Why Not to Use Frames in Your Website
By Victor H. Schlosser
Over the years, as the Internet has grown and expanded, website
developers have worked very hard to try and stay just a "little
fresher", or one step ahead of the competition. Different sizes
of text, different colors of text, graphics, tables, bit maps,
animations, frames, push technology, pull technology, layering,
all of these are a means to an end... To get your page read!
I'm not going to discuss the others here (I'll save those for
future reports). Today, I would like to talk to you about
frames. I personally like frames if they are used properly.
Some people seem to use them just because they can. This can
make you site harder to navigate and a whole lot more confusing
if not used properly.
Using frames should be like an other type of advertising or
marketing strategy you use for your business, base the decision
on whether or not it will enhance the message you are trying to
get across. But make sure that you understand the trade-offs
that go along with using them.
1. The biggest trade-off. And probably enough reason by
itself NOT to use frames: Search Engine robots do NOT read pages
with frames!
When they encounter a frames page all they see is they outline
of the frames, the . They don't see any links so they assume it
is a dead page (or a dead site) and they move on. This can be
disastrous for a web-site.
If you want to generate sales, you need customers. To get
customers you first need to get people to your web-site. To do
this, you need the Search Engines. To go to the time, trouble,
and expense of setting up an Internet Store (web-site) and then
to deliberately block your site from the Search Engines is like
opening up a retail store but painting the windows black and not
putting up a sign. You are open for business, but nobody knows
it, unless they happen to accidently stumble in.
2. Frames can oftentimes be confusing, especially if all of
them have scrollbars going up/down and left/right. Besides
taking up a lot of your already limited screenspace, the
scrollbars are just distracting. This can cause a lot of people
to leave your site immediately. They figure that if your front
page is confusing (and that is the page you are using to draw
them in) that the rest of the site probably isn't worth their
time or trouble either.
3. Navigation. You have to have Everything just right when
you are using frames. If you don't, when you click on a link it
can come up in the wrong window, thus destroying what was there
and probably blowing any and all formatting that you had done.
And, if linked pages come up in the window where the Links are
supposed to be, the person is trapped on your site, in your
frames, with nowhere to go.
Frames can be useful, but having your main site done in frames
is not wise. Look around at other sites that have frames, try
top navigate them, and try to read and see everything using all
the scroll bars. Then... think about your average customer. Is
this something you would want to put them through? Is it
something you would want to have to go through if you were the
client?
Copyright 1997 by Victor H. Schlosser
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