In a previous article we explained why the key visitors to a web site were search engines and people. Which one is more important does not matter, suffice to say both are important and both are essential for a website to flourish.
In the former article, seven essential aspects of website design optimisation for search engine visitors were examined. Although we are examining website design optimisation as separate parts one part for search engines the other part for people, during the optimization process they must both be taken into account at the same time.
This is because in practice the requirements for effective website design optimisation for search engines, often opposes the website design optimisation considerations for people visitors. This is a frequent dilemma that requires compromise in favour of one or the other.
In this article we take website design optimisation further to see how it can affect a person’s behaviour.
But before we get to that, have you undertaken any website design optimisation aimed at people ?
If you have:
Did you track, test or measure how effective your web page optimisation actually was ?
I would take a guess and say you would say “NO” to at least one if not both these questions. Being able to objectively evaluate your own website is also likely to be difficult, especially if you were closely involved in the original design.
What is often needed and of great benefit is the experienced eye of another designer to uncover or confirm areas of the design that would benefit from improvements. If you think your website would benefit from such an assessment then we offer a number of different FREE webpage optimization evaluations.
Establishing the effectiveness of any web page optimisation can best be achieved by tracking visitor actions combined with split-testing, or segmentation and targeting.
When undertaking site and page evaluations from a human visitor perspective we recommend the focus be on the 7 key aspects that exert the most influence over human behaviour.
An in-depth evaluation involves many more aspects, but for simplicity the main ones are summarized as:-
Visual Appearance
Complementary colors should be chosen for the site so as to match the theme of the site with text of a color and size that makes it easy to read for people of all ages. Backgrounds or images should not be distracting and should compliment the look and theme of the web page providing additional useful information and enhancing the visitor’s perception and understanding of the site. Do not use images unless they contribute to your message.
Visitor Impression
The web page should clearly convey the impression you want to create or the main message you want to give the visitor within 3 seconds of them first viewing the page. Visitors expect to get a quick impression of what your web page is offering. If people can’t work this out quickly most will generally become frustrated and move to another page, or another web site.
Clarity and Value of Proposition
Information about the product or service being offered must be clearly apparent to the visitor. Uncertainty regarding what’s being offered leads to confusion and visitor loss. The offer also needs to clearly convey value to the visitor. The page must answer questions in the mind of the visitor such as, how does this benefit them, in what way is the offer of value to them and what makes your offer so special that they should buy from you.
Easy Flow
The page should be clearly laid out in a single column avoiding two or three column layouts. Eye tracking studies have shown multiple column layouts cause visitors more distractions and detract from them following a clear defined path down the page. It has also been shown in other studies that the places on a page to get the most consistent visual attention are the top left and page center below the header. Using information from these behavioural studies a page layout can be made easier for a visitor to follow and determine what the page has to offer.
Web Page Navigation
Navigation of the page should be easy to use, links in the page should look like links – blue underlined and it should be clear what they are leading to. Use alt tags for images and title tags for text links as a further visual aid for visitors. Using link and image tags will make your site more accessible to the visually impaired and add to your compliance to W3C web design standards.
Web Site Navigation
This frequently causes one of the biggest conflicts in website design optimisation between what is best for the search engines and what is best for people, as both usually have different requirements. For common links to pages throughout the site we usually advise a top or side of page navigation menu that should have a consistent location and appearance throughout the site. The home page is usually the only exception. The site should also use a site map and on large sites a search facility. A different site map should also be created for search engines.
The Proposition Experience
If a site provides downloadable information, purchasable products or services, or sign-ups to obtain information, products or services, then the system the visitor must follow should be short and without distractions and hindrances. The anxiety and friction caused by a site’s order and fulfilment process is a significant factor in lost sales and site abandonment.
Common failings are:
- Requiring unneeded personal data
- Not confirming the value of the offer
- Requiring information too early
- Insufficient use of confidence boosting measures
- Unnecessary distractions on the fulfilment page
- Too many steps in the process
- Customer reassurance builders not positioned within their eye path
The ideal objective should be for the process to have no more than three steps.
Page Access Time
With the advent of high-speed Internet, many web site designers have abandoned mainly text web page designs preferring instead graphical designs with flash movies and videos. Modern web pages have become so bloated that even for visitors with a broadband connection they are slow for a visitor to download to their web browser.
The consequence of this is that for 30-40% of Internet users with no broadband connection these sites are unavailable to them or take longer to download than most people are prepared to wait.
To make matters worse in our experience the majority of high graphic web designs are not very well optimized. This means the images and movies in the design are not optimized for quality while maintaining the smallest downloadable file size. We consistently find it possible to make savings of 50% and more, through proper graphical, image and video optimization.
We provide web design and website optimization service that enable site owners to improve functionality and increase profitability of their web sites. We also specialize in web design and research and publish free reports on web page optimisation.
Most of our website optimization service we supply with a No-Pay if No-Result Guarantee. If we don’t win you the agreed results you pay us nothing.
We also offer free consultations and a range of FREE website optimization service evaluations and web site reports. Visit us for one of our FREE web site optimisation reports or a consultation on your web site.