The relationship between web design, search engine marketing and optimization and web site usability is my specialty. They're all related. When united together and fully understood, each aspect becomes a work horse for your web site.
My passion is digging up the latest trends, finding industry professionals who are testing and gathering the data, and presenting it to web site owners in easy to understand terms. I also work on web sites as a usability consultant, which affords me great insight into what you most want to learn how to do.
How to Improve Web Site Usability
The usability effect is what every web site hopes to achieve.
Your web site is built and people are visiting it. Are they leaving too quickly? Did they make a purchase or signup for your newsletter? Do you know if your web site will achieve all your business objectives? How do you find out? Is your message getting across to your web site visitors?
Getting into search engines is vital to online success. I should know. I spent several years in the search engine marketing business as an SEO Consultant, focused on helping web site owners get their web sites into search engines and rankd well. But, as they soon learned, being found wasn't good enough.
User centered web design is good for marketing. Using my training in software application testing, combined with insights into SEO, I decided to explore what I call "the usability effect."
Below are articles, checklists and a bonanza of resources.
Getting into search engines is vital to online success. I should know. I spent several years in the search engine marketing business as an SEO Consultant, focused on helping web site owners get their web sites into search engines and rankd well. But, as they soon learned, being found wasn't good enough.
User centered web design is good for marketing. Using my training in software application testing, combined with insights into SEO, I decided to explore what I call "the usability effect."
Below are articles, checklists and a bonanza of resources.
Checklist - Navigation
Logical navigation pointers for people and search engines.
Link labels are vital to successful navigation.
Do yours describe the website itself by offering clues?
Do they accurately explain where the user will end up if they click on a link?
Do they offer a description via an alt or title attribute?
Remember, text labels are great ways to insert keywords for search engine optimization. Here is a list to check how your site is doing.
Do yours describe the website itself by offering clues?
Do they accurately explain where the user will end up if they click on a link?
Do they offer a description via an alt or title attribute?
Remember, text labels are great ways to insert keywords for search engine optimization. Here is a list to check how your site is doing.
- How well do groups of links relate to each other?
- Are links organized in recognizable groupings, such as company information, investor information, products, services, etc.
- Are there hidden links, such as icons, that are linked but the user can't tell? (Example: icons to the left of text links that are also hyperlined, but not beveled images, so it's hard to know if they're clickable.)
- Is there link decoration such as underlines (commonly accepted indicator that a word is hyperlinked), or hover color change? (Note: Some hover colors are distracting to users, especially color blind visitors.)
- Do frequently used page links appear in prominent areas such as primary navigation or the footer?
- Is navigation consistent, from page to page or hub to hub (section to section)?
- Are "You are Here", "You Were There", "You Can Go Here" signals obvious, or included in the navigation layout at all?
- Are link labels so mysterious that your website visitor must go over every possible link with a mouse to learn more about the page it links to?
- Are link labels too similar, so your visitor is confused about exactly what they'll find if they click on it? (Example would be "Our Products" and "Our Catalog" both going to the exact same section.)
- Are the navigation setups organized to be task oriented or more like "show and tell"? (Note: You must understand your website visitor and what they want to do on or with your website.)
Web Site Desirability Checklist
What triggers a physical response or call to action? (i.e. Conversions)
Do you offer incentives?Are there sales, free things, specials, and hot items, presented in full view? (No hunting, no distractions...)
Does your visitor know where you want them to click to order?
Remember, they're scanning for words that signal bargains, specials, give aways and new stuff. Those words must stick out and grab their attention, immediately.
A newsletter or email reminder announcing sales and specials is a nice way to keep customers coming back, or referring your web site.
You can use this checklist, as well as free Relevance and Credibility Checklist and User Interface questions in the Free Usability Test Center
Educational Resources
Checklists and tutorials for web design improvements.
- How to Quench Your Web Site Visitors' Thirst
Contained within 23 pages is information, checklists, tips, pointers, and resources to help you increase traffic, sales, subscriptions, and return visits.
Subjects cover what happens when someone finds your web site in search engines, navigation, architecture, credibility, authenticity, and ways to improve newsletter signups. - Please Ring Bell for Service
Have you ever wished there was one place that contained a list of everything you need to know to make your web site user-friendly?
What is causing those mysterious low sales leads or driving customers away?
"Please Ring Bell For Service" is better than all your yellow post-it notes and long lost responses to questions you know you asked in web design forums somewhere. Now you can have a checklist to follow! You can re-use it or share it with your web designer or development team. Each item is worthy of being added to an overall set of website guidelines written specifically for your website.
Covered are:
Standard Elements
Architecture and Navigation
Content
Forms and Error Tolerance
Organizations
For further study
- Human Factors International
- "Our mission is to improve the interactions that people have with computers. "
- Usability Professionals Organization
- "The UPA supports those who promote and advance the development of usable products, reaching out to people who act as advocates for usability and the user experience."
- User Experience Network
- "User Experience (UX) is an emerging field concerned with improving the design of anything people experience: a web site, a toy, or a museum. UX is inherently interdisciplinary, synthesizing methods, techniques, and wisdom from many fields, ranging from brand design to ethnography to library science to architecture and more."
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- Implementing Usability Practices/ROI
- Turning usability user interface design into revenue generation and traffic conversions. Project management suggestions. Targeting the visitor.
- Ecommerce Usability
- Online commerce design assistance and advice.
- Web Design and Usability
- User centered design tips, techniques, articles for advanced consideration.
- Web Design Standards
- Web site usability and accessibility standards. Great for guidelines.
- Engagability, Desirabiltiy, Persuasive IA, Credibility
- How to design with persuasiveness in mind. How to engage your web site users. The emotional side of a web presentation. The ability to communicate authenticity and credibility.
- Navigation and Information Architecture
- Articles, research and studies about structure, web site navigation, breadcrumbs, and information architecture.
- User Center Design Publications
- Each publication is valued here for its emphasis on one or more aspects of user centered design. Some are free, some are fee-based.
Great Stuff on Amazon
Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become
Amazon Price: $19.77 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $29.95
Used Price: $8.32
Usually ships in 24 hours
The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design (Interactive Technologies)
Amazon Price: $66.18 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $76.95
Used Price: $33.17
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Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests
Amazon Price: $44.10 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $70.00
Used Price: $4.96
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Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human Computer Interaction (Interactive Technologies)
Amazon Price: $55.40 (as of 07/25/2008)
List Price: $71.95
Used Price: $22.00
Usually ships in 24 hours
