I have been a bit concerned about our website - specifically the amount of time it takes to download web pages, but also about other factors that stop people staying. 47% of our visitors stayed for less than 30 seconds, which doesn't sound encouraging. Our previous front page had lots of graphics and little text. I have now changed it so that it has more text and less graphics. Hopefully the text is better too. We have also tried to optimise the front page for search engines, particularly people looking for anything to do with 'X-com' games. We will see what happens.

How much effort does everybody else spend on getting their website front page just right?

hey ya,

If you have a fair amount of text; turn on mod_gzip (or the iis equivalent). Compresses your text lots leading up to a few seconds of saved time especially on 56k modems, but even on broadband connections.

Use a lower number of images over a lower size of images. Because web browsers make limited numbers of connections to a webserver at once. Also if you get lots of hits your webserver will thank you for less work.

You can save a couple of kilobytes here and there by using some of the better image compressors.

If you have roll overs, try and make sure they are loaded last.

If your web page is over 15KB people start getting bored. One tiny image, and hardly any text like googles would be the best :)

Do some experiments trying to get people what you want them to do on your site. If everyone is following a certain link, why are they doing it? If most people leave after getting to your front page, why? Do they finish loading the full front page? If they don't finish downloading, your front page is probably too big for them.

oh, and make sure it looks ok in all the browsers/640x480/800x600.


Have fun!
http://www.holepit.com/

little suggestion:

you can make your file size even smaller: get rid of those "HOME, NEWS etc." rollovers and use simple ARIAL link and just change the font color to yellow using hover.

And yes, front page is crucial - and our (morphecy games) frontpage is not a good one. have to change it.

The new page is a lot faster for me, the old one was pretty sluggish.

Actually, couldnt it be that the problem lies somewhere else? Like, for example, that they have clicked the banner or search link, but, upon arrival to your site they understood that its not what they were searching for?

Maybe you should change your ad efforts, target more some core audience or something.

Just a thought.

I disagree with the opinion that index pages must be as small as possible. I think it's one of those things that people repeat simply because they've heard it so often and think it must be true. But my experience has been quite the opposite.

My last redesign saw a very nice increase in visitor retention and general website interaction, even though the page size increased to just under 100kb. Basically I think that if your page looks nice, people are prepared to hang around a little longer waiting for it to load. That may not be the case for everyone, but it has certainly worked for me.

As Dan said.. the new one is a lot faster. Now as pretty, but a lot faster. Especially when I compare the new one with the current 'News' page.

One definate speed improvement would be to ditch the tables for the layout and use CSS. With tables, browsers generally wont render anything until everything up until the end of the table has been loaded. Complex table layouts slow sites down dramatically.

-Z-


PS. On quick inspection, there are a few spelling mistakes on that front page.

'Rebselstar Raiders’

a more amitious single player exeperience

I don't think that a small webpage = more visitors!
if you look around for commercial titles webpages you'll see a lot of BIG images and lot of flash intros, etc etc!!
of course if your page size is big and it is not nice, better to use only text (haven't look at it though, it is only a general comment).

Julian,

Another issue I noticed that might have made a difference.

Ive known about your work and LSN for a while, but Ive never visited your site.

When I went there (after you posted) I found that overall the site has no interaction with the user.

That is, there is no way of me interacting with you guys, there didnt seem to be an obvious link to forums, some kind of feedback, the news was very cluttered etc.

Perhaps its because my eyes are used to scanning the left bar for a menu and there were only 3 options (none of which suggested browsing or user feedback and community).

I think one of the main things we, as developers should concentrate on, is giving the users a means to interact both with us and with each other.

So my suggestion would be to rework the site such that it focusses on how the player base will communicate with each other and with you.

Does that make sense???

Phil

I think the downloading time is certainly very significant if you want to keep people interested, particularly if they have just found your site from some search engine. I think the text has to be relevant and interesting. Most commercial games with flashy websites simply don't rely on their websites to sell their games - but us shareware sellers do. So I think the front page has to do a lot of things well.

Zoombapup, you are right about the lack of interaction there. I should restore the link to our message boards, certainly, because they are very active and will probably do a good job of selling the game for us as well.

Most commercial games with flashy websites simply don't rely on their websites to sell their games - but us shareware sellers do.
yes, well... you got a good point here :D
I think it's still possible to make a website nice without big loading times even on a 56k modem.
I've looked at your site now, and I think it is quite good. A thing I would probably add is more colours.
As it is now it seems more a website selling "serious" software, not really a videogame, IMHO of course.
If you look at my website is full of colours and has a certain feel that you can instantly classify "this is a videogame!" :P

... well of course my game isn't as good as yours ;) hehe

p.s. want just to add that UFO was one of my favourite game ever. I've played it when I was just 16-17, and when I think about it, I think about some of the happiest days of my life :D
(in those years I played also Master of magic, Daggerfall, Diablo... sigh, I miss those days!!!)

I know for a fact that we take great care in having as low load times as possible. We do it through use of JS and html1.1 and really have pushed our page load times down.

The in game load time is averaging at 3 seconds per page for a 56k modem.

Then again, since our game is entirely web based this is a little more relevant to us.

So on to LSN's site:

I think the problem I see is not load times, selling video games is selling image. Sure, you can argue that good content is where it's at, but what gets the product into the hands of the consumer is all image. Thats why you want big, flashy.

The first page should be the most flashy, it doesnt mean high load times. Your news page, for instance, is vastly superior to your index page. However, both suffer from the same problem. Information overload. A new person to your site (in general) does not want to go sifting through the last dozen news events, see the top 20 ranking, and the plethera of other information you provide on that main page.

Your first page should be conciece, aimed directly at getting the product in the hands of the user.

Your 'news' page should be where users go once they have the product. It's main page should be targetting the new person. The people already playing your game will be fine clicking a link to bring them to the mass information screen. The first time user just gets confused and frustrated.

I'll use our main page as an example: www.dragonclawstudio.com/faith
Page loads. 8 words on the screen. 7 real simple options to click on. Our next version has cut it down to 6 (login is directly on the startup page instead of a seperate login screen). It will go back up to 7 when I write a 'About' section which is something we are lacking. In general its not a big idea, most people visiting your site will already know that LSN or FaitH is a game.

Our 'second' screen is in game, so I cant give you a link, but I can say it is basically the game screen with a tutorial and quick start guide. What does the user want? He wants to get started, so we give the 8 first steps of the game.

Finally, we have a 'news' page. This is the confusing screen, much like your own news page. However, getting to it is not something new users do right away (in fact, we hide it from new users because it would just confuse them)

View this at
www.divinequest.net/faith

Its not so dissimilar to your own, but the point is acccessing it has been made so that a first time visitor probably will not see it, though anyone who plays the game for any length of time will know about it (there are links, but they aren't out in the open.

Thats our theory.

If you are interested Julian, I run a massive multiplayer online game business group. We have a meeting tonight at 9:00 PM Eastern time. Contact me via e-mail for details. That offer goes out to anyone running a game that is of multiplayer variety.

Sincerely,
Joseph Lieberman

There are some interesting arguments there Terin, and the Faith front page looks very slick. However, we do have some other serious objectives - namely getting search engine traffic. We basically want people searching for 'X-Com' or 'Xcom UFO' or 'Xcom game' to find us pretty high up the search results list. We would also like to be high up on 'strategy game' or 'online strategy game', but that's tougher. Therefore we have to construct the page with a reasonable amount of text that has a good number of references to 'X-Com' in the right places - and the search terms can't take up too much of the text without arousing the search engines suspicion. We already had a reasonably good google page rank of 6/10 - but we weren't getting people looking for X-Com.

Also, I think the page has to sell the game in some way. I am not sure we are doing this the right way yet, and certainly we can improve the page design. However, it does load really nice and quick now - its 61k including all images. One common complaint about our previous page is that people couldn't spot the 'download' or 'subscribe' buttons, despite that large amount of graphics devoted to them.

You may want to consider changing the Alt mousover text on the 4 award graphics as they are all the same. You could get X-Com and Strategy game into each one, but make them all slightly different. Those 3 small screen shots on the left are also the same mouseover text...you could get more vriety into these.


Hope this helps.

Alfie

Just had another thought:

There is a lot of space on the left of the page under the 3 small screen shots.

You could have a lot of descriptive text here that includes the search terms you are trying to achieve. Have the text size at the smallest font and the same colour as the background so it is not visible to visitors but search engines will "see" it.

Alfie

Search engines are not so easily fooled though. These tricks may have worked once upon a time, but not any more.

Someone should do a book about how to get your site "ranked" :)

Or at least a website.

Or.. erm. something.

Of course.

Phil.

I'm not an expert on this and I probably have less experience on web marketing than most of the guys around here.

But considering that even though I really loved the X-Com games and had always hoped for a slick modern update and especially from the true creators, but then somehow after seeing your laser squad nemesis page I just felt an urge to close the window and get it out of sight, that probably means that there may be something wrong with it (at least for me).

Information overload is probably the thing. Maybe you should put a screenshot to better attract the viewer.

Instead of putting the ORDER NOW button at the top of the page (the first screen of the page), maybe you should begin with getting the viewer to learn the facts
- attract the viewer first with screenshot or some BIG text
- tell the viewer what is laser squad nemesis
- who created it, why is that significant
- put in thumbnails to screenshots
- what's new in it, how is it better than X-Com, the features
- then put in the CGW, PCZone quotes (or maybe put them in between sections)
- then after you have succeeded in attracting the viewer/interested the viewer provide the demo link
- and then put in your order link for people who are already convinced

Basically the first screen (top of the page) should aim to get the attention/interest of the viewer, instead of shoving the ORDER NOW button in his/her face when they don't know anything about the product yet. Then fill up the details and other selling points when the viewer hits the page down key to view the rest of the page. And the ORDER button should be the last thing on the page. (I hate it when people try to sell something to me that I don't even know what it is.)

Alternatively you could keep the index page clean and aim just to get the viewers attention and link to the details on another page.

Another thing is I relate X-Com to a dark blue/green/black futuristic color theme, but your page doesn't give me the same feeling as X-Com. I was actually expecting a black background page.

Just my two cents. Hope any of that may help.