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Have you received feedback that your web site is hard to navigate? Are your users “dropping off” your site after only a couple of minutes or page views? Do you sometimes get lost on your own site?
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If so, take some time to focus on your site’s “usability” - the golden
ticket to an engaging online experience. If your site visitors can find
information quickly and easily, and feel comfortable navigating your site,
you are one (very important) step closer to "converting" them - the industry
term for getting a visitor to take action, whether it is joining,
purchasing, subscribing, downloading, logging in, bookmarking, forwarding or
returning!
What actions can you take to improve your site’s usability?
1. Revisit your site’s goals and objectives.
Why do visitors come to your web site? What information will users be
looking for on your site? What information do you want your visitors to view
on your web site? What do you need to get out of your site?
2. Review your web site’s reports.
Take some time to review your web site’s reports – the statistics on how
your site is performing. This data can reveal a lot about your site’s
usability. For example, you can find out what pages are losing your
visitors. Also, you can see how long visitors are staying on your web site.
These types of signals can indicate your site’s ease of use.
3. Fine-tune your site’s search function.
More than 90% of web users search during every online session. Users are
comfortable finding information this way. Does your web site have a good
search tool? If your web site is complex, can the search tool provide
advanced search options? Fine-tuning this tool can be a valuable addition to
your site’s usability.
4. Check out the competition.
Look at some other web sites in your industry. Can you navigate those sites
easily? Is information readily available and easy to find? How do these
sites compare to your own? Taking some time to evaluate your web site’s ease
of use will put your business one step closer to having an effective
marketing and selling tool in your web site.
About New Target Inc.
New Target, Inc., based in historic Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, is a
dynamic web site design, development and hosting firm characterized by
strong and steady growth since its inception in 1998. Today, New Target is a
full-service provider of quality, custom web solutions including web site
design, application development, e-commerce, fully managed hosting, search
engine positioning, email marketing, and content management and maintenance.
The New Target team is an experienced group of designers, developers,
strategists and customer support professionals, each dedicated to providing
the highest quality service.
Every year since 2001, the Washington Business Journal has ranked the
company within the top fifteen Interactive Web Design Firms of the
metropolitan Washington, D.C. region as well as on its list of the region’s
top Community Investors.
April 2008
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