Day 4
Track 3: Usability & Seo: Two Wins For The Price Of One
Panel Members:
Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive and Matthew Baily of site Logic Marketing
Sheri is her typical self with lots of energy and enthusiasm to keep my attention even when my butt officially hurts from sitting all week and the class is so full Im typing like an oompa loompa!
She starts off letting us know that website usability encourages links to your site! This is best reflected when a site offers a sense of place on the site and a scent of information.
Use the 8 second usability test. Show a test group 8 seconds of a web page. What do they take away form it? Ask them…Where are you? What page are you on? and Whose site is it? If its not your keyword, you lose!
Quick Tip #1: People always expect to see your logo in the top left corner. Unfortunately, they don’t always know to click on it. Provide secondary nav with an alternate home button.
Quick Tip #2: I know designers (I’m guilty) like to take away the underline when linking for design purposes. Users use that as an identifier that a link is active and click-able. They like it. Keep it if you don’t test it yourself.
Quick Tip #3: Use the best of your website architecture. Be sure to decide how to arrange, categorize and group before building!
Quick Tip #4: Cross link!!!!!! This is how pages within your site link to each other. By cross linking you bring your pages up to the user and the search engines to crawl.
Next up, Matt Bailey who mentions that SEO is a child of usability and content architecture.
Usability changes = rankings = conversions
Goals:
What happens when visitors get there determines your conversion goals.
Whose fault is it if people cant find the next step on your site? UM….YOURS…they will find it somewhere else don’t cha knooow? (said with Ang’s full midwestern)
Quick Tip: When there are multiple options, users get confused. Make them clear options! 5 clicks later, you don’t want them wondering, “Should I have clicked on that other button?” Lead your user to the content you want them to read next.
Site Taxonomy:
Your hierarchy, site structure, classifications and groupings can all be arranged according to the users preferences. You must be able to let a visitor know where they are on your site to avoid confusion due to personal preference for labeling and organizing.
Be sure to offer other options for sorting data to make it user friendly with the architecture. Offer sorting capabilities by:
1. Brands
2. Price
3. Flavor
4. Favorites
5. Best Sellers
6. More!
Don’t forget to give people a way to get to other related products as well.
Finally, be sure to call your products what your customers call it. Do your keyword research. Users want the info, not your brand. Nobody calls “butt paste” butt paste, they call it “diaper rash ointment.”
Quick Tip: Users purchase based off of emotion. Use emotional words!
Cool Site: Extreameek.com
OMG – Is that really it? Was that the last session? I’m ready for a nap. Looks like Ill be blogging in my sleep again. Sigh!
