Website Design for SEO and Usability - The basics

One of the best ways to design a website to rank well in search engines is to bear what search engines like about websites in mind at the planning stages of your website design or redesign. When website owners award web design project to web designers, the last thing, usually added to the instructions,  usually as an after thought goes something like this “ah, yes, and make it search engine friendly”.

In reality, most of the things search engines require in a website design to rank it highly are common sense things that actually helps website users to navigate and find information on a website easily. The fact is that if you design a user friendly website, its bound to be search engine friendly as well. This article illustrates the basics of designing  search engine friendly sites that is also user friendly or is the other way round?.   Some web design companies for example web design Vancouver puts user friendliness at the heart of the site design planning stages because they know the importance of user friendly/search engine friendly websites. [Read more]

User Centred Design - Design for SE or users?

User Centred Design

It’s always a good idea to test your website out before you release it to the public, but an even better time to test it is day one of development. User Centered Design is just that, but it doesn’t stop on day one. It’s an ongoing process throughout the development of your site.

Well Worth the Time

Testing your site throughout the development does take more time, and money. Rebuilding a site, and potentially loosing a customer share will most likely cost you more though. If you plan on marketing your site, I would strongly suggest not spending dime one, until you have conducted some test. What’s the point of marketing a poorly designed site that the visitors hate?

By doing things the UCD way, many negative issues that may have occurred later on are already figured out. You may even find strong selling points about your site, that you can now give extra emphasis to bringing your site to the top faster.

Not Everyone Tests

Your advantage to the millions of other websites out there is that most webmasters don’t even bother to test their target audience on how they like their site. Having a site where you know your audience loves will only make your numbers go up, and make your marketing guys your best friends.

This article was written for Temi by Rob Campbell of Best Web Image. Rob is a usability and web design consultant. You can contact Rob via the contact page on Best Web Image. You can discuss this article and other web design related issues at UK Webmaster Forum .

Usability and Your Website

Proof in Usability ROI is Knowing What to Measure

There are two common reasons why many small business owners or site owners do not conduct usability tests on their websites. The first is the simple fact that they cost money. The second reason is that even if they are willing to spend the money, they are afraid it may not even be worth the money. Where is the proof that I will get a return on my investment (ROI)?

The Proof is Knowing What to Measure

Yes, you can measure usability, and it may be a lot more identifiable than you would expect. The most important ones are effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Measuring the time and success rates are the obvious tools in judging a site, but you can also use the test subject’s feedback. A users satisfaction in the form of feedback may seem a bit vague in measuring, but after getting just a few a real interpretation of a site, it starts revealing itself on how most people see it. Having pre-designed questions with multiple choice type feedback can additionally give you real identifiable numbers as well.

Setting a Benchmark

After conducting a usability test, you now have a benchmark. You know what to expect when a visitor shows up to your site, you know the probability of success, and you know what the pitfalls are. When making changes to your site in the future you will now have an identifiable measuring stick to see whether those changes were good or bad. Having a personal benchmark for your site can also be beneficial, because you can compare those numbers with industry standards.

Making It Pay

So you have conducted the analysis, you have some numbers, how does it pay? It pays off in a number of ways:

• Changes in effectiveness can be compared to the current version – Will the change be more profitable?
• Stopping/bouncing effects to users are identified – Prevent visitors from leaving your site and reduce marketing costs
• Priority in future changes are identified – Don’t waste time and money working on fixes that users think are fine the way they are. Fix the obviously bad stuff first.
• Reduce time spent on customer service – They won’t email you as much if they understand right away.
• Reduce maintenance costs – A less confusing site to the users is typically easier to manage on the back end.

Assuming your site works, and depending on the budget, two big items on that list can really pay off for you. If you can identify some of the negative items that are bouncing your visitors this can drastically reduce your marketing costs, or at least make that marketing money a great deal more beneficial. Would you like 1 out of 100 making a sale or 4 our of 100? The second one is actually knowing what needs fixing first. Every aspect of a site could use some improvement, but knowing what is hurting the most can save you big money on site development fees. It’s the quickest way to decrease the bounce rate, and to improve user satisfaction.

This article was written for Temi by Rob Campbell of Best Web Image. Rob is a usability and web design consultant. You can contact Rob via the contact page on Best Web Image. You can discuss this article and other web design related issues at UK Webmaster Forum .

Usability and Your Website - Time to take a critical look

Your site is fine you say. It is not hard to figure out how to use it you say. You designed it yourself, and you have been building sites for years. There are no known problems with the site. Here is something I will say; I bet your site is failing your visitors at least 50% of the time.

Understand the value, and learn the basic methodology of usability testing in this four-part post.

Understanding Usability Testing

I think most of us understand what usability testing. It is a simple test to see how easy it is to do something. Usability or usability testing is really more than that though. Usability is all about measurement of a user’s experience on different levels. It is about clearly understanding what is failing your users from completing their tasks, and knowing what the current level of effectiveness is. When you know how effective your task is, you can then know if future changes to your site were positive or not. You can also compare your current effectiveness to your markets known benchmarks. Many surprises come out of a usability test so be prepared to be amazed at what a difference it can make.

What does Usability Testing Measure?

Offline or online there are four key factors to measure when conducting a usability test. These are the items we can measure, and work to improve.

Items to Measure:

• Ease of learning
• Ability to memorize
• Error Frequency
• Satisfaction

Ease of learning is basically, how quickly does a user understand how to complete basic tasks on the site. The ability to memorize is calculating the user’s ability to remember a previous session. How much did they remember? Was it noticeably easier on the second visit because they remembered much of the method of site structure? Measuring the error frequency can detect the number of times errors are being made, and how serious the errors are. Measuring error frequency additionally finds how often they actually recover from the problem or user error. Satisfaction is a simple measurement made by user feedback on how much they like the site or task.

50% Failure and Why You Should Think UCD

So I first started this post saying that your site is most likely failing your users 50% of the time. It may not be true, but most likely, it is. Several tests have been conducted over the years, and the numbers point to failure. Some of the best sites have a success rate of just 42%. All of this means there is plenty of room for improvement, even for the best of us. I’ve personally conducted hundreds of usability tests on websites, and am amazed at how something as simple as making an order on an ecommerce site has failed. Words to live by when you own a website, “Test, test some more, then test the things you know that work.”

UCD is short for User-centered Design. UCD is designing a website based on user input throughout all the designing stages of building a site. In short, design using visitor action, not on visitor or designer thought. If your site is not easy to use, do you think visitors will come back? The second part of the four-part post will be all about UCD so stay tuned.

Usability testing is an essential part of building a website, and you don’t have to wait until you start a new site. Start testing your site today, even if it is five years old, even if it is doing great. Finding what is failing your visitors is not easy, but can make the difference between just another website, and a great website.

This article was written by Rob Campbell of Best Web Image. Rob is and expert on Usability and Design Analysis, he can give you expert advise on Usability and web design related issues, contact him directly via his website.

You can discuss this article, other articles from on this website at Webmaster Forum .

Website re design contest win £250

Webmaster communities and probably other communities have and interesting ways of getting project done by; starting a contest. At UK Webmaster forum, there has been logo contest, SEO contest and today, one of the members announced a website redesign contest.

The website to be redesigned is the site of and antique furniture business know as the A645 Trading Post, a family business that was established over 25 year ago. The contest seem straight forward, a few of the rules of the contest follows:

* The new website must compatible with, Microsoft Expression Web.
* The new site must be easy to edit.
* All contents from the existing website must be imported into the new site.

You an read the full rules at the contest url. You can also show your interest in the same thread of you want to participate. The contest url is Web Redesign contest.

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