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A staggeringly huge number of people use search engines like Google as their primary source of information. Hence, it’s absolutely necessary to ensure that your website delivers a satisfying experience to your site visitors.What’s amazing is that in the face of such fact, about 90% of all websites are deficit in delivering a satisfying experience to their site visitors often in ways that can be easily rectified.
All too often such websites deliver a less than ideal visitor experience because:
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The Effect Of – The Lack Of Thinking About – Site Visitor Types
In the absence of reasoned thinking about various site visitor types, website design appears to be based on the following assumptions:
- All visitors will think in the same way
- All visitors will similar paths through site content
- This is very far from what actually happens on the website once it is released on the Internet.
Site visitors have:
- A wide range of needs
- Differing levels of literacy and language comprehension
- Different decision making processes
Hence can and do respond very differently to the website’s – Call To Action
Hence, do keep this in mind when crafting the look, feel and content of the website’s – Call To Action.
Learn the demographics of your website visitors in as much depth as is possible. Based on this learning keep tweaking the website’s – Call To Action – especially as your understanding deepens. Google analytics is excellent for doing this.
Once the website’s – Call To Action – and its Main menu navigation, has been set so that it has the widest appeal to your site visitors, you will engage more and more of your site visitors, opening up multiple revenue generating opportunities.
Here is a great technique to use.
After studying Google analytics content for a while ( three to six months perhaps ) define a set of typical site visitor – Personas.
Set aside and spend time thinking about the different types of people that you can attract to your website, not just about the current site visitors. These are your potential customers and you have to reach out to them. These people could be from various walks of life bankers, job seekers, media, members of the general public that are interested in your website content.
Attributes For Defining Personas
Break down visitor demographics into personas based on some of the following attributes:
- Gender
- Age
- Language(s) spoken
- Education level
- Disposable income levels
- Reason for visiting your website - be as specific as possible
- How site visitors make decisions – i.e. are they visual / emotional / data-driven?
- Content and or site elements that attracted them to respond to your – Call To Action
- Content and or site elements that could deter them from interacting with you further
- Other relevant details you’ve discovered?
Then give each persona a name.
Sit down and discuss all of the above attributes with all staff members involved with crafting and maintaining the website.
Once you have documented each persona, try walking through your website in the shoes of each Persona. Seeing your website as they would, and trying to interact in the way they would prefer. This will most certainly be an eye-opening experience.
The Impact Of A Lack Of Clear Site Positioning And Navigation
Website studies have always shown that if a site visitor does not believe that they have reached the right place in the first 10 to 15 seconds they will navigate away immediately. Hence your website’s landing page content must clearly and unambiguously indicate what the website has on offer. Especially that the website content has been built on competence and credibility.
Your Home page is where most site visitors expect to find such information, irrespective where they entered your website. Hence, pay very careful attention to the impression that the website’s Home page delivers the site visitor. The key areas being: Look and feel, Content and Main menu navigation.
Focus sharply on what is visible on the website’s Home page when it renders in a Browser’s window. Check this content across multiple Browsers. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome.
Check the content visible at different screen resolutions, starting with 1024px by 768px and going upwards.
NOTE: 800px by 600px is generally considered redundant today.
Make notes on what is visible across the screen at different resolutions. Tweak this carefully. This will empower your website to show its visitors that it has been built competently and that its content is credible.
Do check to insure:
- Which elements stand out more than others?
- If they are they appropriate to the site visitor demographics?
- Are the website’s key messages clearly visible?
- Are the Main menu navigation labels intuitive and easy to understand?
Do not use – Flash – based menu items, they may look great, but on a slow Internet connection can put off a site visitor. Keep your site designer under your control. Always trade off great visuals for the fastest page load times. If a site visitor has to wait a tad longer than absolutely necessary they will navigate to another website,
Do not use phrases in your content that does not make complete sense to your site visitors. No matter how important to the content flow your content developer says it is. Your site visitor has the option of moving away if they cannot fully understand just what your website is delivering OR if they believe they have come to the wrong place.
Lack Of Cohesion Between Your Website And It’s Social Media Presence
It’s pretty important to ensure consistent content and its presentation across everything connected to your website on the Internet. Over look this, and you run the risk of weakening your brand. Especially the emotional connection between your brand and your site visitors.
Very often a company’s LinkedIn or Facebook profile page presents a very different image than what the website does. This is bad for the website. One can have a Facebook or LinkedIn page content that is well presented and exciting. This drives the site visitor to your website with – great expectations. Regretfully the website content and look and feel is flat, dull and lifeless. This can negate all the positive energy that the site visitor is bringing to your website from your social media page.
Often this happens simply because the website content and the social media content are managed by different people or different departments. Either ways this is terrible for your website, which is from where your inbound revenue streams.
The Lack Of A Well Crafted – Call To Action
It is crucial to have a compelling – Call To Action – on various pages of your website. If you do not direct your site visitor on what to do next, more than likely they will leave without doing anything, which would be a great loss to you. You have just lost an opportunity to engage your site visitor and convert the site visitor into a – Paying client.
