Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [94]
When asking a person to review your website, simply showing them a page and asking their thoughts is not enough of a test to get an accurate assessment of your website. The processes need to be tested. To test a process, give your subject a specific task to accomplish, such as a product to find and purchase or a piece of critical information and then a registration process. Either way, the process of a visitor coming to the website for a specific purpose is the tested procedure, not the opinion of the design and layout.
Be sure to test processes and watch the time and accuracy of the process. When using more than one subject to test the website, the time and accuracy of the process can be compared and evaluated to ensure that one test wasn’t simply over-thought or not valid. By developing a standard process test and metric goals, you will then be able to compare multiple subjects according to a single goal, which allows for additional insights and analysis.
Review and Hands-On
Just as engineers test equipment before it goes into production or new medicines undergo trials, take the time to test your message to ensure that your message connects to your audience in the right way. Ask yourself the following questions:
Do you have content on your site that is simply a block of text? Does it have a clear purpose and benefit? If so, rewrite your content to display clear benefit statements that will connect with your audience’s needs.
Have you verbalized that value in any way; is it clearly communicated? Additionally, how can you help them realize a return on their investment from working with you? Assess the value you provide to your customers, readers, fans, or clients.
Can you create an experience? Anything that has a visual or auditory aspect can be used to develop another means of reaching new customers and enhancing the experiences of your current customers.
Do you have a process that can be explained or used as education in order to show the difference of your company as compared to others? Are there resources within your company that you can use in explaining benefits more clearly or in different ways?
Do you make a living in providing information based on a news cycle or timely events? Do you analyze the market and provide a response? How can you develop content based on these areas to provide both education and a means of entertainment, value, or necessity?
This is an area where developing an accounting of the benefits you provide and a clear message of value will assist you in then developing the best way to communicate that to your audience. Develop the message first so developing the creative communication will be easier.
Chapter 9
Week 6: Connect Your Content to Users and Search Engines
Just as critical as writing good content that educates, informs, and answers questions is how you present that same content. Web users tend not to read long paragraphs. Quickly moving from area to area on a page, the visitor’s eyes take a seemingly random approach to moving through the content. However, you can develop a few tactics with your content to ensure that visitors will see and absorb a lot of your message without much effort. Understanding the factors that play into how people absorb content from a web page and how search engines use those same factors in determining relevance for your content can help you develop effective content that will rank well and increase conversions.
Chapter Contents
Monday: Understand Human Factors in Scanning
Tuesday: Create Concise and Memorable Content
Wednesday: Consider Your Site’s Credibility
Thursday: Create Accurate, Attention-Grabbing Headlines
Friday: Connect Human Factors to Search Factors
Monday: Understand Human Factors in Scanning
Studies by the Nielsen Norman Group explain the online behavior of people as they search for information on a page or in a website. Human interaction with content online is very limited. This led researcher Jakob Nielsen to comment on the