Building Effective Websites, Part 2: Maximizing Site Usability and Content
This is the second article in the Building Effective Websites series, covering key design and content issues that will draw customers into your site.
The three articles are:
1. How to be found
2. How to be read (this article)
3. How to be bookmarked.
This article will cover the Section 2 of these three crucial design elements with loads of suggestions and tools for improvement.
These articles will give you the tools to analyze your site and talk intelligently with your web designers to improve it.
Section 2: How To Be Read (How to Help Visitors Explore Your Site)
If you followed the suggestions listed in Section 1, you should be experiencing increased traffic to your site. Now the question becomes, how do you draw site visitors in? How do you encourage them to explore around to find all the wonderful content you are offering? Or, in other words, how can you get them to read what you have?
Content is King
People seek solid content when surfing the Web. Your site should be a source of solid, helpful content if you wish to draw people in. Uniquely define this content, your service and/or your product in terms that people will be searching for is the first step in drawing people in.
Content will almost always be more important for traffic than style.
Finding the Content
A significant challenge with many web sites, however, is that it is difficult to find the content. There are several things to consider in assisting site visitors to do so.
State your unique selling proposition in the opening paragraph of your home page. Many sites are not clear about their purpose. If you force to visitor to search around to find what you are offering, many will not stay around to find it. Pictures are nice, but they serve to add to or reinforce the content you must have.
For example, the first line of the first paragraph of the www.corbinball.com web site is: “Meetings Technology Headquarters – the world’s most comprehensive site about meeting planning and events technology.” It is very clear about what you will find there, defining it with key words that people use to find this information.
In other words, answer within seconds the question “What’s in it for me (the site visitor)?” This same question should be answered for every significant content page on your site as well.
Navigation
A poor navigation scheme is probably the biggest hindrance to people finding the site content you are offering. I recommend the following to help:
- Navigation bar consistency: Keep your navigation scheme the same on every page and place it as a bar on the top of the page or on the left side. Many sites move or change the navigation elements from page to page making it difficult for visitors to figure out where to go.
- The 3-Click Rule: One part of your web site should not be more than 3 clicks (or 4 clicks maximum) from any other part of your site. Make sure a link back to home is included on every page to help with this.
- No more than seven primary navigation items recommend: The human mind on average does not remember more than seven items easily. More than seven navigation items (nine maximum) will cause confusion, and, therefore, will not explore your site as thoroughly.
- Avoid splash pages: Splash pages (often animated) are commonly seen as you enter a site. Not only do they add load time and serve as a hindrance for the visitor to see your content, they typically do not have a navigation scheme, breaking the above recommendation about navigation bar consistency.
- Don’t hot-link the current page in the navigation scheme. If you are on your home page, the “home” button should appear selected (a different color usually) and nothing should happen if you click on it. This is a very common error which hinders site ease of use.
Design
Web site building involves an interesting mixture of art and technology. Many web design firms do not balance these “right-brain vs. left brain” functions well.
The content and navigation mechanics involve the “left-brain” technology side. This must be balanced with the “right-brain” artistic side.
An attractive design portrays you corporate image, establishes a “feel” to your site and should be carefully considered. Recommendations:
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