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Why I Hate Keyword Clouds

cloudskevindooleyEver see a set of words in different sizes which are all links on a site?  It’s probably a keyword cloud.  These clouds try to give a visual representation of what the site is about.  Sometimes they’re based on tags, which the writer of the content uses to categorize their content (these are .  Often they are based only on the words the site – the keywords – the words that are mentioned the most often are represented by the largest size.  The problem is these keyword clouds often falsely represent the true content of a site.  Keywords are not intelligent.  They don’t know that a story about – they don’t know about context or associations.  Keywords are dumb.

For example, we try to cover social media, marketing, strategy and technology links through our Twitter feed.  Many of these tweets do not use any of those keywords, but they do cover that subject area.  If you were to just look at the words we tweet, you’d come up with a keyword cloud that looks similar to this:

twittercloud
From this keyword cloud, it looks like all our feed is about is thanking people, being happy and retweeting. Secondarily, about marketing, social media and the web.  While our tweets certainly to include those words, it’s not the entirety of what we’re about.  It doesn’t show context or association.

These types of keyword clouds also encourage people to game the system by always including certain words in their tweets and websites (what people often think of as keywords).  This makes conversations dull, repetitive and largely useless.  When you start writing and tweeting for search engines or computers, you’re missing the conversations you need to be having with customers and people.

(photo by kevindooley)

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Cheap Usability Testing – Gather Some Friends

eyeslookintomyeyesYesterday’s post over at ProBlogger – Watch a First Reader Use Your Blog – got me thinking more about business website usability.  Many times sites are poorly designed because those who design and own the sites never have to actually use them.  Testing them to make sure functions work isn’t the same.  When you’re familiar with a site, you have a certain way of doing things and you know what to expect.  But a first time user has no preconceived notions about how the site “should” work.

Still, truly professional website usability testing can be prohibitively expensive for many business owners.  But hopefully you all have a few friends who haven’t really used or seen your site.  Sit down with them and watch them try to use it – just make sure you watch and listen, don’t give them any pre-instructions or help.  Once your friend is done, ask them their thoughts and what they thought could be improved.  Watching someone else try to use your site can give you some very useful feedback on what needs improvement.  While a friend will (hopefully) be more forgiving than a customer, any feedback is good and most customers won’t bother telling you when something doesn’t work – they’ll just go somewhere else.

(photo by Look Into My Eyes)

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Want People To Fill Out Your Forms? Stop Annoying Them

flowerskaatjevervoort1

How many more leads and sales could you be generating from your website if your forms were designed properly? When forms annoy people, or things aren’t where they expect them or don’t work properly, they’ll just leave.  I don’t know about you, but I end up filling out quite a few forms on websites – when I’m researching products, looking for information for clients, signing up for services, and purchasing products or services.  It annoys me to no end when web forms aren’t designed properly, especially since it’s not that difficult.  Good usability and design principles for web forms have really been around for longer than the Internet, even if they’ve been updated somewhat.

Here are some ways to improve the forms on your website:

  • Next or Submit buttons on the right – think about turning a page in a book.
  • Clear or Cancel buttons on the left.
  • Fields with enough space – Make sure people can give you all the information you need and see it without having to scroll the field.
  • Be flexible – If you want a phone number, let people enter it however they want.  Use background processing to format it the way you want for your database or CRM.  For example, 2485556758 can easily be turned into 248-555-6758 or 248.555.6758 or however you want to see it.
  • Be clear – If you absolutely need something in a certain format, make sure it’s clear and obvious right next to the field.  The same goes for any maximum field lengths.
  • Keep it simple – Only collect the minimum amount of information you need.  While it’s nice to collect information for statistics and marketing purposes, you risk not gathering any information.
  • Required fields clearly marked – Need particular fields filled out no matter what?  Fine, just make sure it’s obvious which fields those are.  Making them a different color will help them stand out.
  • Quick feedback – If a field was missed or wasn’t filled out properly, try to let people know before they click the submit or next button.  This is pretty easy to do with javascript.
  • Clear feedback – However you give feedback, make sure its obvious what field you’re specifically talking about and what needs to be fixed.  Putting messages at the top of the page and marking the field in question are best.
  • Do the heavy lifting – Need information in more than one place?  Pre-fill it in if the person has already typed it once.  Need some calculations made?  Do them with backend processing and present them to the person to be confirmed.
  • Allow people to edit – People make mistakes.  Let them go back to change what they’ve entered.  This means your forms need to be able to handle the back button on the browser and still have all the information that was already entered available.
  • Test in multiple browsers – It may be hard to believe, but not everyone has a PC running Windows with Internet Explorer.  Make sure your form works for the major platforms, operating systems and web browsers.  If you accept file uploads, make sure they work across platforms.  Soon you’ll also need to worry about mobile platforms.
  • Confirmation – Let people know you’ve properly received their information.  On your website is best.  Following up with an email if they’ve provided an address is also nice.
  • Thank them! – People are busy.  Thank them for the information they’ve provided or the purchase they’ve made.

What did I miss?

One of the easiest ways to design forms properly is to try to use them yourself.  Then ask a few friends to try them and give you feedback.

(photo by kaatjevervoort)

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