website is in jpeg format?! how do i get my boss to listen?!?

[dexter12]

So I don't know a whole lot about website design, but im trying to understand why our company isnt showing up organically at all. Here is the problem, they hired a company to design a website for them and they linked a whole list of keywords, however, the format is all in jpeg, even the text. Its like they typed it and made it look pretty in microsoft word, and then took a picture of it and attached it in jpeg format so since its a picture, theres no solid "text" on the website at all. Just pictures of words. From what I've learned is that as long as there is no text on a website, search engines aren't going to pick up anything from your site. Does this make sense?

I told him in order for us to show up organically the website needs to be in text format. Not jpeg, is this correct? Then he wants to pay a company 20,000 a year to make a bid on specific words. If the website isnt in text format, how are they going to get it ranked high organically?!

 

[AsheSkyler]

My first site was like that. Boss wanted me to redo his site. Turns out it was nothing but five images that weren't even linked together! The front page had a section for some unstyled site links, but that was it. It wasn't as "pretty" after I got a hold of it, but at least it was usable.

Regardless of rankings and crawlers, the site needs to be textual instead of graphical for sheer bandwidth reasons. Dial-up isn't common, but some people still have it and satellite can be nearly as bad. (If not worse on some days, right HughesNet?) A webpage that totals to be 300KB in text and pictures is a lot faster to load than one that is a 1500+KB image. Not to mention if your host has a limit on how much data it will transfer per day, that image page is going to seriously hamper your traffic if you ever get a big boom of regular visitors. Double or triple the necessary file size is half or a third of possible visitors.

There's also the whole disability thing. What if you have somebody with bad eyesight come to visit? They could zoom in, but images don't scale as well as text, so the writing becomes extra blurry. Then there are those who are outright blind. They visit your site, and the reading program is silent because there is no text to be read. (Unless you put all that text into an alt attribute or something, but if you're going to do that, might as well just type it to begin with.)

Then there is the whole screen-size issue. If that image is designed for a 1024x768 screen, and the user has a 1600x1200 screen, there is a lot of white showing around the image. (If the image is set to repeat, then it just looks silly.) It's not going to work well on a phone with an 480x640 screen either. That's a lotta finger flickin'. And possibly some finger flickin' that never makes it to the screen.


Now cue the people to properly explain SEO and ranking, and the importance thereof. =)

 

[chrishirst]

Now cue the people to properly explain SEO and ranking,

Yep that is assuming of course that you first understand that SEO is NOT about rankings any more!

 

[ronaldroe]

No matter how you look at it, images in place of text, or in this case an entire site, are no good. How to get your boss to listen? I'm not sure. Let him know it's costing you potential clients/customers, it's probably breaking on some browsers and he got boned by the previous designer.

 

[dexter12]

it's probably breaking on some browsers and he got boned by the previous designer.

my thoughts exactly, but it's a little hard explaining that to someone who has very little understanding of computers, and by that i mean i had to show him how to save something to his desktop... and when I explain the whole image vs text thing, he says he's not sure if he believes me.. its a little hard not to walk out after that comment.

asheskyler - funny you said it takes a lot longer, because it does take a few seconds to load the pictures when I click on a link, I personally think this developer is lazy, and doesnt want to rewrite the website again, but of course the developer is going to tell my boss his format is fine and won't cause any issues.

 

[AsheSkyler]

Well, if you can't blackmail him with limiting potential customers, irritating current customers, or discriminating against the disabled, is there any way to use an analogy that he would understand? Something related to his own business? Best comparison I have off the top of my head is tax returns. You could use TurboTax if all you have is a W2 and you'll be fine. But if you have stocks, bonds, if you're self-employed, in college, have kids, and plenty other stuff, your chances go up of unintentionally hurting yourself.

Everything else that came to mind was stuff like using paper plates because you don't like to wash dishes, wearing flip-flops to keep from having to tie shoelaces, shaving your head and wearing a wig to avoid shampoo and combs, pulling your teeth and getting dentures to avoid floss and toothbrushes, using pine instead of oak in the fireplace because oak is considerably harder to chop and split (despite the higher risk of house fire from all that pine resin building up in the chimney), wearing a tuxedo shirt to your wedding because you didn't want to have to dress in layers...

 

[d a v e]

load the site with the images turned off (web developer toolbar for example) then show him that this is what google and other search engines see