Elegant Organisation

Your product images and descriptions are really important on your ecommerce site, so it’s essential that they are compelling and include plenty of calls to action.

Why not make sure that your potential customer know as much about the product as possible?

It’s a good idea to put the product or the price in context.  By showing the product being used, or explaining the features and benefits,  you’re more able to convince cisitors to become customers.

Remember, nobody wants to buy a drill, they want to make a hole.  You don’t  want a £200,00 debt for 25 years,  you want a  nice house for you and your family.

What about showing your patio furniture in a garden on a summer’s day, rather than just on a white background? What about saying that your life or car insurance costs less than a cup of coffee a day, orare less than the cost of a daily newspaper.

Instead of showing a TV, and mentioning it’s technical specification, why not explain that pictures are clearer, meaning programmes are more entertaining, and that wildlife and animal are almost lifelike?

Instead of showing a pair of jeans or shoes, why not show complete outfits, or somebody wearing the clothes, so that potential customers can see what they look like.  It’s also a fantastic opportunity to cross sell products,  and encourage visitors to explore more of your site.

in the same way that some shops will show related products that go together, such as all the camping equipment you’d need , rather than just a tent or a pair of hiking boots, why not see how how you can create environments, or scenes, such as the kitchem, the bedroom, the dining room, the garden, the night out, the wedding, the office  and what ever else will be relevant to you.

As life insurance salespeople might use techniques such as mentioning your family members when explaining policies, why not see how you can use scenes and paly on emotions to make your products more desirable?

If you’re using relying heavily on images on your website, then it’s essential that you use them well so that your visitors can easily see them, and understand their purpose and relevance.

If you’re selling products, then the product image is just as important as the description, specification and price.  You’ll want to make sure that your images are clear, big enough, and relevant.

No matter what sort of site you are, any products that don’t have images, but have an “image coming soon” message instantly reduce the credibility of your website.  Why haven”t you got an image? If you haven’t got an image from the manufacturer, why not create your own image? Surely you can take a photograph, and amend it as necessary, at least until you can get an official image.

For each and every site, especially those selling clothes, or jewellery, you’ll need your thumbnail product images to link to much larger images, so that visitors can see what the product looks like, and can then decide whether or not to make a purchase.  If you have a link that says that it goes to a larger image, then why would you use the same small image on a new page?  A larger image should be just that.

Images need to be in focus, and clear.  If there is any text or specific design, such as a slogan on a T shirt, or feature on the product, it’s important that his can be seen.  Why not have a separate image of the slogan,  so that it can be read.  Why not have the ability to zoom in, or rotate products to make them more attractive to your visitors?

However, too many images or  products on a page, will be off putting, and instead of visitors exploring more, they probably won’t explore much at all.

How could you make your images better for your visitors? Why not see which ecommerce sites images you like? Why do you like them? Which sites would you, and wouldn’t you buy, from based on their imagery?

Remember, your website is helping visitors find what they are looking for,  they won’t want to spend time having to look for product details.  They won’t be impressed with your clever carousel, or lightbox method of showing images, if the images on your website are poor quality and don’t show what they want to see.

If you’re in the process of redesigning you website, or adding and removing pages, or revamping your content, it’s essential that you make a note of the existing pages, and redirect them to the new pages, as necessary.

People who have bookmarked you pages, or who link to your content will be greeted with your error page the next time they visit, and will think that there is something wrong with your site.

Using 301 redirects will not only help your visitors find what they are looking for, but will also help the search engines to know where your content has moved to as well.

If you decide to add more content,  or have separate pages or sections, or are adding and removing products from your range, then think your users, and how they will find what they need, if you haven’t used redirects.

In addition, have you got redirects in place if there are common misspellings of your products, or staff names, or other ways in which you can make it easier and quicker for people to find what they want.

Why not take a moment to ensure that all of your redirects are up to date in your .htaccess file?

What other ways can you make redirects more useful?

If  you’vebeen using the web for a while, and dabbled in Online Marketing, or SEO, then you will have heard the term that “Content is King”.

Despite all the web designers making sure that their design is pixel perfect, and the colours are just right, and the developers making their clever databases, and secure payment systems, the content of the website is the main reason that visitors will come to your website.

Whether you’re writing copy for your product descriptions, or telling the world why they should visit your town, or sign up for your newsletter, it’s important to get it all right.

You’ll need to make sure that your language, tone and contents is right for your target audience.  A site for teenagers will have  different lanauge to a corporate site, or a site aimed at the silver surfer.

You’ll want to make sure that you change your tone, and contents from your offline material.  With more calls to action, and perhaps less text, you’ll have the opportunity to entice your visitors to get them to do what you want them to do.

Content is the most important thing about your website.  Visitors don’t care too much about your design, or what your site actually does, they just want to read your contents.

It’s important to regularly check your contents, especially if lots of people upload content to your website.

If you can’t write well, or are struggling to get the contents and tone and right, then why not hire a professional copywriter? You wouldn’t do your own plumbing or car repairs if you weren’t up to the job, so why do your own writing?

As Relly, from the invaluable Boagworld Podcast commented, there is rarely any budget put aside for content when a website project is undertaken.  The budget is for design and development, not content, yet the content is the whole point of the website, and without it, your website is worthless.

Isn’t it time you gave your content more thought?

When was the last time that you checked out your forms?  Really?  By checking that your forms work properly, and that they are easy to use, and provide the information that both your visitors and you want .

Forms are an essential way for your visitors to find the information they want, and for you to to get the information you need too.

Every drop down box, radio button, and check box, as well as free text area is an annoyance for visitors.  Especially on ecommerce sites.  If your visitors are ready to buy, then they want to buy now.  The more questions you ask them, the more barriers you put up, and so the more likely they are to go elsewhere.

Whilst some questions have to be asked, such as size or colour, and delivery and payment details, do you need any more information?

If visitors are signing up for your newsletter, then surely all you need is their name and email address.  If visitors are enquiring about your service, then why not ring them back and find out what you need to know.  People are much more likely to tell you what you want to know over the phone, than by a series of check boxes, or from a drop down list.

Why not consider making your site even easier to use, by allowing purchases to be made using Google Checkout or PayPal? What about using Facebook Connect to register?  Do visitors really need to register at all?  Although it might be a great data capture method, what are you going to do with all the animus and email addresses?

Perhaps you will make the time to look at your forms, and the way you direct visitors to your site, and how easy you make it to find the information or products they want.  Remember, they’re doing you a favour by visiting your site, make it a pleasant experience!

In my previous post I mentioned that I was submitting free press releases.  As these are a good source of traffic and links to a website, they are worthwhile, and can see your comapny news picked up by a wide variety of publications, both online and offline.

However, some of the free press release sites (and I won’t mention names, but you know who you are!) are extremely difficult to navigate.  Even as an experienced user of the Internet, and knowing exactly what I wanted to do,  I still found it hard.

It’s not a good idea to have Adsense, or other adverts right under your navigation, so that it’s not clear which is your navigation, and which are adverts.  If you don’t clarify, it’s likely that visitors to your site will click on the advert, rather than on your website.

it’s also extremely bad form to make your visitors hunt for what they are looking for.  As an example, on these press release sites, the premium paid press releases are heavily promoted on the homepage.  The free press release is often hidden in the navigation block containing the “About Us”, or company details.  Although they are right to encourage visitors to pay for their press releases, they shouldn’t make it hard for those that want to submit a free press release.

Also, be wary of what sort of language you use, and the amount of jargon you use on your site, especially in the navigation.  Your visitors might not be as au fait with your products or industry as  you are, and don’t know exactly what they are looking for.  On a well know UK baby site, the navigation for prams contains several different types , such as “2 in 1″s and “travel systems”, as well as push chairs, buggies and prams.  To the expectant parents, who might not have a clue what they need, this isn’t very helpful.  Why not have a buyers guide, or explain the differences on the prams page?

By making your site hard to navigate, and using jargon, or hiding what people are looking for, you won’t encourage visitors to come back, and they’re likely to tell their friends not to visit either!

Rant over for now!

I’ve been filling in a lot of online forms today, because I was submitting press releases, and the 10 or so press release sites I used were really hard to navigate, hard to use, and altogether not a nice experience., but that’s another story!!

So, here is my thoughts on using forms for submitting data, based on today’s experience.

1. Remember that people don’t like filling in forms, so you need to make them as simple as you can, and as quick to fill in as you can.
2. Why not make the first field in the form active immediately, so that I don’t have to click on it?
3. Why not tell me how many characters I can have in each field if there’s a limit?  Don’t wait until I have filled out the form, and submitted it to tell me.
4. If there is a limit to the number of characters, then why not have a character count? This would be really useful.
5. Remember that a lot of people will be using the tab key to move between fields, rather than the mouse.
6. So, make sure that the tab key moves to the next field, rather than the next link.  I don’t need help, or an explanation of what the field is.  And if i do, I’ll click on the relevant help clink.
7. In addition, if I’m using the tab key to move between cells, I want to work down the cells, especially when entering the address. If your form has cells on the left and right hand side, ensure that they tab down the left hand side of the list, and then the right hand side.
8. If you are a country specific site, then why not have your country as the default country on the list? Why do I have to scroll to find my country? Why can’t you help me out?
9. If your country doesn’t use zip codes, then why does your form ask for them? Use a little common sense, and ask for the relevant postal code.
10. The same goes for phone numbers too.  Make sure that your form is clear about whether the phone number needs to be with or without spaces.
11. Whilst having helpful advice in text fields can be useful, it’s also frustrating, as the existing text needs to be deleted before the actual form text can be entered.  Whilst not the end of the world, it can be annoying. Why not ensure that your field heading is self explanitary?
12. If you have different options for your free and paid services, such as for press releases, then why not hide the fields that are only available for the paid option? This makes filling in the form much easier.
13. Let me know which fields are required, and if I miss one out, then let me know.  Why not take me back to the incorrect field, and highlight it.
14. Remove optional fields,  so that I don’t get confused, or miss out anything important.
15. Don’t give me too much information and instructions.  I don’t want to get overwhelmed and leave.

These are not best practice ideas, just ideas and advice from a  frustrated web user!

I would imagine that I’ll rant about form design again, especially for ecommerce and help forms, but I’ll leave it for now…

In his excellent article Without Usability, You’re Not Doing Advanced SEO, Chris Silver Smith suggests that usability will replace advanced Search Engine Optimisation.  I agree in some respects.

My background is in SEO, but I am increasingly involved in site usability, and think that it is extremely important.

In order for a site to be ranked well by the  search engines, it needs plenty of relevant content, as well as links.  The content can include maps, and images, and by making the site easy to navigate for humans, they are more likely to delve deeper into to the site,  and the search engine spiders  will be able to visit more pages, and index more content.

Usability is the whole gamut of design, development, SEO and common sense.  It should be easy for visitors to find what they are looking for, especially if they have found your website via entering keywords in a search engine.  The content should be relevant and, depending on the sort of site, should have the right sort of tone and calls to action, in order for visitors to do what you want them to do.

Onsite SEO, usually involves ensuring that the H1-6 tags are used well, that there is plenty of content, that the page title is unique and includes keywords, and the meta description has a call to action in it.  As well as being useful for the search engines, they are also useful for visitors too.

How can you use SEO in your usability, and use usability in your SEO?  Whatever you manage to improve, it will make your website easier to use, and so will encourage your visitors to stay longer, and come back again.

Why not see what difference it makes to your website, trafficand conversions?

Search Engines, and visitors rely on links to discover new content and new sites.

It’s essential that your website has well labelled links, so that your visitors can find what they are looking for, and the search engines can index your content.

Relevant, and useful anchor text (the text in the link) will help your visitors to know where the link will take them.  Instead of  “Click Here”,  you should be telling your visitors what they are clicking on.  If some of your images are links, remember to put text link under these , so that those who are using a screen reader can see where the link takes them.

How can you make sure that your navigationand internal links will help visitors to find what they are looking for? As your navigation and link s improve, you’re sure to see an increase in traffic as more pages are indexed by the search engines, and more people can find your content.

If you have an ecommerce site, then you’ll want to make the most of it, and encourage visitors to become customers, and customers to buy more.

As well as making it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for, via your website navigation and search facility, you’ll also want to make sure that you cross sell and upsell

Cross selling promotes the additional extras that go with a product, such as batteries, or a carry case, or peripherals. If you were selling TVs, you might want to cross sell cables, DVD players, stands, home cinema systems, and games consoles.

Upselling involves promoting slightly higher priced, but "better" products. So going back to the TVs, you might promote a TV with a slighter larger screen, for another £50, or for £100, you could get a far better TV with a much better picture. Upselling will make visitors wonder if they are getting the best value for money, and encourage them to spend more with you.

Done well, using plenty of calls to action, and persuasive text, cross selling and upselling can prove to be very successful, and increase your revenue.

How can you introduce, or improve your cross selling and upselling? How can you promote your products with the biggest margins, or that customers will need? How could you help customers get the products they really want?