Archive for the ‘Usability’ Category

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Web searchers looking to research or purchase items to buy on the web are inherently skeptical. This is especially true when they end up on a site which is new to them. Regardless of how they got there–web search, referral, advertisement, etc.–this skepticism interferes with the buying and selling process.

There are numerous issues that make their way into the visitor’s conscious and sub-conscious, most of which must be overcome before they are willing to seal the deal and complete the sale. Here are just a few:

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One of the most fascinating things to watch, when you’re running an online business–or likely any business, for that matter–is the increase in traffic coming through your virtual (or physical) doors. Watching that traffic count tick up due to a successful optimization, PPC or social media campaign can be thrilling.

Yesterday I talked about how to turn your top search engine rankings into traffic. In reality, rankings are just one way to generate traffic. There are literally countless ways in which you can drive traffic to your website, via both on- and off-line marketing efforts. Unless you sell advertising by the impression, traffic isn’t the end-all, be-all of website performance. For many sites there has to be a conversion.

What that conversion is varies from site to site. For one it can be finalizing the sale of a product, for another it can be a lead, and for others it can be a download or signing up for a newsletter subscription. Whatever a conversion means to you, you know that getting it is the most important thing. Rankings only lead to traffic. Traffic puts eyeballs on the site, but beyond that, we need to know how to get that traffic to convert.

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Back in August of this year, while at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, I sat in a session where one of the speakers talked about site search. He said something that I fundamentally disagree with but it got me thinking about why you should or should not implement a search feature on your own site.

I believe that implementing site search is smart for large sites, but only if you can be sure it works nearly perfectly. On the other hand, the speaker in this session (and I completely forget who it is) said that, for analytical purposes, every site should implement site search, even if it doesn’t do a good job. This is what I fundamentally disagree with.

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This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series.

What this is about: This list covers issues regarding site pages that outline your privacy and security policies as they relevant to the site visitor’s needs.

Why this is important: While most visitors won’t read Privacy and Security pages, they do provide necessary assurances that visitors look for in terms of being able to trust you. However, when visitors do click into these pages need certain information needs to be presented to them to ensure their needs are met.

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What this is about: This list covers in-site search, what features should be included, what is expected by visitors and how the results should be laid out.

Why this is important: Site search is an important element of on-site usability. Both in its ability to help visitors find the information they are looking for, or by being absent if it doesn’t produce accurate results. Site search must be able to improve the visitor’s experience in your site, otherwise it does more harm than good.

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This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series.

What this is about: This list covers how web forms should be created as well as basic functionality, including how errors are handled when something goes awry.

Why this is important: Forms are a standard method of allowing visitors to communicate with you, including the placing orders. If forms don’t work properly, frustrate your visitors or create additional roadblocks that the visitor must hurdle over, the contact/conversion rate on your site will drop drastically.

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This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series.

What this is about: This list covers a range of items dealing with pages dedicated to helping your customers with various needs and answering important questions they have regarding your site, products and services.

Why this is important: If your customers are digging through your help and FAQ pages, chances are they are close to making a decision to purchase, they just need a little extra bump. These pages are essential to these visitors seek by providing answers to questions and other helps that will push them through the conversion process.

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This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series.

What this is about: The list covers items that have to do with the process of logging into or accessing “my account” pages, and the information found on those pages.

Why this is important: Ensuring visitors can easily login and find the information they need is essential to providing a good customer experience. Since this is your engaged audience you want to make sure that you can keep them engaged without additional frustrations.

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This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series.

What this is about: This list covers items regarding the actual checkout process of the shopping experience, after products are added and the visitor moves to complete the purchase of the items in the cart.

Why this is important: If visitors only add products to the cart but abandon the cart or get confused in the checkout process conversions will be low as will profit. The more proper cues you can provide that give the shopper confidence and assurances about their purchase, the less likely they will be to dump the cart or lose interest before closing he deal.

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This is a continuation of a series of website marketing checklists. Check out all Web Marketing Checklists in this series.

What this is about: This list covers a few items regarding mini-baskets. These are the portions of the page that show real-time updates to the information added to the shoppers cart.

Why this is important: Since mini-baskets are ever-present through the shopping experience, the information here can be vital to the visitor, helping them keep track of items, total costs and links back to products already added.

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