In a prior article we said the essential visitors to a website are people and search engines. It doesn’t really matter which one we view as being more important, both are essential for a web site to thrive and prosper.
In the prior article, seven essential aspects of web optimization for the search engine visitor were outlined. Although we are examining web optimization as separate parts one part for search engines the other part for people, in practice both have to be considered at the same time.
This is because in practice the requirements for effective web optimization for a search engine, is frequently at odds with the web optimization considerations for people visitors. This dilemma often calls for a compromise that may favour one more than the other.
Here we examine web optimization one stage further and look at how web page optimisation can influence the behaviour and perceptions of people visiting a web site.
But first, have you done any web optimization or web page optimisation for people visitors ?
If you have:
Did you track, test or measure how effective your web page optimisation actually was ?
I would take a guess and say you would say “NO” to at least one if not both these questions. Assuming you knew what to look for it would still be difficult to remain objective about your own web site, the more so if you did the design.
What is of significant benefit is the experienced eye of another designer to uncover or confirm areas of the design that would benefit from improvements. If you would like an assessment carried out on your website we provide a number of Free web page optimisation evaluations, just complete one of the forms on our website.
Establishing the effectiveness of any web page optimisation can best be achieved by tracking visitor actions combined with A/B split-testing or Multivariate split-testing.
When carrying out an evaluation we suggest the emphasis be on seven factors that influence people the most when visiting a web site.
There are many behavioural influencers but the most important ones are listed below:-
Visual Appearance
The overall color scheme should be sympathetic to the theme of the site, with text of a size and color that makes it easy to read. Backgrounds or images should not be distracting and should compliment the look and theme of the web page providing additional useful information and enhancing the visitor’s perception and understanding of the site. Do not use images unless they contribute to your message.
Visitor Impact
The web page should clearly convey the impression you want the visitor to have all within 3 to 5 seconds of them landing on the page. Visitors expect to get a quick impression of what your web page is offering. If people can’t quickly grasp the essence of what you are offering they will not stick around.
Clarity and Value of Proposition
Information about the product or service being offered must be clearly apparent to the visitor. Uncertainty regarding what’s being offered leads to confusion and visitor loss. The offer also needs to clearly convey value to the visitor. The page must answer questions in the mind of the visitor such as, how does this benefit them, in what way is the offer of value to them and what makes your offer so special that they should buy from you.
Slide and Glide
Avoid the use multi-column page layouts. Eye tracking studies have shown multiple column layouts cause visitors more distractions and detract from them following a clear defined path down the page. Many studies have also shown that in general, key information or impressions you want to impart to the visitor should be across the top of the page below the header, in the top left corner and page center. Observing these guidelines will make a page quicker and easier for a visitor to determine what the page is about.
Web Page Navigation
Page navigation should be easy to see and easy to follow, with on-page links that look like links - standard underlined blue text. Make use of image alt tags and link tags as an aid to the visitors understanding of where links are going. The use of image and link tags is good design practice and a requirement for compliance with W3C guidelines.
Web Site Navigation
This often creates a conflict for web optimization as the site navigation preferred for people is frequently not the best for the search engines, since the two requirements are usually not the same. For common links to pages throughout the site we usually advise a top or side of page navigation menu that should have a consistent location and appearance throughout the site. The only exception to this is normally the home page. Large sites can benefit from a search box and all except sites with less than 10 pages, should have a site map as a further aid to visitor navigation.
The Proposition Experience
If a page is offering opt-ins, downloads or products and services for sale, then the process by which these are obtained needs to be free of distractions, obstacles and barriers and as short as possible. The anxiety and friction caused by a site’s order and fulfilment process is a significant factor in lost sales and site abandonment.
Typical deficiencies are:
- Absence of customer assurance
- Requesting unnecessary personal details
- Unnecessary barriers i.e. register before placing order
- Insufficient use of trust builders
- Having too many steps and/or pages to the fulfilment process
- Asking for too much information too early in the process
- Poor customer reassurance
You should aim to have a fulfilment system with ideally no more than 3 stages.
Download Speed
With the advent of high-speed Internet, many web site designers have abandoned mainly text web page designs and replaced them with web designs high in graphics, flash images and movies. Some of today’s web pages are so heavily laden with images that even for visitors with a broadband connection they are slow to access with a normal browser.
The consequence of this is that for 30-40% of Internet users without high-speed broadband such web sites are completely inaccessible or are so slow they give up.
What makes the problem far worse is that many image laden web pages are not effectively optimized. By that we mean they do not use graphic images, flash and movies that have been optimized for the smallest file size while maintaining quality. Savings of typically 50% in image file sizes are achievable with better optimization, leading to faster page access for visitors.
We provide web design and web site optimization service that enable site owners to improve functionality and increase profitability of their web sites. We also have many years of experience in web optimization and search engine optimization.
Most of our web site optimization service we supply with a No-Pay if No-Result Guarantee. For many of our services you pay us nothing if we don’t achieve the agreed results.
We also provide FREE if No-Result web site optimization services guaranteed to increase site performance and/or revenue. Visit us for a consultation or a FREE website optimization report on your web site.
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