Discussions about navigation on a website usually revolve around where to put them and what items should be in them. But without navigation on a website, there is no website, just the one page where a visitor entered your site.
Jul
13
2009
When They Can't Figure Out Your Site, People Turn to Search – Have One?
Usually when people come to a website, they’re looking for something. And they hope they can find it on the first page, but if not, most are willing to scan the page to see if there’s a link that may lead them there. This behavior really points out the importance both of properly organizing the information on your website, as well as having a navigation/menu system that people can quickly and easily understand.
Jul
07
2009
Your Website is Your Business Card
What does your paper business card look like? It probably has your name, your company logo, some contact information and maybe a quick tagline summarizing what your company does. People can find all the information they need to contact you just by glancing at your card.
Jul
01
2009
What Your Website Visitors Initially See – The 5 Second Glimpse Test
The first time visitors come to a site they usually spend less than 5 seconds figuring out if they’re in the right place. Right place being, of course, where they can get whatever information it is that they’re looking for. During those 5 seconds you need to communicate what your site is about, what information you have to offer, and how they’ll be able to navigate the site, so it touches on design, usability, content and marketing…
What do visitors see during those 5 seconds? Try The 5 Second Glimpse Test:
Jun
26
2009
The Value of a Website's Tagline
There’s nothing new about taglines. They’ve been used in different types of media for quite some time as a way to summarize the entire company/product/organization in a short bit of space/time. On a website, the tagline is usually a short bit of a text near the logo to describe what that site is. They’re the first glimpse into exactly what it is you do. If the tagline isn’t clear, visitors will have to spend more time figuring that out (which they may not). Often visitors enter your site somewhere other than the homepage and the tagline may be the only real description on the page where they do enter.
A good tagline should:
- Be clear & informative
- Be short & concise (six to eight words)
- Differentiate your business
- Offer at least one clear benefit
- Be personable and catchy (hopefully a bit clever)
- Be unique
- Stand on its own
This may seem like a lot of weight on just a short phrase, but good taglines are invaluable for differentiating yourself and quickly describing what it is you do. Once you have a good one you’ll be able to use it on all your marketing materials and advertising. If you don’t know how well your tagline works, try showing someone (or telling) your tagline and see what it is they think you do.
How do you use your tagline?
(photo by Delphine – Very very busy :/ @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: tagline, design, marketing, uability, business
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Jun
09
2009
Book Review – Don't Make Me Think, 2nd Edition
Website usability is more important than ever with a large portion of business research conducted online. With the rise in popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices, having good usability on multiple platforms will be extremely important. The principles and examples used in Krug’s book will help any business understand the basics of getting their website into shape so that they can reach a much larger audience (and stop annoying their current customers).
Even web designers and usability “experts” will find something useful in Don’t Make Me Think
If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
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May
07
2009
On a Crusade Against Drop-Down Menus
Anyone who worked with me at the publishing company will know that I am completely (almost) against using drop-down menus on websites. Why? Well there are lot’s of reasons…
They’re cool
I hate using anything because it’s cool. If you have a business reason for using something, that’s one thing, but using something because it’s cool, just isn’t. Most things that are used for this reason are annoying and quickly become yesterday’s fad. Besides, you’re running a business, not trying to join a high school clique.
They don’t work well
While this problem has improved, many sites still don’t implement drop down menus very well. They’re hard to use and clicking on just the right link is very difficult.
They don’t show up on mobile devices
This has been improved as well. But even if they do work on mobile devices, they’re even more difficult to use than when you have a mouse.
What about people without a mouse
There are people out there using computers without mice – text readers and other devices for people with disabilities, and other devices. Some drop-down menus will have accessibility for people with keyboards or other devices, but often this is forgotten.
They’re a crutch
In order to properly (if there is such a thing) use drop down menus, information needs to be organized in a way that makes sense. There needs to be some sort of hierarchy. Most sites that use drop down menus don’t have a true information hierarchy, they just use cute titles that only make sense to the designer or marketing guy. And there’s almost always a bunch of pages that don’t fit anywhere and are thrown under a Misc. heading – not very helpful.
It’s hard to find things
People are much faster at scanning a page than mousing over menu items to see what’s in them. While your drop downs may seem like they’re saving time, they really are causing seconds of time for every use – that really adds up.
They’re annoying
I don’t know how many times I’ll go to a site with drop down menus and my mouse will happen to be over one of them. All of a sudden a menu pops up when all I’m trying to do is read an article. Now I have to take the time to move my mouse so I can do what I came to the site to do. Or, I’ll be trying to navigate through a site but I can’t seem to get my mouse in the right place to keep the menu open long enough to click on the text – it can be pretty trying to click on a small word just to go to another page.
They’re a fad
For the most part, large sites have started to go away from drop-down menus (yay!). They’ve found that people can scan through a long list of links much faster than they can hunt through different drop-down menus. Having all the major links on a page means that it’ll be easier for people to find other reasons to stay on your site, instead of leaving or clicking off.
(photo by puroticorico)
Technorati tags: drop-down menu, usability, design, business, marketing strategy, marketing
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May
05
2009
Splash Pages – Thumbs Up or Down?
Now, I have to agree with Todd Zeigler over at The Bivings Group – normally I hate splash pages, especially as a user. But as Todd said, they seem to be extremely useful for collecting information (usually emails). It seems that sometimes you have to be a bit obnoxious for people to actually give you their information.
However, I want to insist that splash pages need to be used for one purpose – and one purpose only – collecting information from site visitors – getting them to sign up for your service, newsletter, whatever. They should NOT be used for a pretty flash movie or some other annoyance that serves no real purpose other than to annoy everyone. I don’t care if you spent a lot of money on that supposedly cool introduction. If you’re not using it for a real purpose, don’t do it. If you’re going to annoy your visitors, at least do it for an actual purpose – collecting information for a specific reason.
I also have to agree with Todd regarding the implementation of a splash page:
If you are going to deploy a splash page, please, please, please set it up so that a user only sees the page periodically. We usually set it up so that users who do not sign up see the page every two weeks or so. Also, make sure to set it up so that if users have already signed up for your email list they never see the splash page again. These steps will minimize the disruption to users who visit your site frequently.
(photo by sergio tudela)
Technorati tags: splash page, usability, design, business, marketing strategy, marketing
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Apr
29
2009
Why I Hate Keyword Clouds
Ever 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:
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)
Technorati tags: content, business, usability, design
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Apr
03
2009
16 Quick & Easy Ways to Increase Usability On Your Business Website
Usability is the science of making things easier to use. Usability is especially important to websites since visitors can easily and quickly go somewhere else. Try these tips to make your website easier to use and help your visitors find what they’re looking for.
- Search in the upper right – Especially for large sites, make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
- Consistent menus – generally on the left or top of the site. Visitors should be able to navigate wherever they want and get a feel for the site structure.
- Include a home link – Visitors may want to get back to the homepage easily.
- Contact page – with a business phone, address and email. It increases your reputation and makes it easy for potential customers to get in contact with you.
- Sized to fit – Fit into the minimum standards screen resolution of 1028×768 without scrolling horizontally.
- Easy to read – Use text colors with good contrast, size and easy to read fonts.
- One layout – If your site has a consistent layout throughout, it will make it easier for visitors to navigate and find information.
- Pleasing to the eye – Color scheme is important to your professional image and makes it easier to visitors to understand what you do, as well as navigate your site.
- Use white space – Don’t bunch things up. People need white space in order to scan and read your site.
- Speak normally – Overly technical text or too much hype makes reading difficult.
- Use bullet points and lists – when feasible to make it easy for visitors to scan your content.
- Move forward to the right – Submit, next, go, etc. buttons should always be on the right, cancel buttons on the left.
- Use Flash, rich media, video, audio, etc. sparingly – If you have a video page, great, but your whole site shouldn’t be in rich media or people without the plugins, on mobile devices, or using text browsers will not be able to see your content. Audio, Video, Flash and rich media should preferrably not play without the visitor clicking a button.
- Restrain movement – Animation, flashing and movement make it difficult for people to read and scan your website. Use for relevant informational purposes, not just as a gimmick or ad.
- Limit advertising – We all understand that advertising has a place and a purpose. If you choose to include advertising, keep it relevant, limit it to specific spots on your site, limit then number of ads and mark them clearly as advertising.
- Include a Sitemap – Sometimes it’s just easier to see a list of all the pages on a website. This helps search engines find all your content as well.
Do you have other tips to increase usability? We’d love to hear them in the comments…
(photo by SantaRosa OLD SKOOL @ Flickr CC)
Technorati tags: customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, usability, design
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