Social Web Tips

When planning and improving a website, it is important to know how people view websites. Knowing this will help you to design your site in such a way, that people will be able to find and do what they want on your website.

How to describe visitor behaviour?

Before changing the site layout, it is important to understand the nature of human behaviour on the website. It helps that certain known patterns apply to human behaviour, such as:

• people hunt for information, using words as clues
• people follow a funnel to conversion
• people flow like water, when released on a website

In essence, the metaphors used to describe human behaviour stand on known natural principles, such as animal instincts and a flow of water. Let’s look at them in more detail.

Hunting for information

When a predator stalks its prey, it uses its senses, such as smell and sight, to find the victim. It follows the trail of paw-prints, spots of fur and blood to track the target.

Humans are very similar: they use words, related to their target (be it a product, an article, or a person’s name) to find what they want.

This fact is emphasized by people reading from top to bottom and from left to right, which creates a top-left triangle of attention. It means that in order to get noticed, you’ll need to use the words your people will recognize as useful in the top-left part of the page.

Read more about:

• Information foraging
• Web portals and scent
• Scent, Search, and the Pursuit of User Happiness (audio and PDF of a presentation on designing for scent of information)
• Getting confidence with every click
• Web Page Design: Implications of Memory, Structure and Scent for Information Retrieval (large PDF) from Kevin-Larson and Mary Czerwinski of Microsoft Research
• Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster (from Jacob Nielsen)
• a very short summary of the above
• A 2001 Wired article: Hot on the scent of information
• Design Secrets of Highly Successful Website

Visitor funnel

The concept of a funnel is less wild and more down to earth. Here, visitors are compared to water and the funnel represents the pages they visit.

The upper, broader part of the funnel is the entrance page and the bottom part is the page of the final conversion.

The intermediate funnel part is pages a human visits before converting.

The different, in my opinion, lies in that in general, the visitor path may not be linear, because people click on the link that they think will answer their needs most - and people are different. But the funnel theory splits the visitor stream in many springs and guides them with relevant clues, aka in a funnel.

Read more about:

• Advance Funnel design considerations
• Conversion Funnel Folly, Part 1
• Conversion Funnel Folly, Part 2
• Conversion versus Persuasion: What’s Your Challenge?
• Design Your Website for Increased ROI

Water flow

The water flow concept, which I introduce here (or maybe introduced by someone else elsewhere), is based on the fact that water flows the shortest way to the downside. The concept is not different from the other two, but it describes as clearly as the scent trail theory the attitude towards the trail: a visitor only goes where it sees a need to go.

In the water theory, people are compared to springs, which go where they can, and when they can’t go somewhere (no path), they just return to them main stream and flow another way.

In general, this is no vastly different from the two above, but I prefer to see it this way.

The details

All the models, however simple or complicate they are, are based on a couple of principles that people follow:

• the visitor goes where he sees a possible continuation of his visit: a link to a useful resourece/product/action
• if the visitor doesn’t see a way to continue his walk from the page, he goes to the previous page to try another way
• the visitor follows the above principle until he either leaves the site (and thus goes back to the previous useful source) or converts
• people scan from top to bottom, from left to right
• people not read, but scan: quickly check if there’s anything interesting on the page and proceed with their journey
• since people scan, the text should be readable and properly formated for reading from the web page
• you should use the simplest words available: your site should be understood by your every visitor
• the words you use on your site should be relevant to the visitor, he has to identify himself with what you have to offer (or visa versa)
• use of call to action, motivating the visitor to proceed (usually, to the most useful pages) helps guide the visitors further

In essence, you should provide the people the words that they will recognize, associate with themselves and use them to find what they want on your website. Formatting the text, combining the call to action with links should help draw attention to the most relevant pages from the current page.

Read more about providing clear click path.

This goes in line with providing various paths for various kinds of customers, such as researching, comparing or buying, as well as different types of people, such as thoughtful (use facts, well-written articles, figures, graphs) and emotional (call to action, various benefits, etc).

You can read more about various types of customers from the Eisenbergs:

• Various character types
• Personas (more, more and more)

When to think about visitor behaviour

Obviously, the sooner you take into account how people view websites, the better off you’ll be. As it doesn’t take long to understand the basic idea of hunting for information, you’d rather implement such website usability concept before you build a website.

It may be hard to redesign later, not to mention it’ll take more time and you’ll have other issues at hand.

In essence, designing for natural consumption should work best: it involves clear information, no distractions and positive user experience.

It also goes inline with various values that you provide to your visitors. The more valuable your website/product is to the people, the more likely they’ll stick around and do what they and you want.

Rounding up

Ideally, you need to at least think about the way the information is presented on the website (site, page structure/layout). You can rewrite the text later. In fact, you will have to test your website copy and rewrite it for better effect, so you can simply focus on the page layout first-hand.

But what you need to do as soon as possible is to make it obvious for your visitors where to go next.

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http://www.improvetheweb.com/

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Normally, working at a computer isn’t considered as harmful as working on a toxic plant, poisonous factory or somewhere similar, though some (most?) people seem to enjoy it. However, it doesn’t mean that building the Web doesn’t negatively affect your health.

Where does it hit you?

As a matter of fact, everything’s pretty simple. Web building people (web designers, web developers, SEOs, Internet marketers, usability professionals, accessibility folks and others) spend at least 8 hours a day, building the Web. While doing so, they:

• lose physique by moving as little as possible (does moving a mouse and typing count at all as moving?)
• lose flexibility by spending almost the entire day in one posture (even if there are varios ways of sitting)
• strain their eyes by staring at the screens with small fonts, bizarre graphics, looking for info
• lose the touch on the real life (because they spend 8 hours a day in one spot, not even outside - ok, most of them, not everyone)
• sometimes overwork, have to travel a lot (Mike Grehan, Rand, anyone?), work irregular hours and so on
• abuse their eating habits (by eating fast, pre-maid food) or even missing meals for work

All this combined makes a pretty nasty picture for a person, who wants to stay healthy for more than 20 work years. Now, if someone has other had habits, such as smoking, drinking and such, the condition becomes even more sewere. But what can you do about it?

Get to action

Of course, one of the choices would be to get another job, in the open air. But for 99.999% of us, that’s not the choice, because we may be experts in SEO, but not in outside jobs, not to mention that some may have some careers in store for them online. So, what to do?

Naturally, you need to do something about it, such as:

• take breaks, often. Not just to play online games, but to stretch, take a walk, do some eye-exercise to relax. Or even take a nap. Anything to break the prolonged monkey-typing position.
• walk more (or use a bicycle). Ignore lifts, cars for short distances. Take up any sport at least three times a week (just do it - you only need to start)
• Find a good monitor (and also an easy-to-use keyboard, mouse and a chair). Choose wisely *before* you buy it. Ignore the price tag.
• find ways to enjoy your work: speak politely, do everything you can for the customers, do only what you like to do
• expand your life (go outside, visit other towns, invite guests/go guesting, etc)
• try to eat human-made, organic food

In short, just do something to improve your life in your situation: you should be able to add a lot to the list (care to share in the comments?)

Why improve your life?

While some of us didn’t pick the occupation we ended up at (who would have thought you’d have to learn everything from copywriting to accessibility to build/improve/promote a website?), it is generally a good idea to stay fit to be more productive.

By improving your life you will not only enjoy it more thoroughly, but will also be able to do work better, do more work and provide better customer care service.

Rounding up

The goal here is not to jump the gun and change everything at once, but to gradually improve your life. Taking it to the extremes won’t help it (though longer vacation might). You only need to start thinking about it and to try find ways to get better.

Links on computer-related health issues:

• http://www.geocities.com/introduction2computers/computers-and-health.htm
• http://eeshop.unl.edu/rsi.html
• http://pages.towson.edu/jack/lab/health.html
• http://www.bangor.ac.uk/ohs/safety_pages/occhealth/dse.htm
• http://news.sawf.org/Health/22636.aspx

(Yes, it is very original to scrape links from Google Top 10 for ‘computer related health issues’, but you can do better.)

What other dangers you think the Web building people should be aware of and how would you advise to improve the working/living conditions?

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http://www.improvetheweb.com/

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Anyone in business is constantly battling for results: more customers, more sales, more profit. And more profit. Naturally, humans with such tasks are under severe pressure and use many ways to achieve the results.

However, not all the ways to make money [online] are helpful, useful and valuable to customers. In fact, they can be categorized in short term (low value) and long term (high value) methods.

So the people, who are pressed for results, may strand for the short term ones, narrowing their view of the picture and allowing minute interests spoil the overall endeavour.

Is there a way to deliver value to the customers, make profit and remain yourself?

The choice in marketing

One of the choices that business people and marketers need to make, when promoting their project, is on which benefits they will be focusing on. Naturally, the product should rather be quite useful and all benefits should be considered.

However, sometimes some marketers, probably due to lack of customer research, try to add imaginable benefits or those that don’t really relate to people or add value to their lives. Such marketing not only wastes peoples’ time, but also doesn’t give them a chance to truly appreciate the project. In the end, the customers leave and business owners, marketers and customers are disappointed.

On the other hand, what might work could be:

• researching your customers: their needs, desires, wishes and values
• identifying the major reason to use the product and playing from there
• focusing on the real value to the people: what is in it for them?

By paying attention to the people, you not only deliver what they want and allow them to improve their lives, but you also succeed with your business venture. Most of all, you remain yourself, while making your bosses, customers and yourself happy.

Be yourself

The biggest part in successful marketing, as in this case, is remaining yourself. By being who you are, you not only do what you like to do, but you also find unique ways to approach the business, the product, the customers and the market. This will give you a significant advantage over those, who go by the beaten paths, avoiding studying themselves and others.

One more reason to be yourself in marketing is to remain unique. By finding the unique point of your personality, you find a new approach to the people, give another angle to the matter. It not only makes your own work stand out, but the product, too, as, most likely, no one has marketed like you before.

Another benefit of being yourself is that the whole marketing campaign will be pretty much build on one scheme: your own character. While this may not be true in larger companies, if you more or less control product creation and promotion, you can pretty much do as you please (as long as you provide results) and enjoy yourself (while providing results). Did I mention you still need to do something to get results?

Getting results by remaining yourself

Of course, the question easily arises “How do I not get swayed by some quick short-term goals, stay myself and deliver results?” The key here is aligning existing or new methods of marketing your product with how you’d like make your customers happy.

Let’s take an example: email content delivery. One on scale there is spam: quick, cheap and very, very scalable. On another scale is your site newsletter: you spend your time to create truly valuable tips for your site visitors and this gives them a reason to subscribe to your newsletter, thus spending their valuable time on your messages.

Which one would you enjoy doing? Which one would give results?

Given that spam bears nothing of your personality, product individuality and ways to build loyalty (who likes receiving spam?), receiving a useful newsletter is something to be truly cherished.

With the useful newsletter you will not only build your recognition, but also show off your expertise, encourage trust and build relationships with your customers. Of course, it’ll take lots of time and effort to build your loyal subscription base - but it’ll be worth it.

So, short-term spam or long-term? Hate the thing or enjoy the process and learn something new?

It is up to you.

Rounding up

While it requires courage to go the route of being yourself in marketing and modifying existing or finding new ways of marketing, the whole reason behind this approach is to enjoy your life. While the execution of marketing solely relies on your skills, not techniques, you are more or less free to try the new ways to make progress.

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http://www.improvetheweb.com/

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When it comes to hiring a search engine optimization professional, people usually expect to get substantial return on investment. And rightly so.

However, what they don’t take into account is how much time and money it will take to get noticed online.

What can one expect from online marketing?

As search engine optimization provides certain improvements in visibiity, it is no surprise that it may lead to products becoming popular and widely used. But can SEOs make an unknown product popular?

As a matter of fact, it will depend on a SEO as long as he makes sure the product is absolutely useful and has numerous benefits. If no marketer was consulted during the creation of the product, the degree of product success will be largely dependant on its quality.

If the product is marginally useful, can be replaced by already existing competing solutions and people can find ways to live without it, it has little chance to survive.

Sure, a SEO will get some visitors to a site and promote the product as much as he can, but he can’t make people buy semi-useless junk and spread a positive word about it.

Thus, if you want to get results from a SEO, make sure your product is useful.

Making as it should be

As SEO’s success is largely determined by the product and other restrictions that higher management puts in his way, the main job is to ensure that everything required online happens. A site appears, it works, converts visitors and a large number of visitors come to site regularly to buy stuff. Sales come and go and everyone’s getting their salary paid.

Nothing spectacular? But without someone experienced online there’ll be nothing to talk about. It takes immense knowledge to do things right from the start and achieve results, especially on a new website.

Though certain experienced individuals can get spectacular results, this can mostly be explained by a good product.

Another reason, of course, maybe that they have mastered the art of creating great content. But even if the site has great content and many visitors, it’d make no sense to have a mediocre product on it, which wouldn’t sell.

In essence, SEOs and marketers, if given no control over the product, simply make sure that there is enough audience to make the company profitable with the product. Sometimes, it may seem just ok, sometimes it may seem outstanding. But either way, if you don’t get your SEO/marketer to improve the product (or create a better one), you’ll only get the audience your product deserves.

Partly, it may be justified by the fact that some SEOs may not take up products that are not useful and possess no remarkable values. Some may even only take on projects that interest them personally.

Time and efforts

Another thing that many people go wrong with expectation on SEO is that everything can be done fast, cheap and of high quality. Naturally, this is impossible.

In fact, you expect to get only two of the three (either fast and cheap, or cheap and high quality, or fast and of high quality, but not cheap).

Let’s take a hypthetical example. You are a shoe seller. You have a more or less running e-commerce website, but you feel like something’s lacking. So you hire a SEO. What he will do?

Most likely, the work will involve:

• optimize on-page SEO
• improve usability to increase conversions
• create great content to get visitors and links

The first two can be done in a couple of weeks, or a month, depending on how knowledgeable is the expert.

On the other hand, creating content and promoting the website can be done perpetually. A month of work may be noticeable, but it’d rather be 2-3 months to get significant results with long-term effect.

If you take visitors and conversions seriously, it’d take some time to study the web analytics and tweak the site accordingly. Considering it may take a week to get results in each iteration, the final site version may be very well weeks or months ahead.

Thus, it’ll be at least 3-4 months before your shoe sales will see significant (150%-500%+) boost from an already existing website.

Sounds like an investment dump? If you consider the ROI that such significant efforts may bring, time should have little importance (apart from procrastination, of course). Especially, when there are numerous examples of offline businesses, which online presence gives them 30-50% of the revenue.

How to set the right expectations

So, you want to make sure you don’t argue much with your SEO about time spent on the project and results. Then you’ll need to consider the following:

• time everything in weeks and months, not days
• thoroughly consider if your product is useful
• only expect almost immediate results from on-site optimization
• give time to create really great content to get more links and visitors
• for substantial growth, consider waiting several months (or more than half a year for a new website)

Read more about things a SEO client should remember.

Rounding up

If you want to save time on negotiation and maintain good mental health during the project, consider having reasonable expectations of what and how fast you can get from a SEO.

As you are hiring an expert, consider doing everything as he says. He’s the expert and that’s why you are hiring him. Talk about how much time and money it’d require to achieve certain milestones. If anything, reconsider hiring him, but do not force him under strict time and results frames - otherwise, it’ll be just another project management nightmare.

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http://www.improvetheweb.com/

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Hello there, folks.

This is yet another post about improving this very site for those, who read the posts, but don’t receive feeds to their reader.

It has come to my attention that some people can not access the feed through the URL they have subscribed earlier (such as http://improvetheweb.com/feed/).

Do you have any problem with receiving feeds?

If you do, do let me know via yuri @ improvetheweb.com pr by commenting here.

If you know someone who does, but doesn’t read the site, could you possibly show them this post?

Thanks.

I have, supposedly, done everything for the feeds to work for old URLs, too.

However, I have also added a mod_rewrite script to remove the slash from the URL. Possibly, this could be causing the problem. I wonder if there’s a huge problem or not, though (or whether it exists at all).

Thank you for letting me know.

Yuri

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