have to love rabbits to enjoy those sites.
I think that there are several things that can hold your website back from accomplishing your goals:
- No one can find your website - make sure that you exchange links with other websites and try to get your site listed with your national specialty club or directories - also make sure that you are linked by a website that has good search engine ratings so that you are picked up by the search engines.
- Your website is difficult to navigate - most rabbitry websites are fewer than 12 pages, so there's no reason to have a complicated navigation system. There are two things you should do, though. Make sure that you can get to any page from any page without having to backtrack to the main page, and keep the navigation the same on every page.
- Your pages take too long to load - as much as I may want to see your bunnies, I do not have the time to wait 12 minutes each time the page loads. Most people are still on dial-up, so make sure your site comes up in a reasonable period of time. It's best to keep page loading to 8 seconds. Fifteen seconds is acceptable. Thirty seconds is the absolute outside limit for high graphics, highly desirable pages. If you go beyond that, you should be totally sure that the page is so highly desirable that folks will stick around to see it loaded.
- Your site does not function correctly - you have missing links, pages that are empty (it is better to disable a link than to have people spend time loading a page just to get an "under construction" graphic), pages that don't load correctly, graphics that overlap, or color schemes that make reading your page very difficult or uncomfortable.
- Your website is not organized - this is a hobby and folks will not continue to visit a site that is frustrating or irritating.
There are many other design errors - centering paragraphs of text, having music play automatically, adding slow loading graphics that are not part of your overall design, using entry pages that do nothing, and much more. By knowing what your goals are, organizing your website, and following some basic principles, you can have a rabbitry website that will help you reach your goals.
Laurie Stroupe
The Nature Trail Rabbitry “Home Of Grand Champions”
Precious Pet Rabbits
Affordable Web Site Design
