Forum Moderators: mack
I'm thinking of building a site using Photoshop Image-ready only, no html text displayed (all text is a graphic). This would be a simple online catalog and I would use links to update the graphic image in the main table cell (where the product would be displayed).
So, go ahead and set me straight! What are the implications vis-a-vis search engines, performance, production etc?
Thanks
Probably not a good idea. SE's will hate it and people will too (my opinions).
Try to find a successful site that does what you're attempting to do. My bet is you wont be able to find any.
If you simply want to create an online catalog, PDF's may be a better way.
Without any text on a page or site, how will a search engine know what your site is about? SE spiders have no idea what a graphic might say, only that there's a graphic there.
SEs rely very heavily on analyzing the text-based content of a web page to determine what the web page is about. No text = no clue for the SEs = no rankings for your site.
And as Robino also said ... it won't be very user-friendly, either.
If you will allow me, I'll play devil's advocate here (hopefully to educate myself and perhaps others). So why would it be user un-friendly? Assuming that ANY catalog-type website would HAVE to d/l the graphics necessary to show the products (pdf, dynamic or otherwise), why would my method be any slower/user unfriendly?
AS for the s/e issue, would alt tags be tracked by the search engines?
In my experience, most people won't stay and wait for a site
to load for more than about 10 or 15 seconds. If big graphics is what they are there for, that is another thing.
If you are trying to keep people on your site for even a little while, you need to keep your page size down to 30 or 40k total. You can then put links to the big graphics and let people decide if they want to wait to see it.
my rant,
robert
It wasn't for commerce, just informational and the people who visit the site know what to do.
Generally I don't design like that, but this was a special case.
So why try to re-invent the wheel, because it sounds like your wheel will be square instead of round. Square wheels result in a very bumpy ride.
If you can live without search engine traffic and your target market won't be slowed by it, give it a shot, you can always convert to text later. In general, however, I don't quite see the advantage unless it is a speed and layout thing from the development side.
Let me pose this question. Provided that one wants to display a simple catalog of items, to be diplayed one by one after clicking on the item name, wouldn't ANY method require basically the same amount of download time? Sure, an image of a product with a little additional text within the image may be a BIT larger, but I suspect not by much. (I understand the implications of not being able to easily update text, etc. like you would with a database.)
Let's say the graphic designer has given me a ps file that has a graphic background that covers the page (except for a banner at the top). The text and product image are to appear in the center of that page. The product image could be placed in a table that (hopefully) lines up seamlessly, but what about the text? How would I overlay live text? This is why I was considering that approach. The grapics guy can lay out the image and text however he wants it to look, and I just update that center image. The rest of the page doesn't have to re-load, just the product image - which would be true in ANY case, right?
No, there are ways to do it with varying download times. And, "download time" depends on the user's internet connection speed. "Download Size" might be the more appropriate term.
- Graphics or Flash only can be largest files
- Text only are generally smallest
- Compressed images with thumbnails/links work well
- Text descriptions with Thumbnail images is probably shortest download.
I found a site a while back that really shows how fast/slow a page will download:
Download Time Calculator [martindalecenter.com]
Just take the sum of the size of the files for a page, and head to that URL and voila! Your mileage may vary.
One another note, you might be better served taking the design and creating a site in your favorite WYSIWYG program, like Macromedia Dreamweaver. This gives you the benefit of using a comfortable interface to design a site, and then let the program create all the HTML. You can put your images in there along with text, and decrease download time for 56k'ers.
I think most webmasters on this site are almost always concerned with Search Engine placement/indexing. If your site is a catalog, you might want to consider SEs in your design.
And, if you want to try the graphics-only site, by all means, go for it. I think I understand what you're trying to do, and it sounds interesting.
1) The size of a picture file of the whole page would be massively more than that opf the product alone.
2) Anyone with pictures turned off will see nothing.
3) Anyone with a text reader will see nothing without an alt tag and not much even with it.
4) To link between pages would need an imagemap which are notoriously unusable.
5) The page will be eternally fixed at whatever width and height you deem appropriate, meaning other screen size users will be forced to scroll or see a half filled page.
6) Any hard of sight users who wish to blow up the text to see can not do so.
7) No search engine will touch you witha barge pole.
8) You will be unable to perform any sort of internal site search of your catelogue without text.
9) For you updating will be hell.
10) I cant copy and paste info from multiple pages to compare (I do this a lot to remember specs and prices in notepad before buying anything)
All that said there is a place for your catelogue pictures on the web. your best bet would be to create a page for your product that would include all the necessary info in text with a thumbnail of the product. You could then display your larger picture (with a link back) when the user clicks the thumbnail.
Using thumbnails is always a good idea, reducing a 600x400 picture into a 60x40 thumbnail gives a massive saving on the download time (60x40 is 1/100 the size of 600x400 not 1/10 as most people seem to think, well people i speak to anyway, maybe it's me?).
You must remember that the web is not a canvas, it was designed to host documents, not pictures and should be used as such.
