Visibility

A prospective client comes to you with a problem. Their site is underperforming and they are certain that the answer to all of their problems is more traffic. If they can just get the site in front of more people, they are certain to capture that phone call, order or download. While increasing the pool of visitors may help, there may be other factors influencing the success rate, including usability or what is more commonly known as the customer experience. 

Does your site have commitment issues?

Unless your brand is well-known, your site’s visitor is probably coming to your website based on the information displayed in the search engine result pages (SERPs), through a referral or an ad. The site’s visitor is essentially on a blind date, hoping to find the site of his/her dream or at least a site that wants an ongoing relationship.

There’s no denying that bringing targeted traffic to a site is essential for a website’s success, but it is only one step in the process of creating a successful website. A transformation has occurred - the targeted traffic is no longer a number, but is an individual who must make a decision and interact with the website in order for the conversion to take place. This is where your skills as a matchmaker come into play.

Will the site be a good match to what the searcher is looking for? Will it meet his/her expectations? Will the website’s scent entice and lead him/her to continue the conversation and heed the calls to action?  If not, is it because the visitor wasn’t a good match for your site or because the site didn’t address the visitor’s needs and desires for more information, better motivation, trust factors and a clear path to guide them on their journey?

As with all relationships, there is room for improvement. Even small changes can make for a better customer experience. Usability can result in higher conversion rates for the site, improved credibility for the business and provide a solid foundation for continuing the relationship both online and offline.

Usability is difficult to achieve … NOT.

Usability is becoming a popular buzz term at search conferences, in articles, and in lists of offered services; but it isn’t new. The concept of creating a visitor-friendly site has long been touted as a basic in web design, especially when creating the navigational structure for the site.

Visitor-friendliness is a start, but usability goes further. Usability is about matching the visitor’s conceptual model of how the website works and then adding an additional layer of persuasion.  Usability is both, can a visitor use the site and will the visitor want to interact with the site.

Usability is about the total customer experience:

•    The visitor has in his or her mind that the site will operate in a certain way, display information and content in a way that they perceive to be logical and that when they take an action, that the result will be what was expected.
•    The visitor needs to be motivated in order to act and the site must address the visitor’s mindset, needs and drives by providing a strong “scent” or pathway to leads to action - to conversion. 

There are many aspects to usability and user experience design. A good starting point is to begin matching your primary visitors’ expectations and motivations to your website.  Define the basic characteristics of your targeted user group and when doing so, remember the adage “You are not the user.”

It’s a myth that one size fits all …

No site is designed for everyone – or more importantly, it shouldn’t be. When working with my clients on creating or improving their websites, one of the first questions I ask is: “Who comes to your site and why? “  If the answer is “everyone”, it’s time to dig deeper and ask for examples of the types of people who would visit and what would make them come to the site.

Your goal at this step of the process is to segment targeted user groups from the general “everyone” audience, creating a user profile.

After discovering who comes to your site and why, the next step is to create something concrete that can help focus and keep the attention on the site’s visitor.  Personas, scenarios and task analysis are tools that often seem simplistic, yet they are powerful because they provide a solid foundation for all upcoming actions to the site’s navigation, design, calls to action as well as online and offline marketing strategies. These tools keep the team focused on improving the customer experience and thus the site conversions.

The development of personas and the resulting scenarios and task analysis does not have to be a time-consuming or expensive endeavor. All usability practices are iterative, so ongoing revisions are to be expected. As with most things, if the effort is expended in the early stages of the process, there is less need for modifications later.

Character Development – There are no small stories…

To develop personas, look at the targeted user groups/user profiles you created when you initially began to define your site’s visitors and assign a priority level to each group. You will create a small set of personas to help drive content and manage site requirements like navigation, calls to action or shopping cart procedures.

Choose 3 to 5 of your highest priority user profiles and create a composite of that individual for each group – a “fictitious” person” that represents that high priority user group. You are now the storyteller and all good stories have well-developed 3-dimenisional characters.

Give your character life by writing down his biography or creating a photo snapshot with words describing:

•    demographics such as age, education, computer-ability;
•    environmental issues such as location, noise level, screen size or lighting;
•    tasks that will be before the visitor – what will they want to know, what will they want to do, what will they expect;
•    motivation, mindset, needs and drives; is there an underlying need or problem that needs to be addressed? What kind of person are they - analytical or visual? Do they look for information by meandering or do they want to get straight to it?  How should information be organized – chronologically, categorically, alphabetically, ratings?

Next, create a scenario for your persona. This is the story.  It is the situation the persona is encountering. Scenarios clarify the tasks the persona needs to complete and the relationship among those tasks; it uncovers motivations and insight into whether the persona will be persuaded to complete the tasks required within the story to achieve the expected result.  Focus on what your persona will want to do, why and what the outcome should be. A good rule of thumb is to create 1-5 scenarios per persona.

From storytelling to reality …

From the scenario, a task analysis is performed in which a list of the required tasks and needed motivations are compiled. From this list, site elements, such as navigation, calls to action and content, can be derived. Remember, the goal is to create a site where your targeted visitor not only can do the task but wants to do the task. For a conversion to take place, a visitor must make a decision to act.  The task analysis provides the outline of what needs to occur for the visitor to take the action.

Added Benefits of Personas, Scenarios and Task Analysis

Now that you’ve learned who your site visitors are and what motivates them, the process of adding usability to your site is not so daunting. Unless your site is being redesigned, implement the changes slowly and test their effects. Testing with your actual site visitors or targeted users provides insight into the positive and negative effects of the planned changes and provides immediate feedback.  Tests can include a paper prototype of the site or a working version of the site.  A complimentary or alternative method of A/B testing is Google’s free tool, Website Optimizer. It’s easy to use and can provide solid data.

By understanding who your visitors are and what motivates them, keyword phrases become more apparent, as does the content creation needs, navigation paths, internal links and calls to action. Trust factors like privacy policies, FAQs and about us pages become obvious.

Usability can help in organic SEO as well as in creating an online and offline marketing strategy. When optimizing a site, the titles, descriptions, headings, calls to actions, keyword phrases and content, are more focused. Understanding your visitors can help you create linking strategies, write articles that will persuade or meet a need, refine PPC ad and landing page copy, etc.

By knowing your visitors, your site can have elements that match their needs and expectations. Your chances for conversions have increased. Embrace usability and the customer experience. You will discover that your web site benefits as will all of your related marketing efforts.