by samSo consider this: you’ve built up a fantastic SEO strategy, and through months of thorough and consistent link building, you’ve managed to get your site one of the top search results for your relevant keywords. Great news, but if your website isn’t as good as your Internet marketing, then you will fall flat. Research shows that people lose interest in what they’re looking at in under 60 seconds, so making your site as aesthetically pleasing and simple to use as possible is vital to ensuring maximum user experience and time spent on the site. Here are some key things to keep in mind when designing your site to make sure that you maximise your site’s potential:
Keep navigation simple: Nothing throws you off like a messy and confusing navigation bar. Rather than spamming users with 20 nav links at the top of the page, why not group them into seven or eight broader terms that take advantage of drop-down menus?
Search: Your site may be bursting at the seams with great content, but if users cannot find it using your internal search feature, then your content is wasted. Make sure you give simple names to sections, items, and posts to make the content as easily accessible as possible. Instead of using the section header “Social Media Optimisation in the South East UK Region,” why not just make it “SEO London”?
Social media integration: People love social media, and if they like your website, chances are they will want to share how great it is with their friends and followers. So make it easy for them by utilising SMO and having clear, well-placed, and relevant social media links at all the appropriate parts of your site. Some obvious ones include “Follow us on Twitter” and “Like our Facebook page” type buttons either in the page header or a sidebar, in addition to the relevant “Tweet,” “Like,” and now “+1” plugins that should be included with every post or article.
Contact: Dedicate a clear and easily findable part of the site to a “Contact Us” page that includes email, phone, and postal details. Nothing is more frustrating and bad for customer service than purposefully making it difficult for people to make contact with your company.
Page Speed: The loading time of your website is key to its success. People using the Internet often don’t have time to sit around waiting for time-outs and slow page loading. To ensure you’re running at maximum speed, keep a lookout for bad code, dead links, using too much Adobe Flash, poor image optimisation, and that your hosting service package is giving you enough bandwidth for your traffic.
Browser Optimisation: Check your website in as many browsers as you can think of. Faulty page loading on a particular browser could ruin your impression with users.
If you haven’t already noticed the trend, optimal website “usability” is all about simplicity. You want to make things as simple for users as they can physically be. Great web design that will improve the user experience goes hand in hand with SEO and is something that should be a priority for any online marketing company.