|
|
|
A Lightning-Fast Way to Grab Graphics for Your Website
Copyright 2005 Ron Hutton Just the right photo or graphic strategically placed on your website can go a very long way to achieving the desired effect, whether it's motivating someone to spend their money, click a link, download a free report or...
How can I promote my web site???
It can be really exciting to get a web site for your business and a lot of pride goes along with knowing that you now have an internet presence! However, many people don't realize that having a site is not worth very much to you if you’re the only...
Web Coach Tip: 4 ingenious ways to NOT give away the Digital Farm!
Copyright 2005 Donna Payne A few days ago a prospect replied to one of my follow up auto-responders where I asked how they were doing and if they had any questions or if they needed help with my free workbook they downloaded. I was so proud, and...
Web site copy…Forget the trickery, it’s all about you.
Here’s a question for you: What are the most important words on your web site? Do I hear you shout, “ keywords of course.” Well if you did, you’d be wrong. Forget your keywords for a moment because what you should have said is “you” and “your”. ...
Website Optimization - A SEO Specialist Reveals All
Website optimization is the first step in promoting your
website. Those with foresight and deeper pockets will have a
SEO-savvy webmaster (such as myself) build the website that is
optimized from the start. Otherwise, a website may need...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
10 Easy Steps To A User Friendly Website
As a busy search engine optimization consultant, I don't have a lot of time to manage my website. But recently I learnt the hard way about the fickle nature of website visitors and the damage that having a user-unfriendly site can do to a business. Now I give my website usability much more priority than ever before.
Here's what happened. I had written a research report late last year and was selling it as a downloadable e-book via the site. However, I was relying on an offline press release and links from other sites to lead visitors to the specific page from which the report could be purchased. Although this report resulted in considerable press attention, much of the media coverage did not include a link direct to my report page, or in some casese, even my website, meaning that interested parties were forced to conduct a search for my site.
It wasn't until I received an email from a potential customer advising me that he had searched my home page and couldn't find a link to the report that I had my "Duh!" moment. I had forgotten to include a link to the report page from my home page! My old website had no site map or site search tool either, so potential customers finally arrived at my site, only to click away in frustration after not being able to easily find information on my research report. Goodness knows how many sales I missed out on due to this oversight. Embarrassed, I quickly added a link to my home page and made a mental note to study up on website usability, pronto.
Since then, I've learnt that improving your website usability isn't time-consuming, it isn't expensive and it's certainly not difficult. It simply involves common sense and dedication to the task. Here are 10 easy steps that anyone can implement to make their website more user friendly:
1) Create a Site Map
No matter what the size of your website, you should include a detailed, text-based site map, with a link to every page and preferably, a short description of what each page offers. An excellent example of a site map can be found here: [http://www.seoconsultants.com/site-map.htm]. The advantage of using a site map is that you don't have to link to every page from your home page, but you should link to your site map from every page. Not only are site maps useful for visitors looking for specific information on your site, but they are great "spider-food", meaning they are a way for search engines to easily find and index every page on your site.
2) Use a Logical Navigation Structure
When designing your site navigation menu, use logical headings and link descriptions. For example, "web site design services" is much more intuitive to a visitor than "Internet services". Use Cookie Crumbs to show visitors where they are on your site at any point. These are headings you often see at the top of websites and search portals showing what category and page you are currently browsing (e.g. Home > Travel > UK > Bristol > Bed & Breakfasts). Guide Visitors to specific pathways throughout your site. You can do this using Call-to-Action links instructing visitors what page they should view or what action they should take next e.g. "Click Here to Order", "Bookmark This Page", or "View Our Catalogue Now".
3) Check for Errors Regularly
There's nothing worse than browsing a site or following a link only to find it leads nowhere. Make sure you check your site at least once a month for any broken links. There are low cost link checking tools such as Link Defender [http://www.webposition.com/linkdefender.htm] available to help you keep on top of this. Make sure your HTML code is designed to display correctly in different browser versions. Also ensure that your site hosting provider is stable and reliable to avoid any unnecessary downtime of your website. Services such as Internet Seer [http://www.internetseer.com] can help you monitor your site uptime free of charge. Make sure your site does not contain spelling or grammatical mistakes. If you're not the world's best speller, have trusted friends and colleagues check your site copy for errors. When proofing your site, remember to take into account regional spelling usage for different audiences worldwide, e.g. British versus American English. A webmaster service such as Net Mechanic [http://www.netmechanic.com] can be used to check for many of these errors via the one location.
4) Use a Consistent Design and Layout
Common sense rules here - make sure you use a consistent design and layout for each page on your site. This means using the same general colour scheme, logo, consistent navigation menu, header and footer in the same location and consistent link attributes (e.g. always underlined). This way you never alienate your visitor or cause them to become confused and lose their momentum to keep looking.
5) Include a Site Search Tool
A user friendly website provides the visitor with the ability to search the site for specific keywords. Thought this one was too hard? Me too. Until I discovered Atomz Site Search
[http://www.atomz.com/search rial_account.htm]. This is a software program that provides site-wide search for websites of 500 pages or less, for free. It's a quick and painless way to setup and customize your own site-wide search tool. They also offer a paid version for larger sites.
6) Ensure All Forms Work
It sounds obvious and it should be. If you're going to make your site interactive with feedback forms, newsletter sign-ups, guestbooks and the like, then make sure they work! Double check each form field is large enough to accomodate even the longest of names. Think about your international visitors when creating fields such as Zip Code. Make it clear which fields are required by marking them with an asterix. Test the form to make sure it submits correctly and displays the right confirmation message upon completion.
7) Ensure Shopping Carts are Functional
This is vital for any type of e-commerce site. Ensure you have adequate product descriptions, pictures, specifications and crystal clear pricing. Include information on shipping and freight costs and integrate any taxes within your price list. If selling internationally, include a foreign exchange calculator such as the free one provided by XE [http://www.xe.com] for visitors to compare costs in their local currency. Make sure your shopping cart pages are protected by SSL or a secure certificate to give visitors the confidence to reveal their personal and credit card information without threat or risk. Provide simple instructions for completing the online transaction, give them the ability to back out easily and provide a help email address or phone number on every page of the process in case they get stuck. For instant transactions, provide a receipt immediately and confirm their transaction was successful. As with your online forms, test, test and test again. It only takes one bad experience for you to lose a potential lifetime customer.
8) Include Obvious Contact Details
With all the scams proliferating the web these days, people are understandably sceptical when it comes to online business. To build trust, you absolutely, positively need to display contact details prominently on your site. If you're not willing to provide a way for people to contact you, why should anyone be willing to buy from you? You should include your business address (preferably your street address and a postal address), a telephone number and at least one email address. If you are concerned about spam email harvesters, you can either hide your email address within a HTML encoder such as Natata [http://natata.hn3.net/antispam_encoder.htm] or use a contact form for people to submit to contact you with (although many people, including me, find the latter annoying).
9) Use Easy to Understand Language
The Internet is no place for verbosity. People are in a hurry - they want to find what they seek quickly and easily with the least hassle possible. You can help them in this quest by ensuring your site pages use simple language and easy to grasp concepts throughout. For example instead of "brand-building web information architects", use "website designers specialising in brand promotion". Keep the text on each page to a minimum, using bullet points and sub-headings to get your main points across or to demonstrate your product benefits. Use the old WIIFM (What's In It For Me?) adage when composing your body copy to keep the user's interests at top of mind. Remember your international visitors by avoiding regional word usage or technical jargon that could alienate. Want your visitor to take a particular action? Spell it out for them in plain English.
10) Make it search engine friendly
Last, but by no means least, make sure your site is search engine compatible. A user friendly site is generally a search engine friendly site too. Use body text and headings in place of graphical text. Use a text-based navigation menu instead of a graphical or drop-down javascript menu. Avoid frames, Flash or any code that could trip up a search engine spider trying to index your site. Use logical Title and META tags for each page, tailoring these to match the content found within. Scatter target keywords and search phrases throughout your body copy to give your pages better ranking potential on engines and directories for related searches. Don't compromise the readability of your copy to achieve this - hire an expert copywriter to strike the right balance if need be.
So there you have it. 10 easy steps to making your websites more user friendly. Now you have no more excuses for avoiding usability. Implement one of these per week and your visitors will repay you with loyalty.
About the Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, CEO of Web Rank. Kalena was one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australasia and is well known and respected in her field. For more of her articles on search engine ranking and online marketing, please visit High Search Engine Ranking at http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com
|
|
|
|
|
| Web Design - HTML XML - Web Development - Web Site Design |
| Web Design and HTML are all about creating a great Web site. Use Web development and Web site design to build Web sites that customers return to over and ... |
| webdesign.about.com |
|
| Open Source Web Design - Download free web design templates. |
| Free web designs submitted by web designers behind the open source movement. |
| www.oswd.org |
|
| Web Design Library — One-stop resource for web designers |
| Web Design Library offers professional free web design tutorials, articles, news, software reviews, websites showcase, interviews, free web design stuff, ... |
| www.webdesign.org |
|
| Webdesign Professional WebSite Design by Web Design Auckland New ... |
| Web Design build professional websites for clients all around the world. |
| www.webdesign.co.nz |
|
| Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) |
| The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they ... |
| www.useit.com |
|
| HTML Help by The Web Design Group |
| HTMLHelp.com is maintained by the Web Design Group to provide Web authoring reference material, tips, and answers to frequently asked questions. |
| www.htmlhelp.com |
|
| Open Web Design - Download Free Web Design Templates |
| Open Web Design is a community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information. ... |
| www.openwebdesign.org |
|
| Pages tagged with "webdesign" on del.icio.us |
| All items tagged webdesign ??? view popular ... 24 ways to impress your friends with web design · save this. This years advent calendar. ... |
| del.icio.us |
|
| Popular pages tagged with "webdesign" on del.icio.us |
| Popular items tagged webdesign ??? view all ... Open Source Web Design - // Home \\ · save this. first posted by cda on 2004-02-07 ... saved by 11694 people ... |
| del.icio.us |
|
| RAGE Software: More Info on RAGE WebDesign |
| For over 6 years RAGE WebDesign has been the HTML editor and web development tool of choice for thousands of Mac users. There is no other tool available ... |
| www.ragesw.com |
|
| Web Pages That Suck learn usability and good Web design by looking ... |
| Web Pages That Suck -- learn good Web design by looking at bad design. |
| www.webpagesthatsuck.com |
|
| Web Design from Scratch - Free web design course - basics, layout ... |
| A guide on essential skills for designing effective web sites. |
| www.webdesignfromscratch.com |
|
| Current style in web design |
| Current best practice in graphic design for the web, kind of boiled down into an edible form. |
| www.webdesignfromscratch.com |
|
| Web design - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| As the Web and web design progressed, the markup language used to make it, known as Hypertext Mark-up Language or HTML, became more complex and flexible. ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| UK Web Design Association - the Web Standards Organisation in the UK |
| The UK Web Design Association is a not-for-profit organisation - established to encourage and promote industry standards within the British web design ... |
| www.ukwda.org |
|
| WebDesignHelper.co.uk - Web Templates, Vertical & Horizontal Menus ... |
| FREE design help for all. Free page templates, Free vertical & horizontal menus and table templates. Tutorials, Graphics and java plus so much more ! |
| www.webdesignhelper.co.uk |
|
| Web Page Design for Designers |
| Web Page Design for Designers Web Design Archive. The cumulation of over eight years of articles, reviews and information about the graphic design of ... |
| www.wpdfd.com |
|
| WebDesign-L.com |
| Email list for web designers and developers, both professional and amateur. |
| www.webdesign-l.com |
|
| PageResource.com- by The Web Design Resource |
| Design your own web site with HTML! Includes an HTML tutorial, javascript tutorial, tips, tricks, and links to numerous web design resources and other html ... |
| www.pageresource.com |
|
| beautifully : : webdesign - links |
| Beautifully-webdesign.net, annuaire de liens autour du web design, mise à jour quotidienne. |
| www.beautifully-webdesign.net |
|
|