There's no doubt marketing companies have a tough job with websites. They're called upon to drive more traffic to your site and/or improve conversion rates or sales. These days there are marketing companies who specialize in all of this and even perform search engine optimization (SEO) services as well. And SEO has been a growing industry in recent years. The goal of an SEO company is to improve your placement in the search engines. Of course, Google has such an overwhelming presence that you could call the process "Google optimization," but I digress.
SEO involves following best practices with html page design. Google looks at many factors to determine relevance. But in no particular order the 4 major factors are:
1.) Page titles (anything inside the <title></title> tags)
2.) URL's
3.) Meta keywords and description
4.) Content
So you should use:
1.) unique titles for every page
2.) page names that are relevant to the page's content
3.) meta keywords and meta description that describe the page's content
4.) text and text links throughout the site (relying on text more than images)
The problem I've seen is that the approach towards SEO can sometimes get a little out of hand. I've seen examples where multiple pages are created on a site with very, very similar content with only slightly different wording. The whole reason for creating these near-duplicate pages is to saturate the site with keywords (what the users are searching for to find your site). The problem then is that these redundant pages seem strangely out of place to any human looking at the site. This is just one form of SEO "trickery" I've seen that can detract from the user's experience when they're actually trying to read the content on your site.
OK, let's say that you have good placement on the search engines but you want to improve your conversion rate. In the case of an e-commerce site, a sale can be synonomous with a conversion. Or in the case of a site for insurance, completing an online application could be defined as a conversion. In either case a user starts out looking through the site. Perhaps they'll read a few of your pages, or perhaps they won't. And then, if you have it your way, they eventually perform the action you're wanting them to. There's a science behind improving the conversion rate. Often times a marketing company will suggest A/B testing to test if a change shows in improvement in the statistics. The problem I've seen is we can sometimes become so obsessed with the conversion rate that we don't want to do anything to screw it up. We don't want to scare off users, and sometimes we'll even lie or we don't tell them the truth up front in effort to get the user to do what we want. And on top of that, some of the decisions around trying to optimize conversion rate can negatively influence the usability of the site.
My Way or the Highway
So here's my proposition, and it's simple: Give and you shall receive. In other words, often times what is best for the user is also best for you. By this point, the article may read as if I'm saying that SEO and marketing services are evil. And I certainly don't mean that, but this is a reminder that your priority should always be to make your customer happy. And you may have to remind your marketing division of this too.
Write Compelling Content
My advice is to write lots of useful content or articles related to your website's goals. If you sell cookbooks, write up some free recipes to bring people to your site. If you're selling some sort of fitness program, write a detailed synopsis and free advice that your audience can benefit from. This will give your company credibility and provide a good service to the public.
Design Carefully for Good Usability
Also focus on usability patterns and apply them to your site. It should be easy to find information on your site, easy to find products, and especially easy to buy a product or complete an application. Use your common sense in all of this, but also try user testing and as simple as it seems try basing your design on proven formulas in some of the hugely popular websites out there. For example, users are accustomed to using sites like amazon.com, buy.com, hrblock.com, etc. So you can take elements or ideas from their design and implement them in a similar fashion for your own site.
The Benefits
Never underestimate the power of a happy customer. One of the big benefits of my suggestions is that users tend to link to "good" websites. And the more links you have from other sites, the better link popularity you'll have. Link popularity is the other major factor in search engine placement. If your site is linked to from hundreds of other websites, then your chance of showing up on the first page of the search results can become far better. In the user's mind a "good" website may be one with good products, good prices, good information, good service, or maybe all of the above. But if you give your users a good overall experience at your website, you will receive more traffic and higher conversion rates. So that is what we as website owners should strive for.
Below are a couple of valuable resources to help you get started:
Website Optimization ( www.websiteoptimization.com ) - This site is packed with good information on optimizing your website for speed, but also information regarding SEO and usability.
Jakob Nielsen's website ( www.useit.com ) - Jakob is an authority in the web world when it comes to usability studies.
Monday, June 30, 2008
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