Martin Koss – Internet Marketing Strategy Coach

Do you expect everyone from a complete techno-numpty to the super-geek to find their way around your website and to carry out what you think is a relatively simple and obvious action – but is it as straightforward as you actually think it is?

Have you ever watched someone attempt to carry out that so called ‘straightforward’ action on your website? Someone who has never seen your website before or read your blog?

Maybe you should. It’s the best way to find out if your website is (as you think) easy to use, or whether it is frustrating the heck out of your visitors.

If you have never done user testing you could be in for a shock – and, if your website or blog is part of your ‘sales funnel’ – not being as simple to use as you think it is could be (and most likely is) eating into your revenues.

The oldest trick in the (designer’s) book:

One of the biggest mistakes a website design ‘client’ (the business owner) allows to happen is to let the designer provide the hand-held walk through of the new website. What happens here is that you become aware of how the website works and, sure, it all makes sense. Surely anyone would be able to use it – it was easy, right?

But what if your designer had sent you a temporary URL (web address) and left you to get on with it yourself – which is the right way for a designer to present a website (in my opinion) – would you have found it as easy to use? Would you have managed to figure out how to get through to your product catalogue? How to use the registration forms or the shopping system?

Would you have accepted the website or would you have been on the phone to the designer with a lengthy list of questions?

Let’s face it. Anyone can use a website if they get the 50 cent guided tour. But your new visitors won’t have their hands held. They won’t have a manual or a guide. And if a manual is necessary then you have a serious problem.

User Testing is Essential – Use it.

Without genuine ‘new user’ usability testing (often referred to as ‘user experience’ and many other labels that make it all sound somewhat complicated – which it isn’t) you can’t be sure your website is easy to use – easy, ultimately, for your visitors to acheove their objectives – getting in touch with you, finding the information they need or buying your products – whatever the aims are of the website or your users / visitors.

Is Your Website Effective?

Sometimes there’s clutter. Sometimes it’s just disorganised. Very often there’s content for the sake of adding more to make the site look bigger than it is – bigger than it needs to be (we call it fluff and filler). Is all your content relevant. Is it interesting, useful, relevant, unique, helpful?

Ask someone new for some real user feedback…

Can you handle the truth about your website? Many can’t – unfortunately. Any website owner who thinks they know best can be the biggest reason why a website fails to grow in the right way and prevents users from enjoying the experience of using it. They think ‘it works and it is a great website’. The reasons this happens are many. Arrogance. Yes – arrogance stands out as one of the main reasons. But failure to ask for opinions is the most costly reason.

Don’t ask your best friends, your employees or your family. They won’t want to upset you. But ask your employees to ask some of their friends. You see, their friends won’t be afraid of being honest – all they are doing is telling your employee (their friends) what they think of the website. They will be more honest about how they were able, or unable, to achieve the objective.

If Your Website Stinks – It Stinks – Ignoring it won’t make it better.

I know – we hate negative feedback but negative feedback  – be it about our products, our services or our business – but all feedback is helpful. All feedback helps us make our products, services and how we run our business better. Same applies to websites and blogs and any other material we use to ‘present’ ourselves to our target market. Use it.

Ignoring negative feedback – of any kind – is riddled with arrogance and is the worst way to do anything. Ignoring what your customers think of your business is a surefire way of losing business. Ignoring the fact that many people could be sratching their heads while using your complicated online forms or trying to work out how to get to the information they need or making them jump through hoops to get in touch is one sure way of letting your freustrated website users walk (or click) away and tootle off to buy from one of your competitors.

Is it worth the risk? Don’t ignore it. User testing doesn’t have to an expense. You can do user testing in-house as well as asking customers, random people (as mentioned above) without it costing you anything. Which is far better than the tesn of thousands many usability ‘experts’ charge for their analysis and reporting.

Never Assume Your Website is Awesome.

We all want to think our website is the best it can be but there is always room for improvement. Even the best websites in the world are always being tweaked, refined, made easier to use, being made quicker and more ‘user friendly’.

Look at Amazon – one of the best examples of an e-commerce website that is very successful. The reason it is so successful is because, over the years they (Amazon) have constantly employed user testing and are always refining their customer services and the website – making the experience frustration free – stress free and an absolute breeze to use.

Make Your Website As Easy To Use As Possible

Make it easy to use and people will use it. Make it easy to locate information and people will read it. Make it easy to buy and people will buy.

Make it a pain in the witsit and they will reach for the ‘back button’ without ever returning and without ever recommending your website to anyone else.

Oh – here’s another quick point. A badly designed website where users dive back to Google after a few seconds can also have a negative influence on search engine rankings too.

From Ramsey Soudah via Facebook:

You really scare me Martin… Have you got a machine that reads my mind? You say EVERYTHING I think!!…

This is a wonderful piece of information and should be noted by EVERY website owner.

This is the main thing overlooked by most people when creating their site, especially ‘home made’ websites with pink fluffy backgrounds, pages about their family history and ‘Tiddles’ the cat and lots of meaningless data. Let your website ‘do as it says on the tin’ and nothing more.

If you have an ecommerce site but have a lot to say about your goods then get a forum attached to the site and talk until your heart’s content in there…

A great way to get people knowing of your business and interacting. Keep your navigation to a minimum and clean and simple. If I’m buying a product and I have to click on 4 buttons to get there.. I’m not gonna buy!

A majority of visitors spend on average 5 to 20 seconds on a site so ensure they see everything they need to and nothing else within that time.

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