Text Only Websites

Pictures sell widgets but....

[d_fused]

Pictures sell widgets. The better the picture is the fewer questions clients ask. But...on the other hand stuffing a page with images, even cutting edge graphics sometimes is no good.

Looking at the log files I realize there are people from countries that still have poor infrastructure and have problems accessing some of my pages.

So, would creating an exact copy of my website and publishing it under www.widgets.com/textonly/blue-widgets.html, trigger a spam filter or be considered as a duplication?

Another benefit of using this approach, I think, would be the lack of nested tables, scripts, yo-yo's... just highly optimized text that matches the content on the main site without the bells and whistles.

One would say: Just redesign the page. But then again, I think it would hurt the browsing experience of those who are on a fast connection and want to see those hi-res pictures of the widgets we sell.

So is it a good idea to have this text only copy, or should I use an additional css to handle other font sizes, printing and even turning graphics off?

Thank you for sharing your expertise.

[RBuzz]

Have you thought about compromising with low-res thumbnails that can be clicked on for larger images?

[rossH]

alternately you could split the site at the main page with the standard "High Bandwidth", "Low Bandwidth" choice you often see.

Then you could really get primitive with the lower one, do all your stuff for SE, and you could still put voluntary link options in at each item for the big pic if you wanted.

over time you could play with all kinds crosslinking .. pics are good, but studies do show that users frantically scan text on a new page first, for navigation clues and orientation

.02

ross

[Birdman]

>>over time you could play with all kinds crosslinking

I would be very wary of crosslinking the two versions, I would even disallow robots to one of them.

I would just concentrate on one version and try to keep it balanced. The people on the slow connections can always browse in text only if they desire to do so.

Another idea is to display your images as backgrounds of html elements, which will then be called from your external stylesheet. Then you can give the user optional stylesheets to choose from and store their preference in a cookie. So every page that gets requested will first check to see if the cookie exists. If it does, give them their chosen stylesheet. If no cookie exists, give them the default sheet.

It's basically the whole idea of separating style from content. The more you can control from your stylesheet(s), the more control you have and the better your page looks to spiders. Think of it, no <img> tags, just plain HTML and text.

Regards,
Birdman

[chiyo]

have you considered making some index or "catalog" pages text only, or with only one or two nicely optimised but impressive widget pics with the promise to the reader that if they click on links they will see all info and a pic of the widget?

To a large extent we do this though we are not ecommerce. Just one or two graphics on a very short page as the index page of each section, and more weigtier grahical pages when people know they really want to go there and wait for the download?

[d_fused]

Thank you for your comments, guys.

What I have learned here is simply invaluable.

Regards.