What type of information do you need to start redesigning your site to be customer-centric and usable? You need to understand why your visitors are coming to your site and what they’re looking for. This type of information is going to come mainly from your analytics software. If you don’t have any analytics software, you need to get one to improve your site. Google Analytics is offered for free or you can have someone set it up for you for minimal cost. (I go over analytics and a few packages to explore in the post Measuring Your Success in the B2B Marketplace.)
You’ll need some information from your analytics package to begin with: the keywords people are typing into search engines to get to your site, what people are clicking on once on your site, and where people are leaving your site.
- Keyword information is sometimes called keywords, sometimes referring sites. Collect a list of your top 100 keywords for the previous six months categorized by search engine. Are there products or content searched for specifically by title or name? These are should have links accessible right from the homepage to make them easy for people to find.
- To see what people are clicking on once on your site find a report of your top pages. If your analytics package offers a site overlay, this will be particularly valuable to see where people are clicking on each page.
- Where people are leaving your site gives you an indication what made them leave. This information is often under exit pages and sometimes in path information. Are their exit pages where people consistently leave your site? These may need to be redesigned to keep visitors on your site longer.
Google’s Webmaster Tools can also give you valuable information about how Google’s search engine looks are your site – with information about the top keywords, pages that Google has in its index, and the top queries from Google to your site. Yahoo has a similar, but not as robust tool, SiteExplorer, which can also give you some valuable information.
If you have a search function on your site, take a look at the logs. Visitors often search for things they cannot find on first glance. If you have important products or content that are constantly being searched for, they should have links on your homepage.
Next step – basic layout lessons in B2B Website Usability Basics – Part 2 – Layout
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