Get the Details Right for SEO - 6. Test and Retest Your Site Navigation and Usability with Real People
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Navigation and usability are fundamental elements to search engine optimization. They are also among the first things I look at when a potential client comes to Stickyeyes for a consultation.
Unfortunately in most situations there is a director, manager or webmaster that is married to the current design. If we see a need for a complete redesign, hopefully we are lucky enough to be given the "nod," but in most cases that does not happen, so we are forced to change bits and pieces.
Before I touch on some really good tips, let me just say this to the site owners, webmasters and upper management people out there: if you are not ranking well, not getting a good click-through rate, experiencing high bounce rates or cart abandonment, or you get a myriad of traffic without a minimum of three percent conversion, then you probably have usability issues. Let the marketing people do the marketing.
You have more than one choice:
You can let us or another reputable SEO company redesign your website and almost guarantee every element I mention above will be resolved.
You can let us or another reputable SEO create microsites in subdomains with full access to tinker around, test and improve. This way your "top-secret" back end won't be exposed (or cause any infrastructure or complicated matrix/server issues), or even allow access to a staging server.
You can let us or another reputable SEO change elements within your current site and test them with the knowledge that we really know what we are doing.
At the end of the day what I am getting at here is that this is a serious fundamental element in a successful web site. We typically sit down with 10 or 12 of our best people when looking at the web site's functionality. This is about the best focus group you could ever wish to have looking at the web site because we also know end user behavior. Keep an open mind to these types of suggestions because they are usually one of the major problematic issues that most web sites have.
So on to more tips.
Be sure you have definitive CTAs (Calls to Action) throughout your site, preferably in the navigation bars. These can be Call Us, Contact Us, Get a Quote, Add to Cart, Sign Up, Request Information or whatever. These CTAs should be in an abridged form that has as few fields as possible. (Remember the 'path of least resistance' and keep it very short.)
I recently looked at a web site (a major name that you would recognize) that sells insurance online. Being an ex-insurance agent I know the information that they need to give a quote is certainly not 15 pages long. We actually timed it at close to 16 minutes to complete.
Checkout procedures, whether for an ecommerce site selling widgets, or an insurance company trying to give a quote, should only be information that is required to give a price, and kept to a bare minimum. Don't ask how or where they found you, if they also want information on something else, or are interested in receiving additional offers…they aren't and it will hurt your conversion if the user thinks that you may resell their information or bombard them with emails each day. Human nature is the "path of least resistance" and you can scare them off with a daunting list of required fields when all they were looking for was a quick price. People don't want to have to give this personal information away in the first place; doing it online is an even scarier scenario. Think about the user's reaction, then; it will seem to them like you want it all!
Next: Tip 6 continued: data captures, customer value, and more >>
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