Borderland Tours

Overall Look
Clean and nice use of photos to catch the eye. No uniformity of the site, meaning the navigation area is disconnected from the meat of the site. 7 of 10

Navigation
No broken links and the search function works well. I would consider altering the photo galleries with thumbnails to help users with slower connections and also reduce scrolling. 9 of 10

Content
The content is great and you can get all the information you’d want. 10 of 10

SEO
Poor use of title tags but the URL is fine. Google searches do not yield much for the common terms for someone wanting a birding tour in Arizona. 6 of 10

Final Results
Total score: 32 of 40 (80%) - The site has excellent content but it could be hard to find from someone unfamiliar with the company. My main focus to improve the site would be through Search Engine Optimization and leave the design completely alone. A blog would be a good idea for this site as a way to gain incoming links (helps with SEO) and improve Google search results as well as keep the site up-to-date. Posting all the gallery photos on Flickr would also be a great idea as a way to gain even more interest.

To kick off the website reviews, I came across this site while browsing the Arizona/New Mexico birding listserv. Each review will go through the same criteria - 1) Overall look 2) Navigation 3) Content 4) Searchability - each category is rated the same, 1 out of 10 points for a total possible 40 points. The higher the total, the better the site. At the end of each review I’ll give my recommendations.

Outdoor Adventures (So Many Birds, So Little Time)

Overall Look
Unfortunately, this site is what is commonly referred to as a “nineties site”, meaning it looks like a design made back in the day. While the colors aren’t the greatest, it is the crazy blue swirly that throws the whole site out of whack. Some of the words are difficult to read because of this. Also, there are too many colors and font sizes used and the text is all centered, making the overall feel look sloppy. 2 of 10

Navigation
The navigation matches the design in that it is cumbersome and sloppy. You can find what you want but it takes a bit of digging. And the search box is useless as I searched “birds” and found nothing. The links all worked and there was adequate contact information, two very important pluses. 4 of 10

Content
The main content from a birding guide, trips, birdlists, and cost are all there but in a messy fashion. Plus, there are no dates given or detailed information for the one trip offered. 3 of 10

SEO - Search Engine Optimization
First of all, the URL is odd and not search engine friendly. Second, searches on Google for Arizona Birding Guide, the most common search I could think of turned up nothing. If you get detailed with the search, the site does come up but it is unlikely too many people will do this. The page titles and descriptions are also under-utilized and not SEO friendly. 2 of 10

Final Results
The final score for this site is 11 out of 40 (27.5%). Overall I was turned off by the colors and design but was able to find the information I would be looking for on a site like this. However, I don’t think I would have ever been able to Google the site under normal circumstances.

I would recommend a complete overhaul with a fresh template. The swirl design could still be incorporated into a header image but the colors should be updated. A blog format would work wonderfully here because there could be updated information on upcoming trips, trip reports, etc. as well as static pages for bird lists, photos, and more. A new URL would be highly recommended - one that incorporates Arizona and birding in the URL. Any links to the current URL could easily be 301′d to the new site, and thus not lose any current traffic.

I am going to be conducting reviews of birding websites I come across. Each site will be ranked by certain criteria and given an overall rating. The purpose of this is to find sites that are in need of facelifts as well as show people what can be done to improve their sites.

Once the sites are reviewed, I will archive them in a collection of links, thus creating an excellent place to find bird-related websites.

1. Multiple Users - a blog allows for many (or all) club members to actively participate in adding content, bird sightings, photographs, field trip information, or pose questions about birds and birding.
2. Commenting - just like the multiple users, members (and people wishing to become members) can respond to posts and create meaningful discussions about bird sightings, unknown birds, new birding locations, etc.
3. Flexibility - the blog format allows for changes and add-ons easier than traditional websites
4. SEO - Search Engine Optimization is all the craze these days and for good reason; if you want people to find your information, you need to be at the top of the search engine results
5. Up-to-date - there is nothing quite as discouraging as reaching a site with “recent news” with a date of 5 years ago; blogs allow for easy updates of current events and even if only updated every other week, still remain a fresh feel
6. Templates - blogs use wonderful templates designed by some of the most creative people; these designs tend to maintain a fresh look that lets people know your site is not ancient
7. Social Marketing - blogs are made for social marketing, that is they are geared towards people who are familiar with networking in places like Flickr, Technorati, Digg, etc.
8. Link Friendly - blogs are easily linkable from other sites and thus can gain more exposure than typical websites
9. Blogs Are Fun - blogs have maintained their personal feel as they’ve evolved and offer a fun, interactive place for browsers

If you’d like more information about any of these reasons, leave a comment or contact me.

Teton Mountains in Wyoming

We are offering any bird clubs that purchase a site from us free and instant access to our photo library. We have an extensive library of bird photos (over 160 species) as well as numerous scenery and flower pictures. If your bird club want to, they can use any of the pictures for presentations or to use on their new site.

The majority of our photos are of high quality and nearly all of them are suitable for promotional/educational purposes. We are constantly growing the library as we get better camera equipment and improve our skills. This is something we just like to do as a hobby and feel it is a nice addition to our website offering.

Feel free to check out some of the Birdfreak Photo Gallery.

Google has become a household name and for good reasons - they have mastered the art of simplistic usability and provide tools that we as internet users can benefit greatly from.

Case in point, Google Analytics. With Google Analytics you can gain all sorts of information about the people that visit your site. Some of the statistics hold extreme value while others can be misleading.

To use Google Analytics, you visit the analytics main site and sign up with your Google Account. This is all free and easy to sign up for. If you don’t have a Google account you can sign up for one easily.

Next, you setup your site to be tracked - just add a new site profile and you are given a little snippet of code to insert into your site. The best place is to add this into the “footer” section of your site since that will be displayed on every page and post.

Once this is added, Google begins tracking all sorts of wonderful data:

• Daily visitors
• Daily absolute unique visits
• Page views
• Time on site
• Bounce rate - how many people arrived at your site and left without clicking on any links
• Traffic sources
• Map overlay - where your users came from geographically

And much much more. Google Analytics really is a great tool and completely free to use.

With over 3,000 templates to choose from, picking out the perfect one can be time consuming and overwhelming. Here are a few quick tips to help you decide. Of course, you could always let us choose your design and customize it for your bird club.

1. White space is good - Even though many colors look wonderful together, white is still the best for reading text. Not only that, but the white backgrounds help with graphics and pictures too.
2. Two columns or three? - Three columns are best for sites with lots of information to be shown all at once. This is especially good for sponsored sites and advertising, but also for clubs with lots of events to showcase. Two columns work better for large pictures and tend to have a cleaner, friendlier look.
3. Header image - It is a good idea to choose a template with an easily adjusted header image. This can be custom created with a bird image or you can add your own creation.
4. Go with your gut - If you like the look, odds are others will to. It is a good idea to think “What do you want to accomplish with this site and what will newcomers think?” For the Birdfreak Birding Blog, we purposely chose “birdfreak green” because we wanted to stand out and still have a environmental-green image.

Plugins, besides your own posts, are the backbone of your Website (blog). Sure you can do without them, but by adding a few choice plugins, you can improve your site’s look, performance, usability, and stickiness*.

In upcoming posts I will discuss various plugins and what they do, but for now I’ll just go through the process of obtaining, installing, and using plugins. (Some plugins will require additionally coding - usually a snippet - that is available from the creator of the plugin.)

Obtaining plugins is easy. Google (or better yet, use Goodsearch) “wordpress plugins” and you will get numerous sites offering one or many plugins. You can just browse, find something you like and then download it. Once you’ve downloaded it, you upload it into your websites’s server (something we would do for you if we design your site) and you are ready to install it.

Installing the plugin is not really an install it all. You just click the Plugins tab of your Wordpress Dashboard and scroll down to the plugin you wish to “install” and click activate. You are now ready to use the plugin.

Sometimes, the plugin will require a little more attention. Often they require a piece of code to be added in your sidebar while others are just a simple drag of a widget. I’ll explain widgets later.

As always, if you have a question or comment, leave one here!

*Stickiness is the idea of how long somone stays on your site and returns on a regular basis.

Photos are often what make a blog. For the Birdfreak Web Design Blog we don’t use many, but on our birding blog, they are what makes it reader-friendly. By separating blocks of text with photos you not only provide graphical representations of what you are discussing, but increase the likeliness of someone reading (and returning to visit) your site.

So, how do you add photos?

Luckily, Wordpress makes it incredibly easy.

Find the upload area (Figure A), click the choose file button, find the photo on your computer and then click upload.

FIGURE A

Once it uploads you will see another screen (Figure B). If you’ve sized the photo the way you like, choose ‘Full size’ and link to ‘none’. Then just click the send to editor button and the tag will appear where you had your cursor in the text editor box.

FIGURE B

The code for an image might look odd but it really is simple. Every HTML “tag” has an open bracket (< ) and a closed bracket (>). The tag between is what you are telling the browser to do. So for an image the tag IMG src=”picture location” tells the browser there is an image, where it is located, and what other attributes it needs to display.

Other Attributes
You can alter the way the image looks with some simple tags (all inside brackets <>):

• WIDTH=”#” - this will change the width of the picture; it (usually) keeps the aspect ratio automatically, so there is no need for a height tag, although it would be good practice to enter it (for older browsers)
• HEIGHT=”#” - this will change the height
• TITLE=”title” - this will display a title of your choice when the mouse hovers over the image
• VSPACE=”#” - this will alter the amount of vertical spacing around the image
• HSPACE=”#” - this will alter the amount of horizontal spacing around the image, both of these are good for an image that you want next to text - sometimes they seem to not work on certain blogs, browsers, etc.
• BORDER=”0″ - if you tell the border to be zero, a linked picture should not have any border around it; if you do want a border (on a linked or not-linked photo) you can set the number to anything you wish, although 1 or 2 is most common

There are other attributes that you can work with, especially to alter the alignment of an image. These tend to have issues with some blogs and browsers for reasons beyond us. You can experiment with ALIGN=”left”, “center”, “right”, “baseline”, “top”, “middle”, and “bottom”.

On our Birdfreak Birding Blog we like to use larger images of birds, flowers, and scenery so we don’t need to align them. These pictures all have a width of 500 pixels and fit nicely in a standard, two-column blog.

We’ve probably missed a few pointers about adding photos to your blog (site), but this will help you through in most situations. If you have anything to add, please leave a comment.

Use good grammar, spelling, and spacing. Typos will happen no matter how many times you proofread but it is good to limit these. Use short sentences and paragraph breaks to improve readability.