Introduction

This contains some help for clients of HCI Data Ltd.

There is another area that is restricted to clients of HCI Data Ltd.

Access Logs

For clients who have access logs analysed, there is a description of the web site access reports which explains the report in more detail.

Mail Form

For clients who wish to create a form that will allow visitors to send them a message see the description of a mail form which explains how to set-up the HTML in more detail.

Promoting your site

Don't just rely on search engines. Here are a few other ways to advertise your site.

E-mail options

HCI Data Ltd can provide many different E-mail options. Most of our clients use e-mail forwarding. There is a description of many the the E-mail options that are available.

HCI Data Ltd recommends that e-mail addresses are not placed on web pages in a manner that a robot can harvest that e-mail address. See out suggested method to hide an e-mail address, on a web page, from robots.

Blocking Spam

HCI Data can block some of your incoming e-mail by using "black lists" provided by third parties. One of these parties is Spamcop - see our FAQ for further information.

Other Hints and Tips

Don't keep users of your web site waiting for the page to be delivered. Some research in 2001 showed that e-commerce pages that take longer than 8 seconds to load lost a significant number of potential customers. As Internet speeds have improved, it is now (2020) thought that most users will not wait longer than 3 secods for a webpage to load before giving up and finding a more responsive site.

There is a free tool at gtmetrix.com where you can test the load time of your website.

It is images that cause most problems. A 30KB image takes about 1 second to load for a dial-in user using an analog modem - a lot less for ADSL. Every picture tells a story but it may be sensible to use words if you are not telling a story. A 30KB image does not always convey a great deal of information but a 30KB page of text could have as much as 3,000 words of information.

What colour schemes work?

See how different colour schemes work by using our simple colour tester.

How secure is your PC?

Test your online security at GRC.com

You may or may not be aware that every time you connect up to the Internet you run the risk of your system being compromised as a result of other computers on the net connecting up to yours - unfortunately the flow of information between computers can be both ways.

In order to see if you are at risk of being compromised, pay a visit to the SHIELDS UP facility at GRC.com. At this site you can carry out a FREE check on your systems set-up to see if you are inadvertently allowing other systems on the Internet to connect to yours. Simply click on the "TEST MY SHIELDS" button and watch for the results.

If you are a Windows 95 or 98 user, you may be at particular risk as the commonly used "express set-up" used to install the operating system by default installs unnecessary network drivers that allow connections over the net. Do you really want to share the contents of your hard drive with all and sundry?

This simple test is FREE, easy to carry out and takes around two minutes.