Blue Tent Marketing

This week, six of us attended the OMS ( Online Marketing Summit) in Denver, Colorado. We packed up the Honda and set forth in hopes of getting a fix on the ever-elusive “best practices” currently espoused by the Internet Marketing illuminati. This year’s summit had speakers covering all topics regarding internet marketing strategies and subjects. A few highlights:

1. 80% of usability lies in a website’s information architecture – Before redesigning your site or starting from scratch on design, spend some time optimizing your site map. A tip: write out the name of each of your pages and a one sentence description of that page on index cards. Then have three people (one from outside your business) organize the cards in the manner most intuitive for them. Furthermore, allow them to suggest other names on the cards if they have something simpler or something that better encompasses the information underneath. Also have them put a star on what they think is the single most important page other than home. Take the feedback from this little card trick and reorganize your information.
2. Make sure you have a strong search tool in the upper right hand corner of your website, assuming it’s deeper than 5-6 pages. Users expect this functionality on every site these days. This tool is especially helpful for return visitors as it gives them the ability to tap in the topic they were viewing previously without needing to navigate to it again. Consider installing Google site search for your website if you need a cheap and effective solution (http://www.google.com/sitesearch/).
3. Facilitate scanning on your site. Users are scanning for information, not reading it. So make it easy for them to draw out interesting information on your landing pages by bulleting the information, allowing some white space around it so it pops to the eye. Divide information up into short, and hierarchical chunks. Putting tons and tons of content on a page can be good for SEO, but not really for your users. In order to win at both games, organize the information and then break it up so it is easy to scan.

I thought these three points were some very interesting bits of information especially for those clients who are looking to freshen up or completely start over on their website design. If you feel your design might be outdated, it most likely is. Keep your busiest office, you website looking sharp and take the time to think about it’s usability – not only will it boost conversions, it will help make the shelf life of your site a little longer. Stay tuned for more from OMS.
Robyn
Director of Account Services

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under Internet Marketing, Visitor Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.