Sep
5
Website Usability and Web 2.0
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Website usability has been changed dramatically with the addition of Web 2.0 and social network marketing sites coming into the mainstream. I have been getting a lot of heat lately over some of my website usability posts, especially the one about keeping content above the fold. Sure I admit that this isn’t as significant when you are talking about blogs, but don’t think that people are going to be scrolling on your site looking for specific products or other information. The fact is you have to lay out your site so that the content and information that make you money is put right in front of your visitors.
I have looked at hundreds of Google Analytics site overlays since I wrote that post and links that are further down on the page just don’t get clicked on with any regularity. This also has a lot to do with the fact that most of my clients had me design their site or work closely with their designers. I stick to the website usability rules I learned in reading Jakob Nielsen’s books because they have always and still do work for me.
Usability and Social Network Marketing Web 2.0 Websites
For most of us social network marketing and Web 2.0 mean blogs and blogging systems. I use WordPress as my platform of choice and have had a great deal of success. I am running a couple of TypePad sites now to test another system, but so far I still think WordPress is the best.
Most website usability rules get thrown out the window just in the very nature of blogs. They are long and require a lot of scrolling. If you look at my blog you can see that I don’t use the more option and don’t use summaries on the home page. Most people believe that summaries are the way to go, but I wanted to run a test. My blog was set up on the same day as I set up one of my data recovery clients blogs. They both are updated frequently and they run different types of set ups. The reason for this is so I can have an opinion that is based upon facts, not conjecture.
The statements that I make about usability are also based upon facts and statistics. I know that everyones website is different, but the most basic rules of usability should still be followed. When you are creating a blog, it looks very clean and easy to follow the first couple of months. The issues start when you are 6 months into the blog and have hundreds of posts. If you don’t properly plan out your blog, it will be very hard for your visitors to find stuff. I use some good plugins that help me keep the site organized and are trying out a few new ones.
At SES in San Diego there was a lot of talk about tagging, Ultimate Tag Warrior and tag clouds. At this time I use the Technorati tagging system because I have concerns about duplicate content and actually have the /tag/ folder disallowed in my robots.txt file. I still think that UTW is a good idea and I am implementing it on a few other sites. As Web 2.0 gets older, website usability plugins will become more prevalent. I am in the process of a major overhaul of this site including a theme change. I will keep all of you apprised of what I have learned and I will explain why I am setting the site up the way I am. The first thing I did was change my permalink structure. This was and still is a major pain in the ass, but it had to be done. You can read about it in my changing the permalinks on an existing site post.
Related Posts:
5 website usability rules that won’t ever change
Web 2.0 Explained
Website usability and the Home Page
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Aug
23
Website Usability rules come and go mostly due to changing technology and design awareness. As time goes on users become more experienced with website design elements and learn how to use the standard features of their browsers. Even though many old website usability rules don’t carry as much weight as they used to, there are still a few that will never change.
Website Usability Rules To Ignore At Your Own Risk
So what are the steadfast rules that no designer in their right mind would ignore?
- No Unscannable Text - users just don’t want to read your site’s content. Sure this isn’t as true with blogs, but if your primary site is a blog, or you have over 25% of your inbound traffic coming into a blog that is part of your main site, you still need to follow this rule. Often called “Dense Content”, long sentences without paragraph breaks and headings make for a hard read. When a visitor hits your site or a page on it and they feel they need to work at getting the info they need, they will make like a tree and leave. You have to make your content scannable and use bolding to highlight the primary keywords within a paragraph. This is also a good SEO practice.
- Visited Links Must Have A Different Color Than Other Links - if you follow standard practices then you utilize breadcrumb navigation and other techniques to help your site visitors navigate your site. This is all well and good as long as the visited links have a different color than the standard blue of millions of hyperlinks all over the web. Users can get confused pretty easy and they should always know when they have followed a link. By changing the color of visited links you assure your users of knowing where they have been.
- No Pop Up Windows - if you use the Internet you must hate pop up windows. In fact most browsers, ISP’s and toolbars come equipped to block pop ups. So why do sites still use pop up windows? Who knows, but it is still a very bad idea.
- No Back Buttons - yes there are still sites that employ the hated “back” button. Back. Back where? Use bread crumb navigation at least, no back, down, up, forward, right or left. This is and always will be a bad practice.
- Don’t Over Do Ads - too many ads on a site is one quick way to loose whatever stickiness you might have had. Having banner ads all over the place will take away from whatever worthwhile content you might actually have on the site. Most users know by now that primary site features are usually in text or in buttons that correspond with shopping carts and images. Google Ads all over the site is a sure way to loose your visitors.
These are just a few of the steadfast website usability rules that have been passed down over the ages. Stick to common design practices and you will do just fine.
Related Posts:
Website Usability Overview
Home Page Usability
Website Usability and SEO
Search Engine Usability
Aug
2
One of the most important aspects of Website Usability is keeping content above the fold so users are not scrolling up and down your web pages. This is absolutely essential when it comes to the home page. People just don’t scroll on the home page.
By now you should know what I mean when I say “above the fold”, but if you are new here I will explain. When you visit a website, whatever is within the boundaries of your screen is Above The Fold. If you have to scroll down to read content or take action, you are venturing below the fold.
No Scrolling Is The Best Policy
Most users just don’t scroll when they come to a web page. This is more true on the home page than any other page. The majority of your sites’ visitors enter on your home page. The ones that don’t have more than likely hit an optimized page that you created for specific keywords. If they don’t see what they are looking for in 30 seconds they will either hit your home page or leave.
These statistics and others I am going to be using, come from years of experience and analytics from thousands of websites. Today I oversee the management of hundreds of websites, together the average close to a million unique visitors a day. I use advanced algorithms to create usability studies. I also have used teams of these companies employees in usability studies over the years. Read my Website Usability Overview and Website Usability Deep Link Navigation posts to learn more about how and where I get my data. I feel it is nesassary to qualify these statistics so everyone can see the importance of usability and analytics in their web strategy.
I want to be clear about this: I am not saying “don’t put content or site features below the fold” , I am saying “put your message and IMPORTANT site controls above the fold”! I generally will put content geared more to search engines than people below the fold. I am not talking about keyword stuffing, I merely am saying that a few paragraphs and static links within the bottom part of a page can go a long way to letting search engines know what your page is about. The critical info for users as well as search engines needs to be as close to the top as possible.
Users just don’t scroll, in fact 65% of home page visitors will not look at more than 1.3 screens worth of data under any circumstance on sub pages that actually have the information they are looking for! If your site is designed around either templates, includes, or css, keep the skin short, headers should not be more than 150 px high. This give you more screen real estate to work with. I prefer navigation elements to be on the left and across the header. These are very common design practices.
Last year when I was involved in a re-design of a 350 page web site that averaged 10,000 unique visitors a day, my team and a team of their employees looked at a list of 400 websites that were on or similar in topics to my clients. We found that 80% of the sites we looked at used the same design approach.
Out of those 400 websites, 90% of them had major site elements below the fold on the home page. Since my client had hired me to obtain traffic organically as opposed to the $16,000 they were spending a week on Google and Overture, I needed to come up with a design that would not only convert, but also be optimized for search engines.
We set up 4 different versions of the home page and split up the PPC so they got pretty close to equal traffic. By studying the different home page styles we were able to have their site visitors work for us and help us decide which was the best design! This is called landing page optimization. There are several companies that sell landing page optimization systems, and they are all very expensive. They also use scripting to control the different “recipes” or page designs. This is so similar to cloaking that I wouldn’t do it even if my clients had thousands of dollars to throw down the drain. We were able to do it all with our analytics suite for no extra costs at all.
The results were pretty much what I expected. The page that converted the most leads had all content and controls above the fold and used standard design and navigation.
One year later, this company is spending only $4000 a month on pay per click and is averaging more than 10,000 unique visitors.
The moral of this story is: KEEP YOUR CONTENT ABOVE THE FOLD!!!
May
1
Website Usability: How Visitors Use The Search Engine Results Pages SERPS
Filed Under Website Usability | 1 Comment
A SERP or Search Engine Results Page is the webpage that shows all the results from a search entered into the engine. If you type in “social network marketing experts” into Google the top 10 websites listed are and the page they are located is a SERP for Social Network Marketing Experts on Google. I have many keywords that are #1 in the results, mainly for localized keywords since I like to meet my clients in person prior to doing business with them. I only work for legitimate businesses and I have to completely understand a business and their marketplace to work my magic.
Visitors Usage of SERPS and What You Can Do About It
Looking through the last 2 years of Usability testing studies I have done, the numbers were quite shocking when it came down to the SERPS. In 89% of all searches the tester did not travel past the first SERP, a little over 9% went to the second SERP, and the number of users that hit the third SERP was so few that it was less than 1%. Since a SERP on Google has 2 or possibly 3 ads at the top and 10 results, it is almost a difference of life and death to be above the fold, the fold being the point where a user has to scroll down to see more of the page. Yahoo is even worse because it has a ton of ads as well as sponsored listings at the top, and I dare say they hide paid placement in the natural searches based upon their Site Submit. This leaves very little in the way of room above the fold in Yahoo.
I have some stats that show about half the users didn’t click on any listings below the fold. I am sorry to say that I wasn’t able to separate out the experienced user from the less experienced user while collecting and processing these facts. I heartily believe that a more experienced user, especially one using Google, will traverse past the fold to find the best match to there query.
Generally a Google SERP only shows 4 or 5 listings above the fold, on high profile keywords, some of the sites show 2 listings, usually the home page and the keyword specific page under it. Another note is on the right side their are usually 6 or 7 ads as well for a visitor to choose from. These facts reinforce the statement that your Title and description are the key to getting clicked on!
Apr
30
Website Usability Paid Versus Organic Search Engine Visitors Analytics
Filed Under Website Usability | 1 Comment
There is a vast difference in a visitor that has arrived at your site from either a paid ad or an organic search. Looking through analytics data from a couple of years and spanning several types of industries and website types, I have found that there is a startling difference in the quality of traffic from these different types of traffic sources. At first glance it seems that there wouldn’t be that much difference, after all a keyword phrase is the same whether the SERP link is paid for or natural, right?
WRONG. There is actually a lot of evidence that suggests paid ad traffic is almost entirely made up of less experienced users. This statement is even more apparent with Google and its AdSence ads. Before Google became a word in the dictionary and the behemoth search monster that it is now, it was mainly the source of information for mostly technical oriented users. That still rings true today. In fact most experienced users know that the top of the searches are paid for, and that anyone with some money can obtain high placement in Yahoo or Google by paying for it. They also know that the listings within the organic SERPS have been placed their because Google (and now Yahoo since it has unleashed its updated Inktomi based search engine), believes the site is an authority on the subject the visitor is interested in.
That would suggest that these ads are often ignored by experienced users. Check out my post on Website Usability Testing for more info on what qualifies a user as experienced. As that post explains more experienced users have much less patience when initially visiting a site, but also spend less time on pages since they are more familiar with navigation and other website functionality. That means that the visitors that arrive through paid search are less experienced and require a simpler website format.
Paid Search Visitor Usability
Through custom landing pages (both Yahoo and Google allow for custom entry pages as long as they are relevant to the search term) it is possible to optimize your paid search pages. As I mentioned above most users that are not experienced online don’t recognize the “sponsored” listings for what they truly are - paid advertising. This being said, it is key to arrange and optimize the landing pages for your paid search visitors. I can’t stress it enough, having custom pages not only allows you to separate your paid visitors for analytics, but gives you the opportunity to not waste time getting across the whole point of your website, just the meat of the subject relating to the keyword or phrase that you are paying for.
Another critical mistake often made in the actual creation of a paid listing is to use either the same title and description used on your general pages. If you know anything about SEO than you have optimized your meta tags to follow the guidelines laid out in my Meta Tags SEO Tips post, in other words you are walking that line of what a person needs to see to click on your listing in the SERPS, and what the search engines need to see to put your page IN the SERPS!
With paid or sponsored listings, you don’t have to worry about what the search engines think about either your listing or the optimized landing page.
*Note: Due to increasing pressure both Google and Yahoo take careful steps to NOT give any organic value to paid listings. I have run several experiments over time with pages that were linked in from Google and Yahoo sponsored listings to see if they received any benefit at all outside of normal spidering. Up to a couple of months ago pages within Yahoo sponsored searches DID get a boost, but never in Google, Ever! Yahoo has tightened this up quite a bit lately.
Back on subject now, the title and description that you use for your listing must clearly and succinctly give the use exactly what they need to click on your ad. The description should be short and sweet, preferably with a hook that will separate yours from the plethora of other ads.
Paid visitors are less experienced and are more likely to not understand a complex website. Be sure to utilize optimized and simple landing pages for your paid campaigns.
Apr
27
Website Usability: Get The Most Out Of Search Engine Visitors
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization, Website Usability | 1 Comment
Getting the most value out of your visitors is the goal of website usability. There certainly is a difference between paid search visitors and those that arrive at your site through the natural or “organic” SERPS. Using data gathered from your website analytics is the best way to harness the power of the Internet. Knowing your visitors and what they need or want, and then providing that product, service, or information is the formula for success online.
Gain Value From Your Search Engine Visitors
Having gone over ways to best optimize your home page for usability, as well as internal page usability in deep link navigation sites, I’m not going to go over it again. I suggest you read the above articles for in depth opinions. The fact is we have to utilize advanced tactics if we are going to succeed in gaining ground over our competitors. This is especially true in paid visitors. You are actively shelling out real money for a throw of the dice in paid ads. One of my clients is a data recovery company and some of their terms go for $5.00 to $15.00 a click. We employ optimized landing pages to track the conversion of their paid visitors. You should too!
The fact is unless you represent only a couple of products or services, you have very little time and screen real estate to get your message across, let alone get the first time visitor to the page with the product or service that they are searching for. I use some distinct tactics to get out what must be said, here are some of my tried and true methods of conversion:
- Flytrap Content - one of my most successful SEO initiatives is to create simple yet succinct pages that have a clear headline and a clear message as to what the page is about. Using the same headline in an unordered list on the home page allows the first time visitor to scan the list and find what they are looking for. These type of landing pages are optimized with specific content and often do well in the SERPS since they are highly focused, keyword dense and utilize proper heading tags.
- Related Topics - also knows as the good ole “see also” embellishment, I often employ sidebar linking that clearly shows related topics to the subject matter of the page the user is on. You must keep in mind that most visitors could care less about your site and what it has to offer outside of what it is going to do for them, NOW! If you have succeeded in getting into an interior page, then it is your next step to show them other parts of your site that might interest them. Having clearly defined “see also” links give the visitor an understanding that your site has more to offer that was expected. I have often seen experienced site publishers (this is especially rampant in the real estate blogging community) that say you shouldn’t “sell” in a blog. What BS, most visitors are more turned off by Google AdWords all over the place then self promotion of products. I often employ “see related products” at the end of blog posts to educate visitors on the fact that we offer more than free information. Again my data recovery client has gotten great results from this practice.
- Insight & Analysis - often times information is dry. A website that has not only information but a perspective and an analysis of the raw information will always do much better than a purely informational site trying to sell a product. One of the things I love most about Web 2,0 apps and social network marketing in general, is the flow of data from author to visitors. This allows for a vibrant and interactive environment that can turn a visitor into a prospect!
- Newsletter - old tried and true, the e-newsletter has been around for a long long time and is still one of the most potent forms of marketing. Of course I am only referring to opt-in readers. If a visitor freely gives their email address then you can be assured of an attentive audience. This goes hand in hand with the last item “insight and analysis”, since a visitor that signs up for a newsletter is obviously interested in your opinion. If you have read any of the content on this site then you know of my use of RSS and Feedburner for syndication. While this is in fact the strongest indication of visitor loyalty for a blog, it isn’t as personal a triumph as is having scores of newsletter subscribers. An e-mail newsletter sets up a closer and more personal relationship than mere page viewing.
In my last post about analytics and website usability I wrote about unique visitor tracking as being an important part of the statistical package. While I stand by that statement, I also want to drive home that the tracking of your visitors loyalty is of utmost importance. This is particularly true when it comes to search engine acquired visitors. Knowing the keywords they typed in to find you and seeing that they came back is the best way to know if your content and linking structure is solid and working.
Apr
5
How To Design Usability Specific To Visitors From Search Engines
In my last post we talked about search engines and how Google is getting into the portal marketplace. Today I am going to go into detail about how people are using search engines, and how their user patterns have changed over the last couple of years. You might wonder how users search can effect your site usability, but believe it!
The fact is more and more users are turning to search engines for direct answers, not for links to websites. Furthermore as we delve into online behavior it is clear that search engine users are NOT looking for sites to explore and use in depth, but looking directly for an answer to a problem, or a product or service. Sites like Google and Yahoo have extensive e-commerce and shopping features built in, that means that more and more users are dealing direct with the search engines and not the website!
Taking these facts into consideration makes it even more important to get your messages across as clear and as fast as you can. The primary way to accomplish this is by controlling what the search engines say about your site in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). The title and description are the primary means for identifying your site and what it is about. Read my article about Meta Tags for detailed instructions.
The meta title is the most important aspect of your pages. When a user does a search they will scan the SERPS for what they are looking for and more time than not they are looking at the titles. Here is the catch; the search engines themselves use the title to determine what your page is about and how relevant the page is. How many inbound links there are to that page with the keywords that are in the anchor text and how they relate to the meta title and the keyword density of the page is part of the algorithm that determine placement within the SERPS.
Walking the thin line between giving a human what they need to see to click on your site and giving the search engines what they need to place your site is the real challenge. It is important to find a combination that appeases both. When looking at your keywords it is important to isolate you most important keyword phrase and THAT needs to be the beginning of your title!
Mar
23
Using Search Engine Optimization And Website Usability Together
All week I have been working on how to test usability, what is important for the home page and how it is different from interior pages. Before I start drilling down to very specific usability issues on a website, I wanted to talk about Search Engine Usability. It is important for everyone to understand how visitors arrive at your site and what behaviors they are likely to exhibit, prior to implementing a site-wide usability makeover.
Search engines more than likely account for at least 80% of your traffic. Whether it is paid or organic search, unless you have non search engine affiliate campaigns, its through an engine that people find your site. If you are at all familiar with my site you know that I am always preaching to get your eggs out of the SEO basket click to read SEO World’s interview with me: SEO is Dead Long Live SEO! which gets right to the heart of the matter.
SEO is a great tool and along with Paid Advertisement, can account for a lot of traffic. But what happens with your income if you get caught in a Google Dance or Yahoo bans your site? What if your PPC budget gets cut because your site isn’t producing enough leads. What if both things happen at once! That is why I have invested a lot of time in alternative traffic options. Right now the best option for most of us is blogging. The thing about blogging is once you decide to use blogs as a traffic gathering option, you need to keep up on it.
Now that we have gone over the different traffic gathering options, lets get focused on search engine traffic. I am going to break search engine traffic down into the 2 primary categories: Organic Search & Paid Search.
Organic Search Usability Overview
When talking about search engines and users it needs to be understood that there are huge differences between Google and Yahoo (or Microsoft Live). Google is a pure search engine with a clean interface that is centered around just searching. That being said they are definitely moving into the portal space that has been “owned” by Yahoo, MSN and even AOL. The image below shows how the Google home page is before customization.
Looking at the above graphic I have highlighted 2 areas that are important, I also moved the “Personalize this page” and “Sign in” links from the top right hand side of Google into my graphic so you can see it. Looking at the above graphic and knowing what Google looks like, the core reason for it’s success has always been due to its simplicity and lack of fluff. I think that they have created the customized home page not only to compete with Yahoo, but also based on the vast amount of searches they get from the Google toolbar.
The graphic below shows a snapshot of my browser with the Google toolbar installed. Nothing is easier than just typing in what you are looking for and hitting go! As a bonus there is also spellcheck, pop-up blocker and even a translation tool (even though it actually is pretty lame.) The page rank bar is handy for site owners who want to know how important Google thinks your site is by fetching the page rank.
OK so Google is moving from a clean pure search to having portal type functions. The next graphic shows my customized home page in Google. You can get just about anything you need as far as news, weather and items of interest on your home page. I still use Yahoo because I can track my fantasy sports as well, and I haven’t seen a good local movie theater widget for Google. So it would fit in this post I changed the window to 500PX wide that is why it looks crushed together, but you get the point.
As you can see I have my blogs’ syndicated feeds on my home page, I also add other peoples feeds that interest me. On my blog if you click on the 
button on the lower right sidebar it will add this sites feed into your Google home page, it also works for Yahoo.
The next article is going to start looking at how people USE the search engines and how it directly relates to your site and more importantly your site’s conversion rate. Knowing these facts and behaviors will allow you to make solid usability changes to your website.
Mar
21
Home Page & Interior Pages Usability Comparison
In this article we will be focused on the usability of a website’s interior pages. We have ascertained that in deep link navigation sites that use good SEO practices, as much as 40% of entry traffic happens outside of the home page. Another important factor is users normally read interior pages as opposed to scanning which is what happens on the home page. In fact one of the primary reasons I always create deep links is because website visitors read substantially more content on interior pages than they do on the home page. Again I am relying on the ever so important stat: “Average Time Spent”.
Looking at our 2 groups (check out Website Usability Testing if you don’t know what I mean by test groups) of usability testers, low experience users spend 35 seconds on the home page, but a full minute on interior pages! With the more experienced users it was 25 seconds on the home page and 45 seconds on interior pages. Keep in mind that the more experienced a website visitor is on the Internet, the quicker they leave if they don’t find what they are looking for ASAP.
The experienced group was also consistent in how little they were willing to scroll to find what they are looking for. These types of statistics are gathered strictly by recording the usability sessions, or from the testing document users created when recording wasn’t available. It is possible to gather some basic scroll stats using Google Analytics’ Site Overlay feature. There is a screenshot of it on my post: Website Usability And The Home Page. When looking at the overlay it shows which links were clicked on by users. By looking at links further down the page it is possible to get an idea of how many users click on links down there. Except for footer links (most experienced users expect there to be links in a sites footer and will scroll down to hit them) very rarely are lower content links clicked on.
One reason for the “average time spent on” to be higher on an interior page is due to the relevance of the page in the SERPS. Google and Yahoo will place interior pages higher than home pages especially when they are keyword heavy for a specific topic. That means that a visitor will actually read the page because it was more related to their task. This is yet another reason why it is critical that EVERY page on your site lets visitors know where they are, who you are, what the site does, what the page (or site on the homepage) is about and how it will benefit them.
Another interesting thing I saw in Google Analytics that was backed up by usability groups, was how so much more action happened in the content section of the interior pages. Most sites employ either a 2 or 3 column page structure with the center of the page being reserved for content. THAT is where users are looking for their answers. Most site visitors spend their time on the interior pages looking for something very specific and how to find it if it isn’t right in front of them. As a matter of fact putting together 2 reports on usability I did last year, I was amazed to find that almost 4700 out of 5000 interior clicks happened in the content area and NOT through the navigation!
Taking these ideas and implementing them is going to be the focus on the next articles. Now that we know how and why users look at the home page and interior pages, as well as utilize deep link navigation, we can start applying these lessons to real life scenarios.
Mar
20
Website Usability: The Home Page
Filed Under Website Usability | 2 Comments
Home Page Usability: So Much To Say So Little Time To Say It!
OK. We’ve covered deep link usability and in that post I told you that if done right, your interior pages will be bringing in 40% of your traffic. That leaves the majority of your visitors coming in through the front door. Another quick stat to throw out there is: the users that come in from somewhere else on your site, 75% of them will end up hitting your home page. This stat is lower on sites that have a root blog since more people are likely to hang out in the blog, but I measure the success of a blog directly to the number of visitors that DO go into the static site after hitting the blog.
I hope we have now agreed that the home page is important, in fact it is the most important page on your site. Today I am going to lay out some strategies to make the most out of your home page. One of the most fascinating stats I follow in analytics is “average time spent on”. Whether it is the time spent on the site or a page, this is a significant measuring stick of how usable your site is. I use Google Analytics now more than ever. In fact I used to resell Web Side Story and have been using that for years, but Google Analytics (it used to be Urchin before they bought it out) has really hit their stride. If for some crazy reason you aren’t tracking your website stats you really need to!
Looking back to my post about usability testing I told you how I break users down into 2 groups: experienced and not experienced. In plowing through 5 years of different usability tests in preparation for a major project (and for this blog series) I found some interesting facts. The average home page visit for an experienced user was 1o seconds less it was for the lesser experienced user! That means that the more a user uses the Internet the less patience they have with bad usability.
Looking at some general statistics available on the web as well as my own, I feel comfortable with the stat: 30 seconds is all you get! This isn’t TV after all, people are using the Internet as a tool more and more as their experience grows. Visitors don’t log on to space out after a hard day. Most content experts agree that all your pages, but more importantly your home page needs to be set up so visitors can scan a page, because they don’t READ it. My game plan is to keep the upper 700 pixels clear and concise, then put the paragraphs below for the search engines. Keep in mind that there is a limit to how much a page will be spidered.
30 seconds: A Home Page Usability Lifetime
Alright so you have half a minute, what are you going to do with it? Here are some of the primary things I try to communicate to a new visitor:
- What website they are on. (I know that sounds ridiculous, but you would be surprised at what I’ve seen!)
- What does this site have that will benefit the visitor.
- A quick feeling about the company or site, who are you, what do you do, and most important what is new!
- What choices do the user have and how do they get to the section that is relevant to them.
Keeping long winded paragraphs down to the bottom of the page is a good plan, but what do you put at the top of the site? Sure a nice graphic or Flash element is eye-catching, but you do have limited screen real estate so don’t waste a ton of it on something flashy. The fact is most people spend the majority of their 30 seconds figuring out where to go next, not reading the content, and certainly not reading it word for word. In number 3 in the above list I bolded “what do you do”, because it is important to get that message across, and get it across fast and furious!
One of the best parts of Google Analytics is the site overlay. It shows a picture of your site with little boxes over the links. These boxes show you what links the user clicks on to leave the home page. Here’s a screenshot of my site:
In conclusion it is best to take the most important parts of your online message and convey them clearly on your home page!