Normally I don't like moving objects when I arrive at a web site. It distracts
visitors from getting to the content. However, many web sites could
enhance their visitor's experience by creating rotating images on
the home page. Here's a good example:
Let's look at some of the benefits of rotating images:
1. Visitors don't need to drill down to the
internal pages of your web site to find your images. All your
images can be placed on the home page for easy viewing.
2. "Pictures are worth a thousand words" - If
the rotating images are high quality and provide an overview of
your best products, they give your visitor a better impression
than trying to say it with words.
3. Timing of rotations, can be adjusted - with
this script, you can speed up or slow down the viewing sequence
of your images.
4. Show many images - you can insert as many
images as you need, although I would suggest showing only the
best ones, because Internet Users tend to be impatient and won't
spend more than a few seconds on your web page.
5. Automatic rotation - when someone visits
your site, the images will rotate automatically like a slide show,
thus adding to the interactivity of your web site.
How to install the image rotation script
1. Copy the image rotation script the
image rotation script and paste it into the head and body
tags of your web page.
2. Set up the viewing order of your images and
number them accordingly i.e. i.e. 1.gif, 2.gif, 3.gif etc. (Give
each image a number, not a name like danish.gif...it will only
produce errors).
3. Optimize your images - reduce the resolution
of each of your images to 72ppi to make them suitable for the
web. Large images will slow down the loading of your web page.
4. Change the time interval between rotations
- I set mine to 3 seconds instead of the 5 seconds provided by
the script. This allows the images to be seen quickly enough to
keep your visitor's attention.
5. Insert the first image of your slide show
on the page and place a link to the URL of your web page.
6. Save and upload the images and web page to
your server (web host).
7. Check your script - view your web page online
to confirm that everything is working correctly.
Optimize Your Web Page for the Search Engines
This script places a lot
of javascript code in the header tags of your web page, thus pushing
your text further down the page. Search engines tend to first
spider the top portion of the code in your web page. Therefore
it is imperative to reduce the amount of code on the page, especially
in the header tags.
Here is how to do this:
1. Place
the javascript code in an external file - copy and paste the code
(remove the beginning and end script tags) in a text file, name
it something like myscript.js and save it. This will reduce the
code to just one line.
2. Insert the external
file between the header tags of your web page i.e.
(remove the periods in the code for the script to work)
3. Upload
your myscript.js file and web page to the server.
That's it!
Web Copy Tip
Search engines will only
spider text (not images) near the top of your web page, therefore
create an optimized paragraph of text before the rotating images.
Place your most highly targeted keywords in this paragraph and
also include these keywords in the title and description tags
of your meta tags. This will increase your chances of getting
good rankings in the main search engines, thus attracting free
traffic, to your web site.
