Optimizing Your Web Site

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Optimizing Your Web Site

• Christy West
• SkyGirl Media
• Christy_at_SkyGirlMedia.com

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Seminar Poll
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What does web site optimization mean to you?

• Search engine optimization
• Better content
• Better design
• Better page load times
• Better marketing

• Better sales
• Better advertising
• New and improved site features
• Better usability
• ?

Do you notice a trend here?
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OptimizingJust a Buzzword for Making it Better

• Not a mystical formula or special process
• Every site is different
• When you leverage your content and site interface
  to best serve your audience's needs and wants
  while fulfilling or exceeding your business
  goals, your site is optimized.

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Its Not a One-Time Thing

• The biggest point I want to make today is that
  optimizing a web site is not a one-time
  procedure. Your audience is constantly evolving,
  as are your content and your business goals.
• Your web site needs to evolve along with them,
  and it will only do that if your staff regularly
  focuses on your site and how to make it better.

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1 Optimization Resource

• YOU!
• The most important resource in website
  optimization is the time and brainpower you put
  towards identifying what your site needs and
  planning how you can best provide it.

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1 Plan Your Attack

• Colors
• Layout
• Search options
• Content presentation
• Branding

• Ad presentation/serving
• Blogs
• RSS feeds
• Community features like message boards or article
  comments, etc.

You have to have a plan to make the best use of
your time, your programmers'/designers' time, and
create the best product for your audience.
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How do you plan to make your site better?

• Consider your sites mission
• Audience needs and wants
• Content
• Business goals
• Usability

All five of these aspects must work together to
yield a website that supports the goals of your
audience and your business.
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Site Mission

• What is the overall purpose of your site?
• Publication mission
• Internal mission

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Audience Needs and Wants

• Who are your online readers?
• How many of them subscribe to your print
  publication, if you have one?
• What's their age, sex, number of horses, number
  of hours spent online per week, number of hours
  spent on your site per week?
• Are they the primary caregivers for their horses?
  
• How many hours a week do they ride or drive?
• Do they show?
• Do they give lessons?

All of these bits of information and any others
specific to your publication/audience help you
figure out how to give your audience more of what
they want and less of what they don't.
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Focus on Content

• What is it about your content that is unique?
• Do you update it more often than most people?
• Serve a particular niche?
• Feature well-known columnists that have a gift
  for striking a chord with your readers?
• Whatever it is that you do best is what you need
  to highlight on your website.

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Business Goals

• Financial targets
• Audience size targets
• Number of subscriptions generated targets
• Revenue targets
• Anything your organization deems important enough
  to require a target and a timeline.

If you want a successful site, you need goals
that push you to improveto provide more
information, better information, or good
information in better waysso that you gain a
bigger audience, more revenue, or whatever your
goal is.
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Usability

• The ability of site visitors to use the site
  without error.
• Good usability Important tasks (search,
  register, purchase, etc.) done without errors and
  frustration by most people.
• Bad Tasks cant easily be completed. User
  leaves.

How does usability relate to productivity? A
usable website means the user can be very
productive, busily and happily searching,
reading, and buying.
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Consequences of Poor Usability

• "Launching a site that is difficult to use will
  deprive the business of its best customers those
  that are so eager to use your service that they
  will visit the site as soon as they hear about
  it. If these users get a bad experience, they
  will not only be lost to you as customers, they
  will also be lost as potential future advocates
  for the site. In fact, any hopes of viral
  marketing will turn into a bad fever as infected
  users warn others to stay away from the site.
• "Once a user has had a bad experience on a
  website, it is very difficult to convince him or
  her to come back. Resampling is one of the
  hardest sells and will cost your marketing budget
  much more money than the modest cost of getting
  the website right in the first place."--Jakob
  Nielsen, http//www.useit.com/alertbox/20000402.ht
  ml
• Although it's often neglected, usability is just
  as critical to site performance as content,
  audience, and good business goals. If people
  can't find it or use it, it might as well not
  exist.

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Everythings Connected

• None of these things we're discussingmission,
  audience, content, and business goals, and
  usabilityexist independently. They all build on
  each other.
• Planning your site from the ground up with all of
  these factors in mind will generate a product
  that fulfills both your business goals and your
  audience's goals.

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Optimizing for Search Engines

• One study says that 81 of Internet users rely on
  search engines and directories to find the
  information they need.
• Google was the search engine of choice for 55.2
  of U.S. searches in April, according to a recent
  article on Yahoo! Finance. Its nearest neighbor
  was Yahoo Inc. with 21.9 of the market share.
• More than 90 of users never go past the first
  page of search engine results.

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Factors Driving Rankings

• Keyword relevancy
• Inbound links
• Domain strength
• User data
• Content quality
• Code to text ratio
• Code quality
• Page information
• Header tags

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Keyword Relevancy

• Article subject Founder in horses
• Keyword research tool http//tools.seobook.com/ge
  neral/keyword/
• Tells the number of searches done in a recent
  30-day period on Yahoo, estimated values for
  Google and MSN along with suggested variations.

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Results
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Laminitis Results
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Domain Strength

• if someone is searching for Western saddles, all
  else being equal between the two sites, a domain
  like www.WesternSaddles.com will rank higher than
  a page on Western saddles on www.christysblog.com.
  
• If you don't already have a domain name suited to
  your content, get one!

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Content Quality, Inbound Links, User Data

• High-quality content
• High usage of your site
• High number of links back
• Higher search engine rankings

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Code To Text Ratio

• Related to keyword density on the page
• Related to overall code used to display the page
• So less code is better

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Cascading Style Sheets

• Generally result in lighter code than standard
  HTML
• The style sheet is cached by the browser, meaning
  that in the page code all one has to do is mark a
  paragraph or other element as part of a named
  style. Then the code that controls its display
  has to be downloaded only once, not once per
  paragraph, and the page itself is much lighter
  without all the display markup.
• Consistency and ease of global changes are
  additional benefits

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Example
http//www.hotdesign.com/seybold/16nasty.html
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Optimize Images Too

• File name
• Alt tag
• Title tag
• Longdesc tag
• Dont ltimg srcfigure1.jpggt
• Do ltimg srchoof-trimming.jpg altFarrier
  trimming hoof titleFarrier trimming hoof
  longdeschttp//www.thehorse.com/FarrierTrimmingHo
  ofgt

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Code Quality

• Code that does not adhere to W3C (World Wide Web
  Consortium) standards can cause spiders to leave
  your page, never finding that valuable content.
• http//validator.w3.org/
• Download time analyzer http//www.websiteoptimiza
  tion.com/services/analyze/

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Page Information

• A web page can specify its title, description,
  and keywords through META tags that do not
  display to the user (except for the title
  appearing in the title bar at the top of the
  window).
• These tags should be optimized for search engines
  as well.
• Title

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Page Information META Description

• Not all engines use this, but it's valuable for
  those who do.
• Brief description that characterizes your page
  and highlights your special focus.
• If you don't have one, or if the engine prefers
  to show terms in context, the description will
  usually be pulled from the text nearest the most
  "important" uses of the keyword.
• Example

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Page Information META keywords

• Not used by all engines, but help for some as
  long as the words also appear in your text
• Code example ltmeta name"keywords"
  content"jambalaya recipes rice"gt
• Good for displaying variations on search terms
  such as "horse health, horse health care, health
  information for horses," etc.

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Header Tags

• Search engines place more weight on text inside
  header tagging.
• Used to denote headlines and subheads

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Optimizing Usability

• Usability is a quality attribute that assesses
  how easy user interfaces are to use.
• Learnability How easy is it for users to
  accomplish basic tasks the first time they
  encounter the design?
• Efficiency Once users have learned the design,
  how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability When users return to the design
  after a period of not using it, how easily can
  they reestablish proficiency?
• Errors How many errors do users make, how severe
  are these errors, and how easily can they recover
  from the errors?
• Satisfaction How pleasant is it to use the
  design?

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There are plenty of other websites available
leaving is the first line of defense when users
encounter a difficulty.
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Here come your competitors
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A Little Experiment

• Grab the least Web-savvy person you know who is
  not familiar with your site and park them in
  front of your computer.
• Pull up your Web site and ask them to do some of
  the basic tasks someone should be able to do on
  your site.
• Do not help, encourage, discourage, or direct
  them in any way. Sit behind them and tie your
  hands down if you have to.

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Its OK, Theyll Learn

• While some might argue that people will get used
  to a design and learn to use it more effectively,
  Nielsen offers this observation
• "Usability can improve error avoidance
  substantially more than skilled experienced
  user performance."

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KISS

• The overall message of most usability
  recommendations? Keep it simple, stupid. Give
  people what they want, when they want it, looking
  like they expect it to look, without cluttering
  them up with things they don't want.

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Think like a user

• Avoid internal jargon and organization
• The user hasnt always done it that way
• Example Posting of content by issue because once
  upon a time, the point was to feature your
  magazine's content on the web and sell magazines.
  Now not too many people care about content by
  issue, they want information on a topic and the
  issue date is largely irrelevant clutter.

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But remember you arent one

• You know too much.
• One of usability's most hard-earned lessons is
  that "you are not the user." If you work on a
  development project, you're atypical by
  definition. Design to optimize the user
  experience for outsiders, not insiders.--Nielsen
  
• How? Back to user testing. Find out what your
  users really want from your site.

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Keys to Usability

• Communicating clearly so that users understand
  you. Users allocate minimal time to initial
  website visits, so you must quickly convince them
  that the site's worthwhile.
• Providing information users want. Users must be
  able to easily determine whether your services
  meet their needs and why they should do business
  with you.
• Offering simple, consistent page design, clear
  navigation, and an information architecture that
  puts things where users expect to find them.

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Common Violations

• Bad search (too literal)

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Common Violations

• PDF files for online reading
• Not changing the color of visited links
• Non-scannable text
• Fixed font size
• Poor contrast between text and background
• Page titles with low search engine visibility
• Things that look like ads

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Common Violations

• Violating design conventions
• Nielsen Consistency is one of the most powerful
  usability principles when things always behave
  the same, users don't have to worry about what
  will happen. Instead, they know what will happen
  based on earlier experience.
• The more users' expectations prove right, the
  more they will feel in control of the system and
  the more they will like it. And the more the
  system breaks users' expectations, the more they
  will feel insecure.
• Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience states
  that "users spend most of their time on other
  websites." This means that they form their
  expectations for your site based on what's
  commonly done on most other sites. If you
  deviate, your site will be harder to use and
  users will leave.

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Common Violations

• New browser windows
• Not answering users' questions
• Frames
• Gratuitous use of bleeding-edge technology

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And More Common Violations

• Continuous animations
• Complex URLs
• Orphan pages
• Long scrolling pages
• Lack of navigation support
• Nonstandard link colors
• Outdated information
• Last but not least Long download times.

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So What DO You Do?

• Nielsen "Usability plays a role in each stage of
  the design process. Main steps
• Before starting the new design, test the old
  design to identify the good parts that you should
  keep or emphasize, and the bad parts that give
  users trouble.
• Unless you're working on an intranet, test your
  competitors' designs to get cheap data on a range
  of alternative interfaces that have similar
  features to your own. (If you work on an
  intranet, read the intranet design annuals to
  learn from other designs.)
• Conduct a field study to see how users behave in
  their natural habitat.
• Make paper prototypes of one or more new design
  ideas and test them. The less time you invest in
  these design ideas the better, because you'll
  need to change them all based on the test
  results.

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What To Do, Continued

• Refine the design ideas that test best through
  multiple iterations, gradually moving from
  low-fidelity prototyping to high-fidelity
  representations that run on the computer. Test
  each iteration.
• Inspect the design relative to established
  usability guidelines, whether from your own
  earlier studies or published research.
• Once you decide on and implement the final
  design, test it again. Subtle usability problems
  always creep in during implementation.

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Dont Make This Mistake

• Don't defer user testing until you have a fully
  implemented design. If you do, it will be
  impossible to fix the vast majority of the
  critical usability problems that the test
  uncovers.
• The only way to a high-quality user experience is
  to start user testing early in the design process
  and to keep testing every step of the way.

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More Usability Topics

• Reading on the Web http//www.useit.com/alertbox/
  9710a.html
• Writing for the Web http//www.useit.com/papers/w
  ebwriting/

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Enhancing the User Experience

• First make sure whatever you're considering
  really will enhance the user's experience with
  your site, and isn't just giving you something
  new and fun to work on.
• Not all technologies fit all sites and audiences.

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A Few Enhancements

• RSS
• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Social bookmarking
• Folksonomy
• Chat rooms

• User-generated content
• Message boards
• Article/blog comments
• Vote on content value
• Product reviews
• Wikis

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What Will You Have Done?

• Make sure the new feature really fits your site.
• Then the skys the limit!

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User-Generated Content Article/Blog Comments
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AJAX
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Developing new features

• Might have to outsource to get those skills
• Test, test, and test again!

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Metrics

• What people actually do online is often different
  than what they say they do, or would do if given
  the chance. Metrics can tell you what people are
  really doing and how they're doing it.
• Key Find the person in your organization who
  loves pulling and analyzing this stuff, because
  most people don't.

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A Few Aspects of Metrics

• What can be measured
• What you should measure
• How to measure it
• How to use that information to make your site
  better

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What Can Be Measured

• Pretty much anything a user clicks or types on
  your site can be logged and measured, along with
  the time in between. Let's start with some of the
  basics, such as
• Page views/impressions
• Number of unique visitors
• Number of repeat visitors
• Average session length
• Does anyone track hits anymore?

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What Can Be Measured Editorially

• Popular pages
• Click paths
• Entry pages
• Exit pages
• Bounce rate
• Search terms
• Error codes

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What Can Be Measured Engines

• Top referrers
• Top search engines
• Search terms
• Amount of traffic generated by search engines ()
• Paid search advertising performance

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What Can Be Measured User Variables

• Browser and version
• Operating system and version
• Screen resolution
• Screen colors
• Javascript enabled/version
• Location---sort of. Often ties through primary
  provider, so not always as useful as you might
  like.

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What Can Be Measured Ads

• Ad impressions
• Clickthroughs
• Clickthrough rates

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What Can Be Measured Marketing/Sales

• Number of sales
• Sale revenues
• Conversion rate
• Paid search advertising

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What You Should Measure

• What's important to your business? That's what
  you should measure. The overall statistics are
  important to maintain an broad picture of things,
  but the details will vary depending on your
  site's content and goals.

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How to Measure It

• Many, many choices
• Just starting out? Try Google Analytics, its
  free

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How to Use That Information to Make Your Site
Better

• Identify things you're doing well so you can
  capitalize on them
• Identify problem areas that need fixing
• Identify trends that tell you your audience's
  needs are changing

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Examples

• High traffic in a topic area might stimulate you
  to do a special newsletter on that topic.
• High traffic in a particular general message
  board might suggest splitting that topic area
  into subtopics.
• High bounce rate on homepage might cause you to
  trim down and focus your message so that it gets
  across more quickly and clearly, hopefully
  resulting in lower bounce rate.
• High number of views of a new feature (i.e., a
  blog) leads you to develop more features along
  that line.
• Low percentage of traffic from search engines
  might lead you to work on search engine
  optimization.
• Decreased sales might lead you to promote a more
  appealing deal to your users.
• Consistently low traffic at a certain time of day
  might lead you to roll out any site changes at
  that timeless server load and fewer users
  possibly being inconvenienced during the
  switchover.

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Usability example QuickFind

• Initial location high in nav links
• People were using a lot this is good, right?
• Not necessarily
• It was also generating a lot of errors. Why? It
  was an empty blankpeople thought it was a search
  box and typed words into it. Since it was only
  designed to accept numbers, that didnt work so
  well.

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Why It Didnt Work/Results

• We violated consistent design principles rulewe
  had given them something that looked like a
  keyword search box but didn't work like one.
  Here's a snapshot of what we were seeing
• In 10 days of traffic 693 uses of this form,
  30-40 errors/day 48-63 error rate. Ouch.
• We moved it down out of the first screen.
• Results (6 days of traffic) 141 hits, 10 errors
  total (max, estimated) 7.1 error rate. Much
  better!

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Wrapping Up

• A lot goes into optimizing a web site, but much
  of it is the same resource that goes into
  optimizing your magazineusing your goals,
  content, and knowledge of your audience to plan
  out and maintain a quality product.
• There are additional considerations brought on by
  the technology and interactivity, but don't be
  daunted! Those are just opportunity for
  innovation. And improving your website is one of
  the best possible things you can do to improve
  your brand.

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A few additional resources

• Search engine optimization www.seomoz.org
• Usability www.useit.com
• A List Apart For People Who Make Websites
  http//www.alistapart.com

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Any questions?
Any questions?