You are here: Home / Archives for Tip of the Day

“Don’t Make Me Think” – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Review & Summary Part III

January 26, 2011 By

And for the final part of our book review on Don’t Make Me Think, author Steve Krug addresses a few other concerns you’re likely to encounter when designing your website. He details the ‘common courtesy’ of having a usable website and the concepts of goodwill – ways you can boost goodwill as well as ways it can get destroyed.

He also outlines other issues to like accessibility for people with disabilities and the importance of including elements in your page to help ALL visitors, not just the perfect ones you’ve identified through market research. The final chapter quickly discusses ways to convince your boss of the validity of your recommendations. Some bosses and executives may have a difficult time understanding the virtue of good web usability. Krug gives some great examples for you to consider.

If you haven’t seen them yet, read parts I and II of our book review to fully understand the intricacies of web usability.

Section IV – Larger Concerns and Outside Influences

Chapter 10: “Usability as common courtesy – Why your Web site should be a mensch”

Besides building clarity into your website, you also need to be considerate of your users as well. Is your site clear? Does it behave badly and erode goodwill among users?

Consider this:

You’re booked on a flight but a pilots’ strike begins two days before you’re scheduled to leave. You go to the airline’s website to find information about the strike. After searching for awhile you give up amid frustration. Undoubtedly, this erodes much goodwill you had toward the airline.

Users in fact, including you, have a reservoir of goodwill. You begin very optimistic and eager to find what you’re looking for. Not

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

everyone’s reservoir is the same…some people have a shorter fuse than others. And this also depends on the situation. Your goodwill will drain away quicker if you’re in a hurry.

Fortunately, goodwill is refillable so if the site makes some mistakes but makes up for it, the user will leave in a good mood and more likely to return.

Here are some things that erode goodwill:

1.       Hiding information people are looking for

2.       Punishing users for not doing things your way

3.       Asking for information you don’t really need

4.       Shucking and jiving users

5.       Putting too much ‘sizzle’ (i.e. Flash intro) in the way

6.       Site looks amateurish

And some things that increase goodwill:

1.       Knowing what your visitors are looking for and making it obvious and easy

2.       Telling your visitors what they want to know

3.       Saving steps

4.       Putting effort into your site

5.       Making it easy to recover from errors

6.       Providing creature comforts like printer-friendly pages

Doing things like this and more to increase goodwill is not only courteous, but good business practice. If people coming to your site have an easy time and enjoy themselves, they’ll be more likely to return and tell their friends.

Chapter 11: “Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheet, and you”

Unless you decide all of your users are perfect in every way, you’re going to need to think about accessibility. Adding features into your site for disabled persons is not only good business, it’s the law.

Specifically, the law is what’s known as Section 508 of the 1988 Amendments to the Rehabilitation Act, which specifies information technology accessibility standards for companies wanting to do business with the U.S. Government.

When discussing accessibility, designers and developers naturally get a little anxious since it potentially means more work for them. Making a site accessible is definitely harder than it should be, but well worth it from both a legal and business standpoint.

To understand how to make your site accessible, there are several articles and books you can read like Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark and Constructing Accessible Websites by Jim Thatcher and others.

Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is one thing you can do to make an accessible website. In the beginning of the Internet, everything was text. Designers and developers didn’t have much control over layout so they began using tables.

CSS sheets give you much more control over formatting, consistency among browsers and other benefits. CSS sheets also allow you to make specific changes in your site’s HTML code to make it more accessible.

Chapter 12: “Help! My boss wants me to_______”

There will be times your boss will want you to do things that are not good from a usability standpoint.

Maybe they’ll want the site to ask users for more personal information than you need. Or maybe they want more ‘pizazz’ to the site – things like splash pages, animation and music.

Steve provides some great examples of letter he’s written to CEOs and other executives warning them about the dangers of doing these things and others.

Well that brings us to the conclusion of Don’t Make Me Think. It’s a very interesting read and easy too – if you’ve got about 4-6 spare hours (…whew, who does?), you can easily read it in one sitting. If not, put it down and easily pick up right where you left off.

To conclude, all of the tips or ‘rules’ outlined here and detailed more in the book are not iron clad. There are certain situations – or interfaces – where doing something contrary to what’s in the book or on here is okay. If your site for instance is designed to make people think, puzzle or challenge them, then by all means do what you got to do.

You can buy Don’t Make Me Think on Amazon for a great price. I certainly recommend it if you want to learn more about a core issue

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

to being successful online.

Let us know if you’ve picked up a copy and your thoughts…we’ll provide further updates into the year.

Until next time…

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day, Usability Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

“Don’t Make Me Think” – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Review & Summary Part I

January 14, 2011 By

Web usability is a topic I’ve recently begun delving into to learn more about how to make websites more user-friendly.

No matter if it’s a website, an electronic device or a really nice car – if you can’t easily use it, you’re going to get frustrated pretty quickly.

This is especially true of websites…they must be user-friendly for each type of visitor coming to your website. There’s no one-size fits all here!!

With that said the title of a book I recently read on the subject – Don’t Make Me Think – sums up the purpose and spirit of making

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

sure your website is easily usable. If you remember anything from this, remember those 4 important words and you will understand the essence of good web usability, which should answer four important questions in a matter of seconds without the user having to think.

First of all, I’d like to say this easy-to-read book by Steve Krug is a must have for anyone wanting to market a business online. Krug’s strong visuals and eloquent prose help you easily visualize how homepages, sales pages and any other page on your site should be structured.

Besides the good writing and illustrations, the book is an easy read as well. Like Krug says in his introduction, it can easily be read in the time it takes to fly from New York to L.A.

Well enough of the glim and glam, let’s get down to the book and what it’s about. Continue reading for a brief overview of each chapter and the concepts Krug explores. Of course to fully understand web usability, I strongly suggest you get a copy of Don’t Make Me Think the first chance you get.

While this book isn’t very long, a blog post summarizing all of the important points would be. With that in mind, this review will be broken into two parts. Below is the first part of our review for your enjoyment and enlightenment. Check back in a few days for a summary of more of Krug’s insights (…and illustrations too).

Don’t Make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug

Krug’s nearly 200 page book comes jam packed with illustrations and tips for making your website more usable. It’s divided into 4 sections and contains 12 chapters in all. Continue reading for a quick overview of each chapter.

Section I – Guiding Principles

Chapter 1 – Don’t make me think!

Krug’s first law of usability and the one thing you must remember when designing a website. Website visitors should be able to “get it” – what it is and how to use it – without having to think about it. In other words, it needs to be self evident to the point that someone with absolutely no knowledge of what you do can understand it in a matter of seconds.

Making people think when they land on your website saps their mental energy to continue. If your website is hard to navigate, it won’t take very long for someone to get mentally exhausted and leave.

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

Many websites contain things that do make us think. Cute or clever names are typical culprits along with marketing-induced names, company-specific names and unfamiliar technical terms. Links to buttons that aren’t obviously clickable is another source of question.

Rather than providing another checklist to follow, Krug says you should simply understand the basic principle of eliminating question marks. If you do that, you will be well on your way to making a very user-friendly website.

Chapter 2: How we really use the web

If you stop and think about it for a minute, most of us don’t read a webpage word for word. We glance at a page, scan some text and click on the first link that we think has what we’re looking for. Many web designers though create websites under the assumption people will laboriously pore over each page and weigh their options before choosing where to go next…nothing could farther from the truth.

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

Many designers think their sites are works of great literature while the reality is much closer to a “billboard going by at 60 mph.”

Below are 3 facts regarding real world web use:

1.       We don’t read web pages, we scan them

2.       Since most of us are in a hurry, we don’t make optimal choices, we just ‘satisfice’

3.       We don’t figure things out, we muddle

Krug in fact said something very interesting about muddling and that is experts aren’t really experts, they’re simply “…muddling through at a higher level.” Remember that the next time someone poses as an expert.

Chapter 3: Billboard Design 101

Considering web users are generally surfing the web at lightning speeds, web designers and marketers need to view their homepage and other pages as billboards rather than great works of art.

Those of us who have worked on web pages take great pride in our work. While this is admirable, it’s important we view our web pages in the proper context in order for them to be successful.

In Chapter 3, Krug outlines 5 things you can do to make sure users see and understand as much about your site as possible. These include:

1.       Creating a clear visual hierarchy on every page

2.       Taking advantage of conventions (both naming and graphic)

3.       Breaking pages into clearly defined areas

4.       Making it obvious what constitutes a clickable link

5.       Minimizing noise

There’s nothing new about visual hierarchies in fact. Prominence, grouping and nesting are concepts used in newspapers for ages.

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

They’re basically designed to give the reader useful information on the contents of the page before the reader actually reads anything. Conventions are also something newspapers have used for ages. Headlines, sub-headlines, picture captions are some examples of both traditional and online conventions.

#3 is pretty obvious…clearly defined areas are a must. Again, this feeds into the goal of creating a webpage users can figure out in a matter of seconds without any thought.

Making sure links clearly state they’re clickable is also important for maintaining patience and goodwill among your users. And finally, keep noise to a minimum. Visual noise can kill an otherwise good page. Having too many things on a webpage can overwhelm users and cause more of them to just leave.

Chapter 4: Animal, vegetable or mineral? Why users like mindless choices.

Over the years, web designers and usability professionals have spent lots of time debating how many clicks you should expect a user to go through to get what they want without getting too frustrated…many designers in fact have rules specifying the maximum number of clicks to get to any page on a site.

Krug thinks numbers aren’t so important though – while it seems like a useful criteria to him, it’s generally safe to assume most users don’t mind a lot of clicks as long as they’re effortless.

Making choices as mindless as possible is in fact one main task to making a site easy to use. Be sure links and drop-down menus are clear in what they offer.

Chapter 5: Omit needless words – The art of not writing for the web.

Considering the vast majority of web users scan web pages and don’t read them word for word, having needless words in your copy will only frustrate matters from a usability perspective.

In his Elements of Style book, E.B. White details several rules, the 17th of which is the following:

Omit needless words

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

Omitting needless words has several benefits, including:

  • Reducing noise level on a page
  • Making useful content more prominent
  • Making pages shorter, which allows users to see more of the page without having to scroll

Therefore, if you’re going to omit needless words, all the happy talk (i.e. self-congratulatory promotional writing) must go. You can tell when you’re reading some. In the back of your head, you hear voices saying, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…”

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

Another way to omit needless words is to eliminate instructions. No one is going to read them unless they’ve failed several times at just ‘muddling’ through. Eliminate instructions by making everything as self-explanatory as possible.

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

From Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. © 2006 Steve Krug. Used by permission

This brings us to the end of part I of Don’t Make Me Think, which outlined some guiding principles you need to understand in order to build a useful website. Check back with us in a few days to learn how you should design your navigation, homepage and even how you can deal with the inherent controversies that stem from building a website for your company in part II of our review and summary.

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day, Usability Tagged With: , , , , ,

Maximize Conversions by Following these 9 Tips for Writing the Ultimate Landing Page

December 8, 2010 By

In one sense, every page on your site is a landing page. Every page on your site should one, be optimized for the search engines, and two, should move the visitor along in whatever path you’ve set them on (…whether that’s a sale, downloading a newsletter, subscribing, etc.)

But you’ll be amazed at the number of sites that direct someone to the homepage that’s coming to the site from a PPC or some other ad.

Many leads like this are very valuable. However, dumping them off at the front door of your site with little direction leads to them leaving your site. That costly click got you nowhere.

To fully capitalize leads coming into your site, you need to develop good landing pages that clearly identify where the prospect is at and where they should go from there.

Continue reading for 9 tips you can use to ensure you write the ultimate landing page. By landing pages, we mean specific pages arrived at through either an ad or a particular online search.

1. Keep your visitor oriented and engaged by making sure your headline refers directly to the place from which they came or the ad copy that drove the click.

2. Provide a clear call-to-action – Whether you use graphics or hyper-text links, be sure you tell your visitor what they need to do. For a short landing page, use at least 2 separate call-to-actions. For longer pages, use 3-5.

3. Write in second person – Say ‘you’ and ‘your’ rather than saying ‘we.’ Prospective customers could care less about you. They want to know how you can solve their problem.

4. Write pages with a clear, persuasive message and not to showcase your creative abilities or how well you can come up with a catchy phrase.

5. It’s okay to write a long landing page as long as you keep it tight – Your reader will continue reading as long as it’s motivating them to act. Good rule of thumb – use longer copy for sales pages and use shorter ones for subscription pages that don’t require a cash commitment.

6. Be crystal clear in your goals – Keep to the point and make sure your copy maintains a logical progression from start to finish. Don’t add fluff or other ancillary elements…these digressions cause you to lose readers and conversions.

7. Keep most important points at the beginning of paragraphs and bullet points – Since most visitors are skimming through your copy, be sure they can easily get the main points without having to look very hard.

8. Keep paragraphs short but vary their length – Variable paragraph lengths help create visual dissonance and make it easier to read your copy.

9. Write to the screen – Or rather, take some time to figure out where your copy will appear on the page. Think about what will appear above the fold and make sure you place the most critical elements above the fold.

Following these steps and others outlined in this informative article from Copyblogger can help you generate landing pages that generate a high amount of conversions. These are great elements to get you started but you also need to think about critical design elements too (i.e. color, images, layout).

Video, audio and other elements need to be considered when it’s warranted to more deeply engage visitors and boost response. Each of these things merits a closer look and testing when it makes sense.

Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Online Marketing, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , ,

One of the Most Effective Advertising Tactics – For Free!

December 2, 2010 By

Word of mouth advertising is the backbone of any fledgling enterprise. In fact, recommendations from other customers are the most trusted source of advertising according to research from Nielsen Associates.  It very well may be the most powerful way to grow your business – all without any financial outlay whatsoever according to premier web marketer Lisa Banks.

Many companies already know the power of this tactic – perhaps you’ve gotten some new clients through introductions by previous clients or you have a friend who has a friend.

Besides these kinds of introductions though, you can get much more exposure if satisfied customers like these and others discuss their experience publicly. And considering the fact that online reviews help strengthen relationships with existing customers, you’ve got two great reasons to take advantage of online review sites.

To get started, create an account or claim your listing on the following:

Once you’ve got your listings set up on these sites, let your customers know you would love for them to add a review of your business. You can notify them via email, status updates on social networks and when you’re talking to them on the phone.

Offer a special discount or giveaway for the first 20 reviewers to boost interest.

Positive reviews help weary prospects confirm that your business is legitimate and will work hard to satisfy their needs.

Of course, you need to be on the lookout for negative reviews as well.

While we all try to satisfy all of our customers, sometimes it’s just not meant to be. If you see a negative review, contact the customer right away and see what needs to be done to right the wrong. If it can’t be corrected, try and get some more positive reviews to counteract the negative one.

If you think a negative review is just outright false, you can contact the review site and contest the review…they may remove it but it’s really at their discretion.

Keep in mind though that an occasional negative review is a normal thing. Most prospects won’t be bothered by a poor review here and there… most realize it’s just a normal part of doing business.

So there you have it – word of mouth advertising and customer reviews are perhaps one of the best ways to market your business – for free!

Tell us about your experiences and how you’ve used customer reviews to grow your business.

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , ,

Usability and your Website – Make Sure Your Website is Easy to Follow

November 30, 2010 By

In recent weeks, I’ve begun exploring the concepts of usability and how they relate to the web. While we constantly evaluate sites for clients for ease of use among other things, I hadn’t spent much time discussing the concept of usability on our blog.

In short, a site with good usability is able to answer four important questions in a matter of seconds without the user having to think. Three seconds is a good rule of thumb. Those questions are:

  • Where am I?
  • What can I do here?
  • What do they have here?
  • Why should I be here and not somewhere else?

Websites who do not answer these questions immediately do not experience their potential. If someone has to think very hard about how to navigate or even have to expend mental energy trying to figure out what you’re about, they’re most likely going to leave and never return.

Good web usability also makes it easy for a person to find out where they are in a site. Say for instance a visitor is on a product page deep within your site but wants to start over at the beginning. Good usability allows them to do that in one click without having to put much thought into it.

Speaking of the homepage – it’s very different than the rest of the pages on your site – different in that it must address each type of prospective customer that visits your site in a short space.

For homepages, the following guidelines are a good place to start. Remember, guidelines are more like suggestions so these are not meant to be all inclusive. Some may not work for the type of business you’re in or you may find yourself needing to add something else.

Regardless of that, below are some of main elements your site’s homepage needs to have in order to answer the four questions above for any type of user.

Site Identity and Mission – Include a unique tagline and value proposition in the top left area of your page. A person who reads this should be able to figure out what you do just by reading these few words.

Site Hierarchy – Make your site’s hierarchy is clearly visible and navigable. Top or side navigation helps users find out what you offer and channels them to the place they’re looking for.

Search – Some people just like to search rather than click links to get from place to place on a website. Like a search engine, a site search box allows you to type in a keyword phrase and find all documents within the site that include those words.

Teasers, promos, etc. – Encourage users to interact with your site and spread the news to their friends. Teasers, promos and discounts draw readers’ interest and provide them with a tangible benefit to choosing you over someone else.

Timely Content – Farther down the homepage, you should also include snippets of relevant and timely content. Doing so builds your credibility as a trusted source as well as gives users not too familiar with what you offer the opportunity to learn more.

Include Shortcuts – Shortcuts can be used to provide users easy access to popular pages. Perhaps someone already knows what they’re looking for. Give them the opportunity to get it in just one easy click.

Of course, there are many other usability conventions you have to be aware of for all of your pages. Clear, clickable links is one example that comes to mind. Links must be clearly identifiable or else a visitor will search around for a link and then leave your site.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be adding more information about usability and how you can design a website that’s easy to navigate, figure out and requires little to no thinking. We’ll also provide some names and resources for you to learn more.

Until next time!

Filed Under: Site Architecture, Tip of the Day, Usability Tagged With: , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »