Search engine optimization often focuses on tweaking existing content to get the perfect keyword density and changing page titles and other important page elements to get the perfect keyword prominence, but the likelihood is design changes and user interaction have taken a back seat to link building and the need to provide lashings of useful, good quality content.

Taking the time to study how users interact with your website can be a useful way of determining what changes need to be made. And what better time than the start of a New Year to make your site even more user friendly in anticipation of more sales?

Testing Your Audience

Google has released a series of hints and tips on low cost ways to test your site. One of the first points mentioned is the most important – how and when do people visit your site? When you first approved the site design, this point may have been overlooked. Did you ask yourself for example, will people connect while on the road via a mobile device? Or while rushed on a job site? Or when sat at their desk with time and a powerful computer at their disposal? If your clients are now more likely to connect while on the move with a less reliable internet connection, a simple design or text only version of the site is something to be considered.  If you don’t know the answer to this question, simply ask a sample of current clients when and on what device they most frequently view your site. Even speaking to just 10 customers will give you useful insight.

A Handful of People is Enough

Sample size is important when testing your website as you need to observe enough people navigating and interacting with the site to get sufficient insight into its problems. As everyone is different, observing a few people means you’ll get a more rounded view of the site and how your audience interacts with it. Asking just five of your clients to sit down and use the site while you observe is enough to gather enough evidence to support ay argument for changing navigation, page structure or anything else that may crop up.

When observing, you need to really focus on how easy the subject finds it to get where they need to go. Note if they can pick out the navigation right away. Do they then go to the page they need directly or are there a few clicks on the back button? Do they read through all of the page and scroll down or not bother scrolling at all, going only on the content above the fold? How easy do they find it to locate contact information? Does the contact form take a few seconds or many minutes to load in?

Set a Task

Depending on your site and its content, set a task such as buying a product and going through check out, downloading a brochure or requesting a call back and judge how easy or difficult it is for the users to achieve. You want the processes of purchasing and getting in touch with you to take as little time as possible – if more than two of your sample stumble over a question on the contact form or find the checkout cart tedious, it’s worth investigating simpler solutions. Any hesitation or difficulty is a barrier to purchase so finding and eliminating those problem areas needs to be a focus for this small test experiment.

There are many ways to test your website, but for those with a small budget and little time, try the above tips and set some actual people free on your site to find its strengths and weaknesses. Then gradually refine the testing and ferret out the stumbling points where you may be losing customers and sales.

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Usability expert Kimberly Krause Berg, in her article “Your Secret Online Marketing Tool: Website Feedback,” tackles the issue of website feedback and the role it plays not just in usability but in helping ensure overall business success. She discusses ways in which you can get extra mileage from feedback collected (or received directly) from your online customers, using that information to improve your site and boost your actual site content. Considering feedback from a collection of different viewpoints, Kimberly’s article provides specific tips for turning website feedback into promotional material and to enhance your site overall.

The complete article follows:

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Flash can work miracles when it inspires people to take action. Does Flash contribute or detract from persuasive design? Can Flash help with conversions? Some may be surprised, but there is much evidence that Flash is beginning to help. Its success, however, is dependent on how well Flash is optimized, and how it is applied.

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In addition to being the CEO and co-founder of Enquiro, Gord is a director and the past Chairman of SEMPO, a columnist for MediaPost and Search Engine Land, a regular presenter at all the industry shows and a popular keynote speaker.

SMS: Enquiro has taken a fairly unique approach to search engine marketing research. What prompted you to choose eye-tracking over other methods of data collection?

Gord: Eye tracking is only one of the tools we use. We’ve also done survey work, standard usability work, and have even done our first neuro-scanning study with a local university. That said, we do like eye tracking as a tool to gain insight into user behavior because it gives you a deep data set, especially when you combine it with post-session questions. It allows you to combine and compare what people physically see with what they remember seeing. Also, some of the most interesting findings in our eye tracking research come when we slice interactions down on a second-by-second basis. It provides tremendous insight into how people digest and assimilate the content on a page.

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With form design, in particular, little thought is usually given to usability, much less for the needs of users with poor eyesight, reading difficulties, or hand tremors that make guiding a mouse impossible. Even with meticulous research, planning, design, and implementation of a form that’s easy to use, missing pieces of the puzzle often remain – notably trust, incentive, and the motivation to use the form.

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Focusing on the usability of your blog can help create a happy picture much like the one I’ve described (well, maybe not everyone will be on that tropical island next year). Like many endeavors, it all begins with a vision.

Vision Quest

What is the purpose of your blog? The ease and availability of blog software makes blogging an option for nearly every website. You can entertain. Inform. Sell products. Offer opinions. Perhaps you simply want to write from your heart and your personal blog is your journal.

What do you want readers to do on your blog (if anything)? Do you want them to buy your book or learn more about you or your business? What would you like them to do after they leave your blog? Can they recommend it to others, order services from your other website, click to other blogs, read your resume, or contact you?

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Have you noticed how life – and our online demands – seem to have sped up? We want our web pages to load faster. We want instant access to our friends via Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, and IM. Website forms are getting shorter. We are too lazy to scroll past the first 10 positions of a search engine results page. Twitter allows us just 140 characters to explain what we are doing. And a new style of dating – speed dating – is popular offline, where you have just 3-5 minutes to sell themselves as a possible love match to a complete stranger before moving on to the next stranger for the next speed date.

This is not much different from the pressure an optimized website is under. It must accomplish several objectives in a short amount of time, just like speed-dating event participants have to make a good impression and find a good match quickly. Additionally, websites optimized by an SEO must be found by the searcher, rank high, prove their worth, and gain trust – all in the same few minutes as a speed dater and typically within the limits of a one line meta or title description.

I think we understand the time limit pressures. We also have a better idea of what we face in providing what the search engines require. We have improved our content and layout to help visitors understand what we have to offer. Where we fall down is in a disconnection between findability and engagability. We can show that we offer bike tires for sale with optimized content for “bike tires.” But without the usability side of site design, how do we provide the experience that will persuade customers to buy our bike tires over someone else’s?

The science of usability goes far beyond navigation logic and decorated links. User experience includes making a lasting impression, which helps with word-of-mouth marketing. Is the site clear about its objectives? Does each page motivate you to read more? Does the site content influence action?

As in dating, we think that to make a good first impression, we should keep the conversation focused on our positive traits. Especially in the vital first few minutes, we avoid launching into what we don’t want others to know.

Some interesting human factors studies prove that when it comes to online selling and influencing decisions, site visitors respond well to both the pros and cons of a product and remember both positive and negative details. If they previously knew about a topic, they were confident in their knowledge, not easily swayed, and resistant to change tactics. When presented alongside positive attributes, negative messages didn’t adversely affect whether or not someone bought an item. The ability to weigh pros and cons to come to a decision worked best.

Does your search-engine-optimized website instill confidence among your visitors? Have you done the homework for them by posting price comparison information or publishing user feedback? Amazon, for example, not only allows customers to send in book and product reviews, but encourages readers to rate the feedback’s helpfulness.

Usability is about keeping the promise that when you click the call-to-action prompt that says “order now,” a consumer won’t be sorry. Usability helps SEO speed dating to succeed, thereby encouraging more action at the local bar/search engine.

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Usability consultant, Kimberly Krause Berg, is the owner of Cre8pc.com (www.cre8pc.com), UsabilityEffect.com (www.usabilityeffect.com) and Cre8asiteForums (www.cre8asiteforums.com). Her work combines usability testing with a working knowledge of search engine optimization.

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This incredible resource is available for free and it spreads open the gates to Yahoo’s vast, time-tested knowledge of user experience design. Yahoo has exposed their testing results on issues ranging from ratings and reviews, reputation, navigational structure, ad placement layouts, bead-crumb navigation best practices and wire-framing tools. In my past experience, I have spent considerable time searching for this grade of information and have often paid for best practices based on valid testing. Now it’s free.

Check out the section on reputation and check out a list of reputation tools tested by Yahoo including use cases, cautionary lists, examples and other excellent information.  When my team member showed me this cornucopia of design best practices, I was very surprised Yahoo gave it away for free.  But to my skeptical eyes, I was impressed. Great work Yahoo!

You can also find similar information at http://yuiblog.com/blog/. So why am I so excited? Because a website or landing page that provides an outstanding user interface (customer experience) makes it easier for a customer to interact with your business. Easier interactions means convenience, and convenience can quickly lead into more sales. As importantly, finding valid testing data to use as best practices for developing an effective customer experience for your website or landing pages means less time and money spent on researching and purchasing – hence more profit.  It’s a win-win – Yahoo!

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Focusing on the usability can help you achieve the goals you’ve set out for your blog. Like many endeavors, it all begins with a vision. You need to be clear no the purpose of your blog and what you want your readers to do there. You also need to be clear on the value you are planning to provide for your readers and figure out who is your target market. Once you are clear on these things, adjust your content and your user interface accordingly.

Are you a blogger? What did you think of the steps outlined in the article? What were some of the lessons you’ve learned since you’ve started blogging?

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In terms of recommendations, Bailey advised designers to utilize established hierarchy of categories and customer-based navigation using relevant keywords. He highlighted bad ideas like rollover navigation (instead of breadcrumbs) and separating content in navigation, but having all links go to the same page (ecommerce example). On ThinkGeek.com, the navigation is incorporated in the main content area, along with sub-text explaining what you can expect to find in each section. He revisited wine.com and their use of color to define sections of the site. The next example he used was John Deere’s product copy, which used to be fluffy and is now benefit-oriented. Transitioning to landing pages, Bailey highlights an example of Target’s PPC ad for a search on hiking trail led visitors to an asparagus juicer. Bailey provided a fundamental rule we should all follow to maximize usability and visibility: call products what they are! (i.e. Boudreaux’s Butt Paste at BabyCenter vs. Dog Fizzix). On the architecture front, Bailey highlighted the Breckenridge Colorado site (uniform page titles, undifferentiated architecture, low contrast navigation, etc.). Alternatively, Rapid City South Dakota effectively uses contrast and font sizing to differentiate navigation. He reminded us that users want to fell smart, feel a sense of accomplishment, reduce stress, confirmation and reassurance (in fact, users consider compliments online more powerful than in person). For bonus points, he recommends ensuring your contact form is internationally friendly.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen reminds us that a site designed with usability in mind can increase conversions by 135 percent. To anchor the session, Kathleen Fealy with KF Multimedia provided specific tips and techniques to effectively integrate usability & SEO. She reminded us of the usability fundamentals, including strong architecture, navigation, site search, content, calls to action and site maps. Fealy also recommended developing a plan of action, including: goals, user profiles, tasks, technology constraints, branding guidelines, success factors and known roadblocks. User-centered design is also a key factor in the process, and involves asking questions like who they are, what motivates and how do they navigate a site. Usability testing, ideally conducted before site, helps validate overall architecture, navigation, design and messaging. If budget or timeline restricts ability to host full usability engagement, utilize surveys, and informal user feedback. It can be helpful to develop personas (usually 3 to 5) based on target audiences as reference for design team. Fealy cautions us that words to not equate to action, when hosting focus groups and evaluating feedback. To help address this issue, she recommends card sorts, which aid in classifying and grouping information. She also covered PET: persuasion, emotion and trust, which differentiates between what users will do vs. what they can do. To maximize conversions, it’s critical to be persuasive, appeal to emotion and build trust. As such, Fealy recommends creating content that drive emotion, provide narrative stories and build credibility, all while incorporating target keywords. She ended the presentation by recommending resources like Usability.gov and SEMPO Institute. Overall, an informative and entertaining presentation by Bailey, and some additional background supporting information from Fealy.

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