Site Design & Usability
The following are articles related to website design and usability from the
archives of Website Magazine. These articles are ordered by the date they appear
in the print edition of Website Magazine (the last article in this list is the
most recent). For daily coverage of all things Web related, please visit the
Website Magazine
Daily Blog.
Recent articles on Site Design & Usability from the February issue of Website
Magazine:
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Landing Page Optimization : The only obstacle keeping you from
creating more compelling landing pages could be just a lack of attention and
imagination. Tim Ash explains and offers suggestions.
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Landing Pages - SEO vs. SEM : Custom landing pages can make the
difference between a sale and site abandonment. To truly maximize your
success, landing pages should reflect how your visitors found you.
WM archived articles on Site Design & Usability from Website Magazines:
Issuu has a goal to make online publishing simple, attractive and easy
to share. Not only can you create interactive, great looking
publications but you can join a growing community, explore their online
library and share your documents with your own, established community.
Take a PDF, upload it to Issuu and they will convert it into an online
magazine with page-flip capabilities, zoom, full-screen viewing and
more. After you upload your PDF you can publish it immediately to a
host of social networks and blogging sites, as well as get some code to
embed on any site. Your new magazine will also be available on
Issuu.com for public viewing, where there are a host of other documents
to browse in categories ranging from Academia to Tech and Travel. You
can also create a profile, add friends and spread your publication to
others.
But Issuu is just getting warmed up. Already an impressive service,
they look to keep innovating. Martin Ferro-Thomson, Co-Founder and
Communications Manager at Issuu took some time to answer a few questions
we had for him:
When was Issuu founded?
Issuu was started in 2006, with just a few guys with a lot of
ideas. We were funded in January 2007 and started developing, launched
in
public in January 2007 and now Issuu is in beta with many plans for the
future. We have a
handpicked and extremely motivated team, without a doubt the most
talented people I've ever worked with (and yes, we're hiring to keep up
with the booming interest).
What are Issuu's goals?
To make online publishing as simple and easy as possible; both for
companies, advertisers and certainly average people like you and me. We
want everyone with a message to be able to get across to the right
targeted audience, no matter where in the world that audience might be.
And we want to empower anyone to publish in style using the best
technology out there!
Who do you find are the most frequent users of Issuu?
Anyone! Businesses want to use us because we have the best online
viewer technology on the market (vector gfx and full screen mode).
Creatives love the viewer too because it's beautiful and they can
connect via our community. Everyone else just thinks it's exciting to
join this living library where you can find so much interesting stuff
you never though was out there - and in a format that really is
something people have been craving for: easy, intuitive and gratifying.
What are some future plans or upgrades for Issuu?
Watch the blog. And believe me, it's going to be a great year to watch out
for Issuu. We have only just started rolling out the basic features and
we have an extremely exciting road map with lots of new and innovative
features that we've worked on for years now - and of course by
listening to our top-notch members (thanks!).
Editor's
note - Issuu is promising some great features but understandably
prefers to keep things under wraps for now. See a recent press release
from their blog and an example of Issuu's capabilities.
Now, a couple of limitations that we mentioned previously:
- Zoom feature: When zooming in on a document, the default means of
navigation is by simply moving the mouse - there is no clicking
involved. While it's nice to easily move a page around, it's also a
little distracting, even disorienting. My hand usually rests on my
mouse - so even the slightest movement moves the entire page. Clicking
on the hand icon at the top of the page turns the feature off, but not
all users will notice this. Also while in zoom mode, you lose the
page-flip effect when clicking to get to the next page.
- Embedded links: Right now you cannot embed links into the PDF files. It would be a nice feature to have.
I've tested Issuu. At first there was a problem uploading the PDF. But
after emailing for support (and a rapid response) the problem was
solved. It appears I simply needed to install the
latest Flash player.
After that, it was easy. I'm impressed ... and looking forward to
Issuu's continued progress.
Issuu has been nominated as a finalist in the SXSW Interactive awards, from hundreds of applicants. If you like what you see, you can vote for Issuu
here.
An example of an Issuu file and choosing to embed the magazine
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You can, within the limits of ethics and accuracy, represent yourself any way that you want on the Internet. Your landing page is not written on stone tablets. In fact, it is the most ethereal of objects — a set of bits that resides on a computer hard disk and is accessible to the world.
The only obstacles keeping you from creating more compelling landing pages could be just a lack of attention and imagination. You are as free as an artist in front of a blank canvas, but the promise of high-performing landing pages is often tempered by a fear of making things worse than they already are — it’s impossible to know in advance what will or won’t work, yet you are supposed to be the expert.
In truth, there are no individual landing page optimization experts. Sure, many people have extensive experience with landing page design such as copywriting, graphic design and usability. But no one person knows everything. As a company that regularly tests a variety of landing pages, we are amazed at how often our best ideas fail to outperform the corresponding elements of the original landing page. Even the most experienced experts will be wrong much of the time. The simple reason is that no one person can envision the diverse needs of all visitors who find your page. Even if the expert knew everything about every visitor, they would find that their needs are often contradictory. What convinces one person to act may be a turn-off to another.
But don’t worry — you already have access to thousands of willing “experts.” You are interacting with them on a daily basis. The real experts on the design of your landing pages are your website visitors.
You may never be able to answer why a specific visitor did or did not respond to your landing page. But there are ways to determine what your website visitors respond to on average. In fact, landing page optimization can be viewed as a giant online marketing laboratory. The actions (or inactions) of your “subjects” allow you to improve your appeal to a similar population of people.
Websites have three desirable properties as a testing laboratory:
High data rates: Many websites have significant traffic rates and an ample supply of test subjects. In aggregate, all of your traffic sources result in a particular traffic mix unique to your website. With high website traffic volumes, statistical analysis allows you to find verifiably better landing pages and to be confident in your answer. The best versions are proven winners. Unlike previous designs, they are no longer based solely on subjective opinions. Nor are they the results of political popularity contests within your company.
Accurate tracking: Web analytics software supports the accurate tracking and recording of every interaction within your website. Each visit is recorded along with a mind-numbing amount of detailed information. Although Web analytics software is not perfect, it provides a standard of data collection accuracy that is almost unheard of in any other marketing medium.
Easy content changes: Internet technology offers the ability to easily swap or modify the content that a particular website visitor sees. The content can be customized based on the source of the traffic, the specific capabilities of the visitor’s computer or Web browser software, their behavior during the particular visit, or their past history of interactions with your site. In other experimental environments it is very expensive and time-consuming to come up with an alternative version or prototype. On the Internet, countless website content variations can be created and managed at minimal cost for a landing page optimization test.
The key to landing page optimization is using all available sources of ideas for what to test. Don’t trust the opinions of experts alone. It is much better to explore among many design alternatives than to trust the opinions of one individual. After all, at the end of the day all that matters is what your audience responds to, not the credentials or backgrounds of the people who came up with the ideas for the new landing page elements to test.
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About the Author: Tim Ash is
the president of SiteTuners.com, a landing page optimization company
that works on a performance basis. He is also the author of Landing Page
Optimization: The Definitive Guide To Testing and Tuning for Conversions
(LandingPageOptimizationBook.com). |
By Aaron Kupferberg
__________________________________________
Obtaining website visitors through search engines falls into two major categories — search engine optimization (SEO or organic search) and search engine marketing (SEM or paid search). While both techniques result in website traffic, the methods and goals are radically different, especially when considering where your site visitor came from and what they see when they arrive – the landing page. SEO pages tend to be website home pages and very general in nature. SEM landing pages can be very specific and offer a greater level of control. But both are essential for optimal conversion.
When a site puts together a landing page for a user, it is often with a specific goal in mind. Most of the time this goal is to drive higher-quality traffic to its website through a search engine. A targeted landing page, unlike a generic home page, is designed to be relevant to what a user has just seen on the search engine results page (SERP), making good on the listing’s offer.
The SEO E-Commerce ExperienceWhen you go shopping at a department store, you may have a specific item in mind to buy — let’s say shoes, for example. You enter through the front door and notice every little thing on your way to the shoe department. The decorations, the sale in electronics or the in-store Starbucks may catch your attention. These distractions might be strong enough to make you forget exactly what you came for, or they could be ignored until you reach your final destination in the shoe section.
The “home” landing page associated with organic listings isn’t that different. Most SEO-focused landing pages have to cater to the search engine bots as well as browsing humans not looking for a particular item. Because of this, the marketing focus of these pages is indirect at best.
The organic listings created by the search engine’s algorithms are not easily controlled by retailers. Most search engines look at a site’s home page first and rank it as the most important page based on the relevancy of search queries. This encourages the webmaster to code the site in the broadest terms, in order to gather the widest audience. Overall, this makes organic landing pages more general – not driven by conversion rates. The main goal of these pages is site ranking and visibility – great for marketing to new visitors or casual browsers but not so good for a customer looking for a specific item or service.
The SEM E-Commerce ExperienceNow imagine you visit the same department store, again looking for new shoes. But this time you are instantly teleported to the shoe department without having to even pass through the front door. There are no distractions and you reach the shoe department still in buying mode. This is the targeted, SEM landing page.
Because the SERPs are predetermined by your keywords, the SEM experience is more direct and ultimately more profitable for retailers, especially in cases where users have very specific requests.
Using paid listings gives the retailer full control of what users see after the click. This destination might be the shoe department or even the exact model shoe the user wants to buy. A user coming from a results page is action-oriented and it serves the retailer well to take advantage of their mindset. After all, the closer I am to the shoe I want the more likely I am to buy it.
Impressions and Clicks in ActionA good example of how SEO and SEM-optimized landing pages differ can be found in landing pages of Zappos.com. When the term “shoes” is searched in Google, the organic results lead here:
Because the Title tag of this page has been designed to function well at an SEO level, its keyword-rich text reads: “Our shoe store features
dress shoes, casual shoes, and athletic shoes for men and women!” Here, the multiple mentions of the keyword “shoes” direct the engine to return this page to the user, as opposed to the “order” or “section” page that, in many cases is what the user was trying to find.
When clicking on the paid link to Zappos.com, we are taken to a sub-page within the site that is more targeted to the “shoes” query.
The Title tag on this paid links-optimized page is quite different. It reads “Shoes — Free Shipping & Return Shipping,” information highly relevant to a commercial query for “shoes” and constitutes an offer that may well enhance conversions on this page. Because this page has been optimized for humans, not search engines, there is no need to flood the page with keywords and Meta tag data — users are coming here to buy.
Creating two sets of landing pages, one for SEO and the other for paid links is essential if you want to make the most of search engine traffic. Just because SEO-oriented landing pages must be more general and less action-oriented doesn’t mean that they can’t accomplish your branding objectives. Paid links-optimized pages, on the other hand, give you granular control allowing you to guide users directly to products they want, when they want them. If you want a complete experience on the Web for consumers, you’ll need to create both sets.
 |
About the Author:
Aaron Kupferberg is Art Director and Interaction Designer for Didit and
develops website audits based on user-oriented goals. Since 1996, Didit
has been providing analytics, technology, and results in leading-edge
search, targeted online advertising and auctioned media for over 150
clients. Send comments to Aaron.Kupferberg@didit.com |
The landing page is the first impression a prospect gets about a product or service when visiting your website. Therefore, it is important to optimize to get your site visitors to take the action you are requesting. Even the slightest improvement (or deterioration) on these pages can make an immediate and major impact on your bottom line.
It is important to note that a landing page is not the step in the sales cycle where a user completes a form – e.g. enters their credit card information. That step is in the virtual sales funnel, referred to as a transactional page. There is a separate set of optimization tips for transactional page optimization, or TPO. The purpose of landing pages is to provide a location for end-users to build confidence through a variety of on-page components. As an affiliate, the challenge many face is convincing buyers to purchase through their website and not another retailer. By giving the consumer a feeling of security, they are more likely to act on your unique selling proposition – buying a tangible product, signing up for a free newsletter, or to complete a lengthy form.
For this purpose, let’s first look at the overarching principles of what makes landing page optimization successful. Only then can we employ the time-tested techniques that make landing pages convert. The simple answer to the question of why one landing page converts better than another is that those with a higher than average conversion rate have mastered reducing buyer anxiety.
Remove Barriers & DistractionsNothing elicits reverse clicks faster than overwhelming amounts of information – whether it’s visual or textual. Your primary goal as a landing page optimizer is to lessen anxiety, help maintain the momentum of the visitor and make a compelling argument about why following one more link will solve a problem. That may sound like a great deal of effort and contradictory to limiting information but, done right, you can provide everything a user needs to know without overwhelming them. By removing unnecessary barriers and distractions, landing pages will convert at a much higher rate. Here are a few things to consider removing, modifying and adding to improve your current landing page success rates:
Make Company/Website Information Readily AvailableThe presence of contact information is a sure sign for many end-users that you are available and committed to solving any problems that arise from website transactions. Successful online businesses recognize the importance of building trust and fostering relationships and include the information consumers need to feel confident in a prominent location. Increase the priority and prevalence of phone numbers, include live-support solutions such as CraftySyntax or emphasize your availability by email. All of these opportunities convey to prospects that you take their concerns seriously.
Product/Service Recognition Is CriticalConsumers arriving on a landing page have certain expectations. Whether they followed a paid link from search results pages, clicked a link from an email or typed in a URL directly, the consumer expects to see and learn more about what was originally offered. For example, if your advertisement offers product support, an emphasis on product support should be prominent on the landing page. Even a minor tweak such as this will enable consumers to quickly identify and move toward the purchase of the specific item they came to find.
Sizes, Shapes And Colors Are KeyEvery user is unique. By testing how components work together on a page, landing page optimizers are easily able to identify what converts their visitors into buyers. If a landing page background is black, try a light blue. If the font size of section headers is 10, increase it to 14. If thumbnail images don’t provide enough product detail, consider implementing solutions like LightBox - a free and very handy utility that enable LPO’s to present product images in an attractive way without interfering with the site experience.
As Always, Don’t Forget to TestOften, key items that make a difference in landing page conversion rates are not obvious. As such, the best way to uncover what works best is through a series of tests. Straight A/B testing is an easy but still very effective method to uncover which on-page variables such as headlines, copy, images and offer pricing matter most to the bottom line.
If unsure where to start testing first, you may want to dig into those customer complaint archives to identify areas your consumers determine faulty. For example, if customers routinely ask for more information before buying, test one landing page as is (sample A) and another with more detailed information about the product (sample B). Run the tests over similar time frames and from the same sources, then compare the results. If you find that Sample B performed better, it appears that providing more information, not less, is the way to go.
Testing will uncover not only what you are doing right, but also the sometimes seemingly inconsequential variables that can actually move the ROI needle. Test early and test often, then watch your conversion rate grow.