SEO is Important, But Remember Your Visitors - What makes your offering special?
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But it may well be the site's improved organization that put it over the edge. It's very easy now to find the human stories of Wish kids; the redesign splits them into several main categories, such as professional, adventures, sports & entertainment, and more. Click on one of these categories and you're greeted by several sub-categories, with pictures; click on one of these, and you get to see pictures of the children, with a sentence under each photo revealing his or her wish. Click the link, and you can read a touching account of the wish, and comments that other visitors have left.
To be sure, the organization has granted more than 150,000 wishes, and not all of them are there - nor do they need to be. But these Wish children are the whole point of the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and the site redesign puts them front and center, from photos on the home page to a link that lets you navigate right to the wish stories.
If that's not enough, there's a category under Wish Stories labeled "Inspired Creations." Many of the Wish children, as well as others, have been inspired by wishes to create something, be it a work of art, music, a video, a scrapbook, or a screen saver. In this section, you can take a look at (or watch or listen to) these creations. Coming from the heart as they do, many of them are quite stunning, and all are touching.
"Digital Pulp's new design has definitely made visiting wish.org a more pleasant, engaging experience for our supporters and people who are interested in learning more about the Foundation," Pressendo noted. "The site is more aligned with the Foundation's brand principles - it's more joyful, inspirational and helps users connect with us more easily."
So what is the take-home message here? Even before you look at details like keywords, think about whether the site is doing what it needs to do for everyone who uses it. Communicate with all the site's users to find out those needs. Make sure the site engages visitors, and if at all possible, set it up so that it makes interaction easy for visitors and frees staff up for the important matters. Make it obvious to visitors what you want them to do. Think about what makes your product or service compelling, and put that front and center so visitors will find it for themselves.
Admittedly, convincing people to give money to grant wishes to critically ill children isn't a hard sell (or maybe it is, and I'm just a soft touch). Still, the point is, you can be at the top of the SERPs, but if your site isn't reaching your visitors with your message on a level that makes them want to do something - and makes it easy for them to do it - you can be doing a lot better.
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