For one day during the holiday shopping period in December, customers could not use a well-known retail giant’s website. Heads rolled. Jobs were on the line. Searchers were puzzled. How is it possible, you may wonder, that a website representing a popular brand could experience a day of lost sales…
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We’ve just experienced another season of roundups in the sports, music and movie industries and throughout it all, I noted interesting things about marketing and human behavior. Super Bowl It began with the TV commercials during the Super Bowl. Usually my favorite part of this final game of…
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This guest post is by Neil Patel of Quick Sprout.
The user is king. That’s what a lot of pundits are saying these days, from usability experts to SEO gurus and content marketing pros.
Actually, it’s always been true, and it’s why the mantra “content is king” has always been so important. Content is exactly what users wanted. Naturally, you should give them what they want.
But content isn’t enough today. Total user experience must be baked into blog content if you want to make it bigger and better so that you stand out and dominate in your space. These five elements of user experience are essential to doing just that.
When it comes to a site heavy with content like a blog, navigation is essential. The primary job of navigation is to lead the user around the site. When it comes to a blog, this is especially important. The goals are as follows:
In the end, it comes down to putting the content where your users can find it. And the number one navigation strategy rule is this: the navigation should never change even though new content is being added.
Let’s deal with a couple of typical navigation problems: finding old content and keeping users reading.
A blog that is just a few months old will not run into navigation problems. There just simply isn’t enough content. As that blog grows, however, and new content is added, you will begin to run into navigation problems, namely older posts are getting lost and forgotten.
That’s not good.
The common way to handle this is by adding a Monthly Archives widget to the blog. That is probably the worst possible way you can handle this problem.
Instead, put your content in proper categories and use a workable search system.
The Popular Posts sidebar widget is a great place to start. And instead of allowing the plugin algorithm to decide which content should go there, you make the choice. It’s better to choose based upon your experience and what your analytics are telling you, than to let the machine guess.
The same is true for adding older posts as related material at the end of posts. This is how Smashing Magazine does it:
Internal links are also another great way to improve the navigation of older posts. This way you can give them related material that’s immediately relevant to what you are writing about … and may even expand on a point.
There are two ways of doing this correctly. One is to make the links organic to context, so that they flow, like I did in my 8 Things Blog Readers Want More Than Just Content:
Or you can highlight the post by suggestion it as additional reading, like James Aultucher does in his 10 Things to Do When They Don’t Call post:
One way you don’t want to link to older posts is like they sometimes do at Freakonomics:
That is neither helpful for SEO purposes, or to users. It’s bad user experience. You are not giving users any indication of what is behind the link, and that slows users progress.
The goal is to keep them reading. Once someone lands on your site, you want them to stay. Otherwise you have high bounce rates. That’s why a Popular Posts or Recommended Reading plugins are essential.
Categories are useful for navigation when done right, but I don’t use categories because my tests have proven they aren’t useful. But perhaps they make more sense for your blog. If that is the case, you always need to keep three rules of thumb in mind when creating them:
Here’s a poor example of category use by Dumb Little Man:
Copyblogger demonstrates a clean, unique, and simple way of using categories:
While categories can prove useful, you should always test to see if they are helping or hurting you.
In a 2009 Google study, it was reported that a 0.5 second delay in page-load time caused a 20% drop in traffic. Amazon experienced a similar drop in traffic and revenue due to a fraction-of-a-second load delay.
More recently, Google has reported that slowing down search results by as little as 400 milliseconds will actually increase dropped searches from 0.2% to 0.6%.
That’s a huge drop in traffic for 400 milliseconds, so it pays to minimize the page speed. This is usability 101. It forces you to always ask if that new feature you want to embed on your page is worth the drop in load times and traffic.
You might like the flashy features, but they can dramatically slow down site performance. And don’t get fooled by the fact that internet connection is speeding the web up. How much site load speeds impact user experience will always be important. Just look at how it impacted Google.
I’ve covered the topic of speed extensively in How Design Your Blog for Awesome SEO, as have authors here at ProBlogger.
When it comes to creating a user experience that will make your blog better, the focus of your blog is equally as important as any of the onscreen, tangible things we have been talking about.
For example, page load speed and conversion are both actions that can be measured. Focus is less tangible, but highly important.
Let me share some common mistakes people make to show you what I mean:
A good, focussed blog strategy has the following elements:
Creating a focused strategy begins with user research and analysis of your competitors. And as you do your research, you’ll come up with a lot of ideas. It’s key that you rank these ideas in order of importance. Keeping just the top two will help you keep your focus narrow.
You may not think about display too much, but whatever stage you are going through in your design process, you will need to think about how most visitors will see your layout depending on what screen resolution they use. Remember that you want to give users what they want.
This means that you have to take into consideration height and width and line length. But that’s not so easy. High-resolution monitors have a high screen resolution, which means users get in a habit of browsing in small windows in which the browser window resolution is much smaller.
In other words, we want to know the size of people’s browsers’ content windows.
So your first step is to figure out who your average user is.
Look at your Google Analytics and see the average screen resolution of your visitors. This data will also tell you about their preferences and behaviors. Then see which user is staying on your site longer, and start to design user display size toward that average profile.
In an older study in which over 18 million screenshots above the fold on browsers, most users will be able to see content that is located within a 500px by 800px space. Over 80% will see the content in a display that is 1000px wide, while the remained browse in a display that is 1250px wide.
The moral of the story is that you need to design displays for your average user. For most, that means the layout will be less than 1000px wide. To give you an idea of what you can do with that, check out The Big Picture Blog by the Boston Globe.
Readability is all about what your user reads on the screen. And the golden rule to good readability is this: the easier your content is to read, the better.
If you want to see how your blog ranks when it comes to readability, run it through the readability test. In the meantime, here are the basics behind good readability:
Just so you can see how awful a bad contrast can be, check out this pink on blue page:
Also, check your site with Vischeck to see what colorblind people see when they visit.
It used to be that content was king. It still is from the perspective of the user. You need to deliver that. But it’s not enough these days. Your readers want a good experience, too.
In 2012 and beyond the user is king, and so you need to design your blog with these usability elements in mind: navigation, speed, focus, display, and readability. It’s essential to get these right if you want to attract and keep more visitors and create a link-worthy blog.
So, what other elements of usability do you feel are important for creating a killer blog? Share your perspective in the comments.
Neil Patel is an online marketing consultant and the co-founder of KISSmetrics. He also blogs at Quick Sprout.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Being the owner of a Macbook Pro, iPhone, and iPad, you might consider me an Apple Fanboy. I can tell you I’ve been involved in web development long enough to tell you that the current state of usability on the web is nearing the low point: when, in the late 90′s, browsers had no standardization and we had to design different sites for Netscape and Internet Explorer. The current situation comes mostly from designing sites that don’t render properly or at all on mobile devices like a mobile phone, tablet, or iOS device.
Before you cast me aside as being on the bleeding edge of technology and that I don’t really register as being statistically significant, I’ll share three links with you:
Recently, I was trying to fix my dishwasher (listen, I cook a lot and dirty a lot dishes…knowing how to do some basic repairs myself saves me a little cash now then). About every 8-10 months, the part of the dishwasher that is supposed to grind up the food that doesn’t get pre-rinsed gets clogged and needs be cleaned. I’ve bookmarked the site with the video for my model in Evernote because I use it so often. However, because the site was using a proprietary flash video player, when I clicked the link, I only got the audio podcast not the video showing me assembly/disassembly (screen shots below).
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Laptop Version |
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Not a problem. I figured I’d head on over to Sears, get a link to the product manual, and do it the long way. Turns out ManageMyLife.com does such a bad job of user detection that they think I don’t have the Adobe Reader installed and can’t view the PDF for my model number.
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Laptop Version |
iPad Version |
Great. So I had a hard time getting a video on how to fix my dishwasher and viewing the PDF for the instruction manual on my iPad. I had to go upstairs and use my laptop. Boo hoo on me for having first world problems, right? What we really have here is a case of bad site design and usability for not designing in a site that fails gracefully when it gets user agent detection wrong. As a marketer and SEO, these things matter and they are going to matter more in the future …
First World Problems
In most cases, people aren’t going to share or link to you if your website doesn’t work on their platform of choice. They aren’t going to share your link on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other social network, and if they do it will be the way I did: to make fun of you or use you as an example of a McFail. Search engines are getting smarter. They are using lots of signals to determine which sites rank. These days, usability and engagement are two key signals and, as Google gets better at measuring them more accurately, they’ll play an even more prominent role.
So what should site owners do in these cases:
photo credit: Shutterstock/Jaroslav74
This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.
Why the iPad, Flash, Adobe Products and User Agent Detection Really Do Matter
No matter where in the world you live, it’s likely you have rituals that you participate in at various times of the year. Website owners have a New Year ritual too. The first item we need to address is updating the copyright year in the footer of our website. Not only does this show that [...]
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
My iOS5 update is complete. Reminders could become my favorite app. I bet I’m not alone. Who doesn’t need a location aware reminder? So what’s up Apple? As far as I can tell I can only see the reminders in iCal, while I’m on my Mac, but I can’t create or edit reminders. Bryan and [...]
by Stoney deGeyter
When you deal with big projects, it is often easy to overlook small things along the way. It’s not that anyone is cutting corners, but rather some small detail gets overlooked. Sometimes even the smallest details can matter a great deal!
Web developers and SEOs often focus on the bigger picture but forget to do what we learned in Algebra: check your work.
If you’re a developer, you want to make sure the sight design looks just right and all the pieces align visually. You might also want to make sure some basic title tags are in place that accurately represent each page. SEOs need to look at things like keyword research, great keyword integration into the copy, writing keyword rich title tags, getting links and so on.
But for both web developers and SEOs, it’s the small things that can often sink a ship the fastest. Here are the three most commonly overlooked tasks when uploading new or changed content to your website:
More times than I can count, I’ve made only minor edits to a page only to later realize I left behind some glaring spelling or grammatical errors. It was such a small change and my quick review didn’t spot anything wrong, but sure enough, it was there. Large changes or small, errors are inevitable.
I’ve also seen new site’s roll out from the developers with spelling or grammar errors galore. Nothing wreaks unprofessionalism more than misspeled words and grammer on the site errors. Fortunately, most people will give you a pass or won’t notice a single mistake or two. But make any moore then that and you look fool!
Bottom line: spell check every change. When you add new content, update content, reword content or even remove content, a few added minutes checking your spelling and grammar pays off. Plus, you’ll save embarrassment from having someone else point it out to you, or worse, not tell you, causing it to stay on your site for weeks, months or even years!
Validating your code is not entirely important for optimization, but it will ensure that there are no coding problems that can prevent search engine spiders from properly indexing your pages.
If you’ve ever gone through the process of validating your code you have likely encountered many “errors” that really have no effect on how a page displays in your browser or the search engine’s ability to “read” the page’s content. A lot of the “errors” in HTML are completely innocuous and sometimes even pointless. Is it really worth it to add alt attributes to every image on your site, even if they are blank?
The answer to that (along with all the other sometimes inane validation errors that pop up) is: absolutely! It might take some time with the first pass validating each page, but getting those errors down to zero (or as few as possible) is worthwhile in the long run.
Why?
First, unless you run a validation check, you won’t know if you have any serious problems with the code that need to be resolved. Your code may be spiderable, but you need to know if there are any errors that might prevent the search engines from analyzing it properly.
Second, once your code is validated, after making any new change, you can quickly see if new, potentially harmful validation errors pop up. If you leave code unvalidated, you may change something that creates one or more potentially harmful validation errors and never really know about it.
Keeping pages validated eliminates a chunk of SEO guesswork.
Like spelling errors, broken links happen quite easily, and often without you doing anything on your end at all.
Internal broken links can happen when you or your developer move, rename or delete pages of content. Such changes require going through and changing all internal links. Don’t just stop at the navigation; be sure to specifically look for any in-content links.
External broken links happen when a site or page your are linking to has moved or gone defunct. The other site may have redesigned and moved pages around and not captured the traffic with a 301 redirect (all bad!).
Regardless of what they have done, you want to make sure you don’t send your visitors off to someplace that doesn’t exist. That makes a pretty significant statement about your ability to keep your information current and up to date (all bad x2!).
If you run a broken link check regularly (every 1-2 months), that will help you find and fix these types of errors.
While these issues generally won’t have a significant impact on your SEO campaign (with the exception of serious coding issues), they are nonetheless important. SEO is, in large part, about credibility. The less credible your site is due to broken links, spelling and grammar errors, etc., the less likely you are to get links, which help improve your credibility in the search algorithms.
Once each of these checks are performed and issues fixed, upkeep from that point doesn’t take much time at all. But the benefit of performing these checks can be substantial. When you lose credibility with your visitors, you also lose credibility with the search engines.
The goal in SEO is to develop the best site possible and give your visitors reasons to consider your site the most authoritative. More of that is always good for business.
Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.
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On Friday I woke up with the distinct feeling that I was going to fall over. There was dizziness and light-headedness and no ability to discern if these two things were, in fact, the same. So I did what any self-respecting lady would do. I took the day off and spent the afternoon Internet shopping. I mean, that’s how you’re supposed to spend a sick day, right?
That’s what I thought.
However, one of the side effects of this job is how easily simple activities turn into case studies for how things could have been done better. Spend a few minutes on the Web attempting to shop and you can’t help but notice that many common sense eCommerce marketing practices are not as common sense as you thought. And then, instead of watching re-turns of The OC on the Soap Network, you’re penning blog posts in your head about how eCommerce sites can tighten up their checkout processes to dramatically increase conversations. Because that’s how sad my life is.
But that’s beside the point!
Below are nine tips to help eCommerce sites increase conversions by plugging up holes in their checkout process. Because if people want to spend money with you, it’s really only fair that you let them. 
There is a certain state of euphoria that overtakes someone when they make the decision to add something to their shopping cart. They’re excited, their heart is racing, and they’re completely ignoring the fact that in three minutes they’re going to wonder if they really need that giant owl locket. This is the moment where you want to convert them and it’s why displaying a “check out now!” button as soon as an item has been added to their cart is a very good idea. Maybe they’re not done shopping and will keep browsing, but if they are then you want to get them to that checkout BEFORE the self-doubt creeps in and makes them second guess their purchase.
I don’t want to brag or anything but I am THE Queen of Abandoning Full Shopping Carts. I fill up my cart with everything I want to buy, I get excited…and then I roll that shopping cart (or “wagon”, as us Long Islanders call it) to the trash can and quickly run away. It’s your job to not let me do that. If someone is trying to leave your site with items left in their shopping cart, consider hitting them with a pop up or another notification asking them if they really, really want to make a thousand puppies cry by doing that. Sure, we all hate popups, but never underestimate your ability to use that hatred (combined with a mother-sized guilt trip) to your advantage.
When I’m checking out, I want to know how long this is going to take. Tell me if I’m on Step 1 of 3 or if I’m on Step 3 of 7. This lets me feel like I’m moving along, that there’s an end in sight and that I won’t be stuck on your Web site forever. And if there’s a reason you’re NOT telling me this, like maybe you’re trying to hide your 20-step check out process, then that’s something you should fix. Because the Internet took a vote and it hates you.
HEY YOU! Stop. Slowing down. The checkout process.
Just because you want people to create an account on your site so that you can better market to them does not mean you should throw this hurdle in their way while customers are trying to finish a purchase. Whether you realize it or a not, to a credit card-wheeling customers the “create an account” option screams THIS IS GOING TO TAKE FOREVER! And it makes them want to go away. I know this because I often leave sites that require me to register (I do the same for blogs that require the same to comment, BTW). Let people checkout as a guest. If they love you that much (and if you provide a compelling reason to do so), they’ll create an account later. This is the not where you want to annoy them.
If I’m making a purchase while logged into your Web site (aHA! You got what you wanted!), then you already know certain information about me. You know my name, you know my email address, heck, you may even know my address. If this is the case, then why are you making me type that information in again when I go to checkout? The more stuff you make me do between “OMG, I WANT THAT” and “OMG, I GOT THAT!” the less likely it is I’m going to see that last step. Or that you’re going to get my money.
Once I am in the checkout process, every question you ask or piece of information you collect should be 100 percent related to this purchase. Otherwise, you are distracting me from my goal and making it less likely that you will ever see my credit card information. Don’t be a dummy.
Similar to above – once I’m in the checkout process, buttons and links to do ANYTHING else on your site should be removed. Once I’m there, encourage me to stay there, to finish the process, and to be giddy about those over-priced shoes I just purchased. Because if I have the choice of giving you my credit card information OR checking out that cute dress you’re showing me a listing for, I’m probably going to go check out the dress. And then I might not come back.
Remember the goal of your page and then remove all elements that do not match that goal. Most people will do anything not to complete a purchase even if they want to complete it. Take away the distractions.
Your checkout process needs to be kept as simple, as streamlined and as intuitive as possible. This isn’t a place where you want people to think. It’s where they are to act like robots and hand over their payment information without stopping to smell the roses. The simpler your process, the more likely this will be the case.
While following eCommerce best practices is a great way to get yourself 80 percent there, we’d always recommend performing your own usability testing to truly understand how customers are navigating through your site, where they’re getting caught up, and what roadblocks are stumping them that they may not even realize. At Outspoken Media, we’ve become fans of UserTesting.com to help us do this.
There. Do you see how easy that is?
Whenever I’m asked what usability is, I get tongue tied. “It’s about humans and computers,” I may say, but they’ll picture robots and talking cars. “I help make web sites that work,” is closer, but vague because technically, if it’s on the Internet, it’s working. Then I’ll hear myself try to make…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Previously in How To Increase Organic Keyword Conversions, we covered how to use Google Analytics to determine the entrance pages people are landing on after clicking through from organic keyword listings in search engines. We showed you how to look for typical issues with entrance pages that hurt…
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