Online Marketing: Keep It Simple, Site
Increasing your website's page ranking through search engine optimization marketing is perhaps the most cost-effective investment you can make in your e-commerce efforts. But an often overlooked improvement is to simply improve the site’s usability, and one of the primary components of usability is to follow the old acronym, KISS—Keep It Simple, Stupid. Make it easy for your customers to find what they want on your site, and then make it even easier to purchase.
Numerous current books, articles and studies have shown that users are not only a fickle lot, they have short attention spans and will leave a site quickly if they do not immediately perceive it to be helpful, interesting or full of the products and services they are shopping for. Usability testing has shown, among other things:
- Twenty words actually get read on a home page
- 75% of users don’t scroll past the first screen on a page
- Users averaged 27 seconds on each page they visited
- Users leave Websites on average in 1 minute and 49 seconds, concluding that the site did not satisfy their needs
In his new book, Prioritizing Web Usability, Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen and co-writer Hoa Loranger liken the Web to an anthill built by ants on LSD. But things are improving. Seven years ago, the majority of users failed at basic tasks on the Web. Now, more are succeeding than failing when they attempt to find information or purchase an item or service. Obviously, users are more comfortable now, but Websites have made improvements in everything from typography and graphics (better and fewer graphics) to writing and navigation. But there is still work to be done.
One interesting number uncovered in Nielsen’s recent research is people now go to a search engine first 88% of the time, which underlines the importance of your search engine optimization marketing plan, along with making your Website easy-to-use, clear, concise, consistent and informative.
Mike Greenan is a writer for the search engine optimization firm, Pole Position Marketing, a results-oriented website marketing and search engine optimization firm established in 1998.
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