As I do this stuff I’m usually working side by side with a marketing manager/director/etc in order to make decisions about SEO strategies, and how to best plan for the future. Content can be a messy business at times, particularly if there are more than a couple of people producing it for a site… anarchy often rules in the shape of strange formating and styling and irregular usage of language.

So I find it helps to give people some guidelines to keep them on the straight and narrow. And in doing so, it’s usually best to strip out the blather and get them focused on just the handful of things they have to remember when creating a new web page (so that they can continue to build on a good SEO foundation without our help!)

So, here goes…. notes from my content optimisation scrap book:

Technical Page Content Optimization Tips

Here at C&M, we always use a CMS for our client sites. We choose these apps carefully, and always ensure that they let us do some essential SEO-related things from a technical and functional page perspective… Because, for good SEO, there are a bunch of things you really have to do at a technical page level:

• Edit each of your page titles independently. Your page title is the thing that will be printed at the top of a browser window (in the centre of the grey horizontal bar, next to your minimise/maximise buttons). You should try and make this title brief – around 70 characters or so, relevant to the page and peppered with a few important keywords or phrases. This is because, like us humans, crawlers tend to use ‘titles’ as a good indication of what the page is about. (NB: don’t go crazy on the keywords! The page title MUST be readable and easy on the eye to humankind as well!)

• Edit each page’s metadata descriptions. This is the stuff that Google uses to describe you when it displays its results (ie, it gets used as the blurb that sits underneath the page title link in Google’s listing for you). As such, this field should describe the page, include a few keywords, and also a call to action like ‘read more’, or ‘find out more’ or ‘get your free offer here…’ etc. (Think about it – this globbet of content is really, really important – this is your ’sales pitch’ on a Google results page…. so a call to action is a good thing to draw people into the click.) This text should be around 160 characters or less. Anything more will get cut off at the knees.

• Edit each page’s metadata keywords/tags. Whilst this used to be important, it’s not any more…. but you ought to do it as a matter of good practice. Here you should list all your relevant key phrases, separated by a comma. This could be a big list, or it could be small…. whatever you think appropriate. You should note however, that this metadata field isn’t really used by search engines as a measure of importance or relevancy any more. It does, however, give them a clue about who you are and what you’re about.

• Use keywords in your navigation schemes wherever possible. Also use them (sensibly) in important on-page functional items like buttons, pull quotes, maps, and other such eye candy.

On-Page Content Optimization Tips

So much for the functional and technical stuff. What about the writing? Here’s my ultra-condensed guide to producing good, SEO-friendly page content….

• Make your content chunky – use header tags to split it into bite-sized paragraphs that are easy for crawlers and humans alike to read and understand. (ie, header, para, space; header, para, space, etc.)

• Use keywords in them there headers wherever possible, and wherever it adds value to the process of scanning or skimming the page.

• Create as many internal links in the page as possible, whilst still retaining a (human) reader’s focus. Use keywords in the descriptive link anchor text (if you’re using a half decent CMS, then you ought to get prompted for this). This anchor text is basically a descriptive label. It tells a crawler what your link is about. Hence, if you’re in the business of CRM systems, then your internal link from your home page to your products page ought to include an anchor text that goes something like this: ‘XYZ Corp’s CRM Software helps mere mortals sell ice to eskimos.’ In other words, use a bunch of sensible internal links to help a crawler find its way around your site and learn about what you do in the process.

• Create as many external links as possible. Use the same approach to anchor text as described above. Whilst internal links are important to help a crawler scoot around your site, external links will help them understand what kind of other web sites you associate yourself with. So, if you’re in the business of selling small handheld computing devices, make sure you link out to popular media sites that cover this topic and also other vendor sites that compliment you (and even compete with you). The more popular these sites the better – your goal is the bask in their sunlight.

• If you’re blogging, or using a CMS that uses blog-style principles (and of your front end design houses them) then use categories and tags for your posts/pages wherever possible, and try to infuse some keywords in there whenever you can. As per the points above, these navigational elements help crawlers to understand how to navigate your site and understand who you are in equal measure…. just like they help us humans.

• Put your most important content at the top of the page. By important I mean the stuff that’s full of useful keywords, headings, and links. Save the waffle for later in the page. (Like us, crawlers get bored easily.)

• Think of your page as a hierarchy of content. In fact, think like a robot in a hurry. Big, important words go at the top in big important heading styles. Weave linkage into this important stuff wherever you can, and try to ensure that this linkage reinforces the big keywords in its anchor text. In other words, keywords get kind of scored in order of descending importance, depending on where they feature in your content: from page titles down through primary navigation, headers, body text links, bold text and boring old plain text.

All You Really Need to Remember About Content Optimization….

In sum, all of the above illustrates that crawlers basically read the way that we humans do – they scan the page and pick out key elements to get a sense of meaning. As such, good SEO content is good to read…. and to write be able to write it is to have a good level of empathy with readers and crawlers alike.

Let’s face it, effective search engine optimisation (SEO) counts for a lot. Just about every purchase involves a Google search at some point, oftentimes at the very beginning.

If you’re website doesn’t come out high in the Google rankings, it’s time to get to work. You can hire expensive consultants, spend a lot with the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) agencies… or you could read this paper and do it yourself.

It will give you a simple set of non-technical guidelines for improving your web site’s performance in all major search engines. Regardless of your level of familiarity with the subject, it will arm you with new thinking on how to tackle the your SEO challenges more cost-effectively.

In short, this paper will help you to ‘SEO like a Pro’ – without major investments in external consultancy services… because SEO is not a black art. It’s simple. There, we’ve said it. Now we’ll show you how to do it.

Framing SEO: What it is and How to Approach it

For the sake of this paper, we’ll refer to Google as our target search engine. Google enjoys an overwhelming market share as the most popular search engine, and the principles that drive it are largely employed by other search engines – eg, Yahoo, MSN, etc. We’ll work to the premise that what’s good for Google is good for the rest.

We also need to make a distinction between ‘natural’ search and ‘paid for’ search. Natural search results are those returned by Google in the main (white) content area of your browser. ‘Paid for’ search results are those returned in the highlighted content cell at the top of the page and the sidebar to the right. They’re referred to as ‘Sponsored Links’ by Google and are generated, as you’d expect, on a paid for basis – ie, the more money I pay Google, the higher my ‘Sponsored Link’ will appear in a listing.

This paper is all about enhancing your natural search performance. Obviously, this is the more strategically important of the two as these results are perceived by users to be ‘unbiased.’

Why Search Matters

Before we describe the core principles of SEO, it’s worth considering why it should be so important to us.

Regardless of what type of business you’re in, your web site is now your primary point of contact with customers old and new — and the majority of these interactions will be mediated by a search engine, because ‘search’ is how we happen to navigate the web.

Your goals ought to be to exploit the way Google is used to:

• Drive relevant and qualified traffic to your web site; and….

• Learn more about how people perceive your products and services via their search behaviour

Note: the primary emphasis here is on understanding people, not technology. You first need to grasp how people are using Google – the technology stuff comes later, and relates to how you’re able to align your web site with these usage patterns. In short, we’re talking about understanding the language that people use to search for you, and the psychology behind this.

As such, SEO is first and foremost a marketing activity, not a technical activity. It works on the basis of helping search engines find you via the provision of superior web site content and adherence to solid web principles. Over time, this practice should also help you to better understand how and what you’re selling, as your SEO tactics will need to be guided by the language and behaviour of the people who are searching for you.

Everything else is of secondary importance when it comes to enhancing your Google rankings. Importantly, this means that ugly web sites may perform better than good looking sites. From a design perspective, your challenge is to ensure that the look and feel of your site is compelling enough to retain interest, whilst at the same time adhering to the implementation practices that we’ll describe below.

Another important point to note is that SEO for SEO’s sake is a bad idea. Your goal should be to attract qualified users to your site, not just any old rabble. This is because the flip-side of increasing traffic is that it carries specific costs – such as rising bandwidth and the amount of resources that you apply to the effort in the first place.

For example, a mobile network infrastructure company that Velocity works with needs to attract prospects that are interested in their specific technology – people who are interested in ‘femtocells’ as opposed to ‘mobile phones.’ If we were to optimise the site on the latter search term, we may well increase overall site traffic, but we would be unlikely to increase the company’s revenues.

So, to ensure that your SEO work is cost-effective, your primary aim is ‘conversion.’ You’re really only interested in generating the traffic that generates a sales lead, downloads a white paper, signs up for an event or registers some other form of interest in you.

For this reason, your SEO efforts ought to be focused on the web pages that ask people to register, buy, download and subscribe….as opposed to your homepage. (Directing users to your homepage will result in unnecessary wastage (or drop out) as they will undoubtedly find something else to do other than click through to the pages that really matter…..although, of course, you may also want to encourage general browsing).

In sum, our advice is to treat SEO as follows:

• SEO is a marketing exercise, not a technology exercise, and should be done by marketing people.
• Understanding and practising good SEO is first and foremost about understanding how your users behave when searching, and then applying this logic to how your web site is constructed.
• Your approach to SEO should be governed by conversions – to purchasing, etc. Therefore your home page is NOT your most important web page, your conversion page is.

SEO Principles: the Complex Bit

When someone conducts a search, Google presents them with a series of links based on relevancy to the search term. Obviously, it’s your aim to feature at the top that list so as to incrase the chances of having people click through to your site.

This much is clear. But to promote this likelihood, it’s necessary to understand how Google actually works.

Google uses its ‘PageRank’ algorithm to evaluate and sort its search results. Much like Coca-Cola, the inner workings of this algorithm are a closely guarded secret. However, its general working principles are well documented (see http://www.google.com/technology and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank).

Google describes PageRank as something that “relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.” In practice this means that Google “interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.”

In addition, PageRank also analyses the page that “casts the vote,” and assumes that “votes cast by pages that are themselves ‘important’ weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important.’”

In essence, Google practices a form of web-based karma, whereby it values your page more if it’s well respected – ie, linked to – by other web pages. So, the number one factor that determines your position in a Google search is the number of external web pages that link to you.

Now, if this were to be the sole determining factor, then we could all pack up and go home right now. Your job would simply be to propagate the number of linking pages out there on the web, whilst focusing on gaining links from the more important web sites (ie, from CNET, as opposed to the Kennel Club of Bow).

But Google is smarter than that because it “combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to a search.” What this means is that Google looks at how pages are linking to you and how relevant to the search term your page content is. In other words, there are good ways and not so good ways for pages to link to you, and – critically – the way in which your web pages are composed will have an enormous effect on whether or not Google thinks they are relevant or not.

This, then, is the technical bit. In order to influence Google and encourage it to view your pages as relevant, you need to know how it thinks….and, armed with this knowledge, you also need to tell people how to construct their links. We’ll deal with this shortly.

In the meantime, you should also note that your site must first be discovered, or ‘indexed’, by Google, and that Google does this via the use of software that crawls the web looking for, reacting to, and evaluating links (according to the PageRank algorithm).

This software is called a crawler, a spider or a search bot – but most commonly ‘bot’ for short. When a bot discovers your pages it ‘indexes’ them by storing a copy of them on Google’s servers. In turn, when someone conducts a search, it is these copies of your pages that Google presents to users as a series of links, ranked by relevance to the search term.

OK, so that’s all the science we need to know for now. It’s really not that complex. As mentioned before, the key to better SEO lies primarily in understanding how your users are searching for you, and applying this logic to the way that your site is built. You see it’s all about keywords!

Think Like Your Customers (Key Words Part 1)

The point of ‘keywords’ is to convince Google that you are what you say you are, and that you’re therefore relevant to a user’s search query. And it’s at this point that traditional marketeers tend to run for the hills or hastily organise a focus group…..because the only way to convince Google that you’re relevant is to use the exact same language as your customers and prospects.

Now, it’s worth reflecting for a moment on what this really means. Remember your last marketing summit, where senior management assembled with sharpened pencils and powerpoints to streamline your corporate messages? Well, skip that stuff, because Google doesn’t care for it – in reality, one company’s ‘personal messaging and productivity optimising platform’ is really just an average users ‘email software.’

You get the point…. The skill in identifying key words lies mainly in being brave enough to describe your products and services in the real, everyday language that people actually use.

Here’s a general formula to keep you honest: if the answer is X, then what was the question? Or, if I sell email software, what kind of questions might users be asking in order to discover me? Perhaps something radical like ‘email software for Windows’??!!

Naturally this is heresy for traditional marketing thinkers…..For where’s the differentiation? Where’s the USP? And here’s the rub – successful SEO depends on not being different, but on being the same. Or just samey enough if you practice it well enough. Because however unique you may wish to treat each individual customer, your customers don’t really want to treat you in a unique way. That’s just asking them to work too hard – to remember a different message or word for every company under the sun.

In cognitive terms, we merge concepts into groups and create labels for them – and that’s good enough. So, email is email and nothing more.

There are exceptions to this rule of course. If you are Pepsi or Budweiser then you have the marketing budget to bend minds and make people think just like you want them to. But, for the rest of us, we have to move with the crowd and identify ourselves in ways that are already part of your target audience’s psyche.

The trick is to find a sweet spot and go for it.

But where to start? Well, focus groups may be an idea, but a more cost-effective approach is to investigate your search logs to see how people have arrived at your site (ie, see which search terms they’ve been using historically). Or there are a number of freely available tools that can show you the popularity of specific search terms and associated data such as the number of pages on the web that contain those words.

Here’s another crude equation that can help (we use it here at Velocity): first of all, you need to establish whether or not your keyword is relevant by understanding how many search terms are conducted on it per month (let’s call this number ‘A’); then you need to get a sense of who you’re competing against, or the number of pages already out there that use that same phrase or word (B).

So, in order to establish how hard it will be to attract interest and rank well in Google, it’s a case of dividing the number of searches (A) by the number of pages that might provide a search result (B)….and perhaps making that number a percentage term to give you a notion of probability.

As mentioned, the tools listed at the end of this paper will get you these numbers, but what you need to discover is a place where your chosen key words can co-exist happily amongst the competition – giving you as much chance as possible to be discovered.

For example, the phrase ‘Open Source Content Management System’ is relatively popular as a UK search term (over 74 searches last month). Coupled with this, the phrase ‘Open Source Content Management System’ has a reasonable presence on the web (59 million related pages are indexed in Google).

As such, using our formula, the chances of a user stumbling across any given ‘Open Source Content Management System’ page is 0.0001%. By comparison, the term ‘open source CMS’ was searched for 130 times in the same period, and yet there are only around 6.5 million pages indexed with that term….meaning that users have a vastly improved 0.002% chance of finding any given ‘open source CMS’ page.

Now, don’t be put off by the decimal points here, because there will always be more web pages than searches (think about it, if there was only one web page per search, then SEO would be so damn easy….and I wouldn’t be writing this paper!). Just treat this as a simple way of establishing what kind of market you’re playing in and how hard it might be to grab peoples’ attention.

The next step, then, is to take this maths and apply a bit of science to it in order to improve your chances of getting spotted – ie, to change that 0.002% number into something more positive (since the previous formula was based on a very even playing field – without taking any ‘optimisation’ practices into account).

To give us this competitive edge we need to understand why, in the eyes of Google, no two pages are created equal and apply some smarts to the way in which we build our web site. In other words, we have to….

Think Like Google (Key Words Part 2)

We’ve already stated that it’s not ‘rocket science,’ so we’ll keep the technical stuff to a minimum. In a nutshell, all you need to do to make Google happy is ensure that your content is King (or Queen!).

As mentioned, Google is not human. It uses bots, not eyes, and so in general it prefers words to pictures (ie, jpegs, Flash animations and video).

It also likes your content to be updated as frequently as possible, to give it an excuse to come visit you more often and ensure that your page ranking is as up to date as it should be. And it likes to be lead very, very clearly through your content, just to make absolute sense of it and to be sure that you are what you say you are (again, there’s no scope for subtleties – you’re communicating with a bot, not a real human being!).

As such, here’s some content rules that Google likes:

• Focus your content efforts on the pages that really matter. Pick a few and stick with them. They should be the ones that you really want people clicking through to as a result of a search. (This is unlikely to be your home page, and more likely to be your key products pages).

• More is more. Update your content as often as possible. Make it dynamic. Suggestions: write a blog; post press releases for anything remotely interesting (don’t save all the news for the annual report!); write opinion pieces and white papers (guess where this one’s going to appear soon!?); and if you have a ‘back catalogue’ of content (manuals, user guides, old articles, etc), then use it….anything to add to the volume of your content and the frequency at which it’s published!

• Where possible, let your site users take the strain of content production: create discussion forums for them; enable them to post reviews and/or comments to your pages; again, anything that adds to the volume of content on your site and its frequency.

• Use those keywords and use them well. Optimise your pages around your key terms in a sensible way, ensuring that humans as well as bots can read them. Common sense should prevail here – and you may find that you get penalised by Google if you ‘stuff’ your pages with too much key word content. As a measure, if your colleague can make sense of your pages then its good for Google. If s/he can’t then it’s not.

With this in mind, here’s some technical guidelines on how to implement your content:

• Try to make your site name and/or your index page a keyword. You can see this by the text that appears at the top of your browser – it will always give you the name of the page that you’re browsing. And if your pages have no name, then shame on you….name them! Ideally, your content management system will enable you to do this as an editable piece of content, and you won’t need to re-code anything at all.

• Help humans and bots to understand you by structuring your composite page elements consistently and elegantly. For example, your style sheets should have a clear delineation between headers, in terms of font and text size, and your images should all carry alternative text tags so that they can be read by machine readers. In addition, your links should also be labelled with descriptive title tags and scroll bar tags (ie, the text that appears in your scroll bar when you hover over or click on a link).

• Exploit your page structure in terms of key word usage. Your page is composed of a hierarchy of elements, as described above – page header, header styles, navigational links, images, bold text, etc. Like a human, when a bot scans a page these are the elements that make a first (and lasting) impression. Use keywords within them – embed key words in your navigational scheme, use keywords as page headers, use them as image ‘alt’ tags, etc…. as a rule, use keywords for as much of your descriptive and/or directional content as possible, and think in hierarchical terms – eg, a keyword as a page title is worth more than one buried in your page content.

• When thinking about how long your pages should be, again, think human. As a guideline, 300 words is a good length to keep each page – this makes them easy for bots and people to read. Any less text and it becomes difficult to optimise your key words without making the page look stuffed. Any more text and your content will become unwieldy – both to read and in terms of its production (of course, the creation of content is an overhead!)

• ….and finally, just because you’re publishing a web site, don’t be limited in terms of distribution. Get your content out there using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, so that users can pick it up in formats other than directly via your site. RSS, for example, allows people to receive your content directly within their RSS ‘reader’ application of choice, without having to visit you. Publishing content in this way also allows other web masters to take it and re-purpose it for their own sites – ie, they can plug your RSS feed into their site, and (re)present it to their users….which should be encouraged since this will create more web pages that link back to you. In fact, ‘online PR’ also works in a similar way, and we’ll discuss this below…

OK, so much for the content production 101’s – all of the above advice is designed to help Google see you more clearly. The next thought is to help Google understand you….

Dress for Google: Some Content Optimization and Site Design Tips

As mentioned above, it’s a shame, but because Google is geeky by nature, it doesn’t always appreciate beautiful web sites. It’s just not wired that way.

Instead, Google prefers to take its time to get to know you via some formal design and implementation principles – and beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder because ugly sites can, and often do, win.

When it comes to site design, your aim is to engage Google’s search bots for as long as possible in order to help them to get familiar with you. Here are some things to avoid:

• Overuse of Flash: because Flash doesn’t subscribe to the ‘say it with text’ rule. Now, don’t get this wrong, because Flash is a wonderful thing – it helps to beautify and communicate – but don’t do all of your talking with it, because search bots can’t get at all those precious key words that Flash files contain within.

• Overuse of image files for key page elements: because, as already explained, Google bots can’t read images as easily as they can read text. Which is disappointing, because often your navigational labels may look better when rendered in a snazzy font with little icons by their sides….but if you go this route, you’re not helping Google to ‘read’ you.

• The use of files over web pages: for example, the use of a pdf download page rather than rendering all of that pdf content as html pages. As before, the trick here is to help Google to read you….and what Google likes to read best is html. So, whilst pdfs may be great for downloading, sharing and printing, why not render that content through a ‘print friendly’ design template? Or why not present both html text and the option to download as a pdf?

• Overuse of password protected zones: because, in the same way that you’re locking humans out, you’re also locking Google out. So, think carefully about the balance of content that you’re putting behind these firewalls. If you’re a magazine or a publisher you should at least put a snippet of your password-protected content on view to Google and the public. This way a sub set of the key words get indexed and become searchable. (Alternatively, you can always talk to Google about how to enable its bots to get behind your firewalls, without compromising your premier content).

In short, when it comes to good, SEO-friendly design, the things to avoid are all the things that are bad for general site accessibility…which means you need to try to present your content in a way that bots and other software programs (eg, text-to-speech apps) can ‘read.’

Further guidance on good accessibility design can be found via the W3C consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WIA) at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/. If you follow this advice then Google will love you!

Having listed the taboos, there are a number of design and implementation best practices to be encouraged. These are the type of things that encourage bots to spend more time indexing you and getting to know you.

For example: Submit your site map to Google, in a Google-accessible (XML-based) way. This way, Google can really get to grips with what you are. For further information, see: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318.

For page navigational elements – such as your main navigation scheme and title links for ‘push boxes’ (eg, a listing for ‘Latest Press Open Source CMS News’) – use key words wherever you can. As mentioned above, Google will view this stuff as carrying more ‘meaning’ than standard page text.

Also, try playing around with your navigation scheme – it may be beneficial to users and bots alike to have some level of repetition going on within the page. See http://www.salesforce.com for a great example of this. At the bottom of the page, they have a very subtle ‘quick link’ navigation scheme that repeats the main scheme…so that users can jump straight to ‘CRM News’ etc. And now look again at these links. Yup, Salesforce.com is a CRM application vendor. These links promote ‘CRM Support, CRM Events, CRM Investor Info’, etc…. all in the name of great SEO.

You should always encourage the use of human-readable urls. Once more, this helps both bots and humans to understand what’s going on on the page (from a human point of view, just think about how we receive links – often in the body of emails – and so http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/archives/category/blog is of much more use than http://www.velocitypartnersco.uk/about/4%$123-7 !!!). An extension of this thought is to build key words into your url schemes. Any decent CMS should enable this.

You should also encourage both users and bots to explore your site in more depth by providing what is known as ‘deep links’ on your key SEO pages. For example, present a listing of your last six blog entries on a key landing page (with headlines that are all optimised). This will prompt search bots and users to go follow them and index/read even more of your site content.

Metadata should always, always, always be optimised around key words and this should always be designed into your page layouts to maximise its effects. For example, if you use custom metadata for page descriptions – such as a press releases synopsis – then you ought to ensure that this is rendered as the intro text on the main press release listing page. This way, bots and users are told what the page is about before they go and click on the page link….and this content can be optimised accordingly.

The use of internal page linking should be encouraged, particularly when using key words as the link description. Again, as an important piece of page content, a link helps Google to understand what you’re really about and get to the pages that really matter.

OK, so that’s some basic design and implementation advice. Let’s stick with the ‘relationship’ metaphor for a moment, because the next element to consider is how to attract attention to yourself… and the best way to do this is to be promiscuous.

The ‘Give to Get’ Rule

Now, getting your name known around town and within Google is not as sordid as you might imagine. As mentioned above, the first principle of SEO is to increase the number of web pages that point to your site (or your optimised page). There are a number of ways to do this:

• Become notorious: spend lots of money on advertising via Pay per Click (PPC – to be covered in a separate, upcoming white paper), banners, offline ads, offline PR, etc…such that you capture the imagination of searchers everywhere through paid-for placement of links and have them search for you – robot-like – in the language that you prescribe.

• Become even more notorious: monumentally succeed or screw-up…such that everyone writes about what you’ve done online and links to your web site. (Actually, this might be the sordid option!

• Become charming: encourage lots of other web masters to link their pages to yours. This is otherwise known as a partner or reciprocal linking plan, and is encouraged highly. It takes time and effort, but using the ‘good web karma’ / Google PageRank logic that we previously mentioned, it can be hugely beneficial – in the sense that working hard to make the BBC link to you will have a positive pay off. (Whilst working less hard to persuade the Kennel Club to link to you is of dubious merit.) Whichever route you take, always try to ensure that the reciprocal links are relevant – ie, the BBC should only be a target if you are a in a related industry. And remember what Google described as its ‘sophisticated text-matching techniques’ because accepting links from nefarious sources on the web (there are plenty on offer) does not tend to pay – for example, setting up or participating in ‘link farms’ or cloning your sites into ‘rings’ that all point back to the same source using the same content. Our advice is don’t do this because Google will find you out. (This is in fact your second sordid option!)

• Become smart: use some freely available tricks and tools to get your name out there as much as possible and have pages linking back to you.

We’ll focus on the final option. Here are some low maintenance and cost-effective ways of punching above your weight and generating links back to your web site:

• Submit your web site to Google, and other major search engines (see the ‘Tools’ section at the end of this paper for links and guidance on how to do this).

• Add your site url to the Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org/add.html). I won’t elaborate here – but it’s important because Google uses it as the basis for some of the ways in which it indexes sites.

• Submit your url to as many free business directories as you can (eg, Yahoo), and as many paid-for directories as you can afford (eg, the Yahoo Shopping directory). For all of these submissions, your aim is to get listed, and hence create another web page with a link back to your optimised page (reminder – this may not always be your home page, but your action or ‘conversion’ page).

• Encourage your team to maintain their own web properties and have these link back to your site. For example, have people refer to your site via their e-cademy profile page, or via LinkedIn, or SoFlow, or FaceBook. Have them build a Squidoo lens (http://www.squidoo.com) that links to you….Encourage them to maintain their own personal blogs and to say complimentary things about your products and services, and have them link to you using appropriately (optimised) language.

• Issue your press releases via free online distribution hubs such as ClickPress, PRLog and others, and fill your press releases full of links to your key pages. (Note: this is an entirely machine automated process, and, unlike normal PR, its goal is not to generate media coverage but to generate new web pages with links.) See the ‘Tools’ section below for a list of online PR distribution services.

Further to this, you should note that there are good links and bad links, as already mentioned. Here’s an example:

• Good: Visit Velocity for their magic <a href=”http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/papers“>tech marketing white papers </a>!

• Bad: Visit Velocity for their magic tech marketing white paper,<a href=”http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/papers“>here</a>!

• You don’t need to understand too much about html to tell the difference, other than the fact that example 1 optimised the link around the phrase ‘ tech marketing white paper,’ whereas example 2 optimised the link around the phrase ‘here.’

Now in terms of these links’ value to our business, example 1 is better because it’s imparting some level of understanding and association within the code, whereas example 2 tells us nothing of who and what Velocity is all about.

A great example of how this plays out can be seen by Googling the phrase ‘click here.’ You’ll notice that the Adobe Acrobat download page comes out on top. This is because people have been placing pdf’s on their page next to a link that tells users to ‘click here’ to get Acrobat Reader if they don’t have it already.

Now, this is a fun example because just about everyone already has the application. But personally, I’d be kicking myself if a partner web site decided to link to my product in the same way (by using ‘click here’ as the descriptive element of the html) because I know that when people search for a tech marketing white paper, ‘click here’ is not the term they’re going to use!

So, it’s important to ensure that external and internal links are constructed properly, and that where possible you can influence web masters to do it your way, using your keywords.

So much for design and implementation and getting your name and links out there. There is one other significant way to help boost your SEO, and that’s….

Conclusion: Start Now!

To summarise, most of the things we need to care about in SEO are the same things we should be doing to make our web sites more accessible and more readable (and I would say enjoyable) for everyone.

The key here is that good SEO requires an absolute devotion to ensuring your content is kept on track at every possible point – and this means placing key words in page headers, navigation labels and the like, as well as describing your products and services in a language that makes sense to normal human beings.

The design and implementation tips that we mention ought also to be common practice to any decent web developer / designer, and the fact that a content management system can help make this stuff second nature ought not be a surprise.

So, to conclude. SEO isn’t a black art. It’s not even a grey area. It can be practised effectively by everyone and, to cover the key elements, this needn’t be an exercise that requires a stack of cash or a bunch of overpaid, under-aged consultants!

Useful Tools

• O’Reilly PDF guide to SEO

• Google Toolbar (to measure a site’s PageRank)

• Alexa Toolbar (to measure a site’s comparative performance)

• Overture Inventory (for investigating key word popularity)

• Google Analytics (for measuring your site’s performance – eg, top pages, search terms, etc)

• Opentracker (as per above, but with some extra cool tools – eg visitors by company)

Useful Web Sites/Online Tools

• http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/

• http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/key word-density/

• http://tools.seobook.com/

• http://tools.seobook.com/general/key word-information/

• http://tools.seobook.com/competition-finder/index.php

Useful Publications

• SEO Watch

• SEO Book

• Search Marketing Gurus

• SEO Moz

Online PR Distribution Hubs

• ClickPress

• PR Leap

• PR Log

• Sane PR

Make no mistake, usability and design and content optimization is very, very important to the success of your web site. A poorly constructed site is a curse for the type of people you’re trying to communicate with (shoppers, knowledge workers, researchers – all of whom are busy people). Usability is often the critical difference between a 10-second visit and a ten minute one accompanied by a download, registration or purchase. Without it, you’ll find that your site becomes too ‘bouncy,’ and not ‘sticky’ enough to do what it’s supposed to do.

In general, this stuff is usually under-valued and badly executed on most sites. A lot more energy goes into creating funky interfaces than developing site products that really work. This is probably because many companies are still in a ‘brochureware’ mindset when it comes to the web. But to ignore usability and design and content optimisation at the outset of a web design project is folly – especially since it’s done so incredibly well in some quarters.

By taking a handful of pages from agenda-setting B2C e-commerce sites, this paper looks at why usability, design and content optimisation is critical to your success, how to build it in to your site at source, and how to test that it’s serving your commercial goals. It also takes in a number of case studies to illustrate best practices – from sites such as Amazon and Salesforce.com.
In our estimation, designing for usability is a must. It’s also easy to do if you start with it as a goal.

But why is it so important? Here are the facts:

• Once it’s built, your web site needs to perform like an Olympic athlete to grab your users’ attention. You will be competing against Manchester United and Scarlett Johannson for their attention, not the competition next door. So you need to be compelling.

• It’s likely that at least 50% of users will arrive via your back door rather than your home page as a result of search activity. (Google has a lot to answer for!) So you need to meet their expectations fast, across every page.

• When they arrive, the vast majority of users won’t know you, trust you, or care for you. Their only assumption is that there’s a slim chance that you’re relevant to their needs… because Google told them so – but you’re just one click away from the ‘other’ 25,678,963 sites related to their search term. So you need to breed confidence.

• Contrary to popular wisdom, they won’t scan your page in any logical sequence (we’re given to assume that the eye zig-zags down a page). Nope, the pupil does a crazy dance in a nanosecond and your first impression will be made. So you need to capture their attention.

• In addition, they’ll see your site like Mr Magoo. No sweeping panoramic views here (after all, they’re late for a meeting and their phone’s ringing). Just a squint. Then their mind’s made up. So you need to channel their focus.

• If they do stick around then they’ll probably just wade in and muddle on through. No clean click paths, just a muddle. Whatever works to get them from A to B – usually via Z, F and M (in that order). If they make a purchase or sign up for stuff at the end of this process then it’s all credit to them, not you. So you need to be simple to navigate.

The Usability, Design and Content Optimization Requirement

The point is that, setting aside your functional and design ambitions, you absolutely do not have a common user to create a beautiful web site for. Instead, you have a schizoid, multi-limbed, mythical creature who’s only consistent attribute is that she’s in a darn big hurry.

What you need is a set of tools that will help non-technical people (including designers) and non-design-literate people (including technicians) create web pages that serve equally your corporate objectives and your user requirements.

A tough challenge, right? Well, not exactly. It’s all rather obvious – but a decent set of descriptive tools can help to ground us in the real, rather than the conceptual. So here’s our guide to web usability…

Clapham Junction: A Case Study

Usability (and it’s close relative Accessibility) is not a new discipline. In more established areas of design it’s a standard practice – so much so that good usability either goes without notice or is simply an expected part of an experience or a service.

An example is our rail network here in the UK. Although criticized for dubious service levels (anyone for ‘leaves on the track’ causing delays!?) they do have one thing nailed. The in-station user experience is pretty tight. So much so, I don’t really need to talk to any staff to get to where I need to be. All guidance information is rendered via a standard string of signs…deep blue and white, with a neat set of icons to supplement the verbiage.

Here’s the view from Clapham Junction in rush hour: a truly crazy place in need of good user experiences.

OK, so…. I just got off a delayed service from the South Coast and I’ve got to change to get to Richmond. But shoot, the connection leaves in under five minutes. Heeeeelp!?
What platform do I need? Oh…

And how do I get to my platform? Ah…

Is this the right one? Yup…

Sweet. Got there with a minute to spare, and only one punch-up in the corridor!

Some concepts to consider: Signposts. Visibility. Legibility. Colour. Fonts. Language. Supporting imagery. Utility.

Taken as a whole, how well does your web site use these things?

In general, the web scores badly on usability and providing great experiences. When it comes to the trade-off between your own objectives and that of your users there’s usually friction. And since the web tends to be viewed as one big advertising property, corporate concerns often win hands down – resulting in a site that bludgeons with branding, messaging and widgets but provides very little in the way of tools to help users do the things that really matter: buy, sign up, find a contact number.

Why is this?

Unlike Clapham Junction, the majority of web sites are built by companies that are unaccustomed to crowds. Instead, they’re built by people who are used to dealing with customers one by one – usually via a real, live salesperson – and with the benefit of time and space to hold hands and help customers orientate themselves in their insular world of products, services and protocols.

As such, good examples of usability and customer experiences on the web are usually found in industries where the heritage is self-service or the business itself has been invented online. – ie, B2C firms. So let’s see if we can steal some general rules from their playbook…

Rule 1: Designing Layouts for Sameness but Difference

Being the ‘same but different’ will capture your users’ attention and channel their focus.

A common mistake in web design is to aspire to difference for difference’s sake. Being ‘brand new’ is beneficial in the sense that it sets you apart from your competition, but it’s counterproductive if it means people can’t use your site. Think about this for a moment. A refreshingly different navigation scheme may amuse you and your team, but you have one up on your average user – you’re motivated to care (thanks to your salary). Visitors to your site will feel less enthused. You have a nanosecond of their attention, so you don’t want to make them work too hard.

An online newspaper provides a good example. Since news is now a commodity online, users are spoiled for destinations but lacking in patience as a result – it’s just too easy to skip to another source.

Here’s an average ‘news hunting’ user experience: I search for ‘social networking’ in Google, and I click on a link. It takes me to the Guardian’s site. Let’s see how it handles things:

Looks interesting. Nice and clean and easy to read. OK, good article. Now I want to find out what’s going on in the wider world. Let’s hit the home page and browse around:

I find I can immediately ground myself in a bunch of different content types, perspectives and potential navigation paths. Without losing any sense of order, everything seems to be beautifully in place. This is a great example of how to use visual hierarchies to guide users.

I want to preview business stories: easy. The site gives me a clear and immediate view of content types. Each editorial section has a horizontal rule above its header. ‘Business & money’ in blue, ‘Sport’ in green and so on. Special features are pulled out in the third column with the help of an image for each one: their header also matches the colour code for the section they live in, so I can tell that ‘Life and Style: Sew Ethical’ belongs in the ‘Arts & Entertainment’ section (they’re both coded pink). The fourth column is given over to ‘push’ style content – it’s either functional (eg, weather and navigation links) or advertising-led (eg, ‘Sponsored features’).

This presentation makes my navigation choices easy. I can see at a glance that news stories live in columns one and two, and I can quickly see how they’re collated. If I want to get a deeper read, then column three looks promising, and if I’m feeling easily distracted then I know that column four is going to take me away into an unrelated content area or off-site to an external world of an advertiser (although in the most subtle of ways – no anger-inducing Flash banners). I could easily close the browser and jot down this organizational scheme on my notepad from memory. It’s intuitive.

This is because, aside from visual hierarchies, the page has been designed with a strong sense of order via the use of structured grids for different types of content. Four columns: elongated cells in the first two for bigger content chunks, smaller cells in the final two for snappy content nuggets. My eye is quickly assimilated into a precise way of evaluating content – and nothing on the page breaks these rules. For example, as mentioned, they’ve forgone the use of any intrusive advertising, which is often found nested uncomfortably in the middle of news or magazine-style sites. Instead, ads are moved off to the right hand side of the page, and each maintains the integrity of the core site design: fonts, colours, header rules, etc are all seemingly governed by a consistent style guide, when this page space could easily have been sold off to the highest bidder in whatever format the advertiser pleased.

Now let’s click through to a sub-page – ‘Business & news’…

Eerily, the page seems the same, only slightly different. The four columns remain – two for news stories with longer content cells; one for features, with thumbnail pictures and one for additional links. There’s an ad, but it’s where I’d expect it to be, to the right of the page, and not too distracting in terms of colours. But the main page header bar’s a different colour – it’s blue rather than the home page red. But that’s OK because the corresponding ‘business’ section snippet on the home page was framed by a blue bar. Everything seems to knit together seamlessly.

This sub-page must have been a piece of cake for the designers to produce: repetition and stability is the order of the day – there’s nothing here that needs ‘re-orientation’ after the home page experience, and so my choices are made even easier as I’m drawn further in to the site’s layout conventions. In addition, although the site is extremely content-heavy, the pages feel light. All of the content is easy to read due to the general removal of noise and clutter. And if you think this is a no-brainer, then think again. Here’s the Evening Standard’s current home page (…who’s in charge here guys, the design team or the sales team!!??):

Some Best Practice Layout Guidelines for Usability

• Establish a strong presentation hierarchy organized around different types of content assets (eg, ‘news’, ‘articles’, ‘features’) and stick to it

• Use colour – and/or icons – to denote different content categories

• Remove all clutter: don’t let non-core content compete on the page

• Establish a visual grid and don’t break it

• Make content hierarchies and labeling schemes persistent across the site

• Make your design templates repetitive (but not boring!) to provide stability for your users

Rule 2: Respect Established Navigation Conventions

If you can follow established design conventions you’ll breed confidence in your users and you’ll make your site infinitely easier to navigate.

Let’s say I’m searching for a Christmas present for my niece. I know she loves the ‘Sopranos’ and that the final DVD of the sixth series is just out. Let’s go find it…

Here’s what HMV gives me on a simple search.

Bingo. But then I remember that my sister’s already bought her this, so I change tack. It has to be the new Roisin Murphy album instead. But, how to find it?

Great navigation breeds confidence and successful visits (cash buys, subscription paths, etc) because it acts as my only guide in what’s usually an alien territory (your web site).

When I land on your page via a Google search, unless you’re a mega-brand with an image that’s already been burned into my brain, then nothing’s going to prepare me for what I see aside from the snippet of text that sits below the Google link. So I arrive stone cold – aside from the expectations that I bring with me.

As such, if I’m searching for a DVD, then the chances are that I’ve been to an e-commerce site before – probably Amazon. Although I have no experience of your site (indeed, this is the first time I can remember using HMV), here’s what I’d like to see:

i) A strongly categorized primary navigation bar

Check. See also the neat highlighting and arrowing motif they’ve used (we’re ‘on’ DVD).

ii) A set of ‘breadcrumbs’ that tell me how to wander back out of the alleyway that I’m in and onto a higher level…

Check. Excellent. I know exactly where I am in the wider context of the site. This is map reading 101!

iii) A secondary level navigation of sub-categories (probably rendered on the vertical)…

Check. Wow, they’ve used that handing highlighting / arrow motif again. Thanks!

iv) A free(form) search tool – probably enabling me to search by product category…

Check. I feel good about searching here: because it’s categorized I know that the results I’ll get won’t be a firehose of irrelevant stuff.

Great. Now, despite the fact that I don’t know this web site, with these things in hand, I’m confident I could get around and find Ms Murphy.

Let’s compare this experience with Amazon….

Aside from a different way of doing breadcrumbs, these sites are practically identical in terms of navigational functionality. Why? Well, no doubt HMV is getting its butt kicked by Amazon… so it’s following Amazon’s lead in terms of design. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily if you’re Amazon (although it’s a sincere form of flattery), but absolutely if you’re HMV.

By paying respect to dominant conventions that have been set by others, HMV is improving its chances of competing for my cash. In simple terms, I feel comfortable in this environment because I don’t need learn any new navigational techniques to traverse the site. All of my preferred cues are present. I feel grounded and, although it’s new to me, there’s nothing to throw me off track (proof: I know I can get to Roisin Murphy in a few clicks before I start trying to find her).
But let’s have a look at an area where the sites differ. It hints at why Amazon is so successful.

So, I’m going to by Roisin Murphy’s ‘Overpowered’. I’ve clicked through to the relevant page (in double quick time!). Here’s what Amazon gives me:

And here’s the same page on HMV:

The bake-off:

• Amazon’s good conventions: “the customer’s about to buy something – let’s get any navigation and extraneous content the hell out of the way!”

• HMV’s not-so-good conventions: “the customer’s about to buy something – let’s keep all the surrounding navigation and content consistent so we don’t confuse him!”

• The difference: I’ll bet my house Amazon converts far more customers to a sale than HMV.

Amazon is smarter because at this point there’s only three actions that matter: ‘Add to Shopping Basket’, ‘Buy now with 1-Click’ or the ‘Buy both now’ offer. To this end, they’ve embedded them as buttons. No rocket science there, right? But take a look at the HMV page. How many things look like buttons here? ‘Deal of the Day’? ‘Offers of the Week’? ‘Great Savings on Forthcoming DVD Releases’? ‘Add to Basket’? ….and how many of them lead to a purchase of the album?

This is a great example of how blind dedication to navigational conventions can be counter-productive. Excuse the pun, but I’m overpowered by the number of options calling for my attention on HMV’s page. When you have a user where you want them, you need to bet that their intentions are in line with yours -in this instance on the sale/purchase. So don’t hedge and give them the choice to move elsewhere within the site – just make it easy to complete the task at hand.

Rule 3: Trustworthiness – Prove You Care with Words

Great content will ensure your users stick with you. The right words will help you to establish trust and ultimately draw them in to a deeper relationship with your site.

Remember I mentioned that – contrary to conventional wisdom – many of your users won’t arrive at your site via the home page? Well, let’s establish a rule: most of your site users don’t know you.

Is this a problem? In terms of marketing, no, far from it – it’s what every sales and marketing guy dreams of: shaking hands with a bunch of unknown people with a one-time opportunity to turn them into a bona fide lead. But in terms of usability it is because you need to do a quick job of convincing them to stick around.

Let’s look at this from a user’s point of view. I’m a sales manager looking to improve my team’s performance. I search for a popular type of software app that I know will help – a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. I click on the first link (of a zillion) that I get because it feels good…

Here’s what I get:

We’ve already talked about navigation cues and content hierarchies and how these things can help to calm the nerves and ground the user. Salesforce.com does all these things perfectly. But what’s really eating at me is the following question: “OK, so I’ve got a real need for CRM and a zillion links to choose from. My time is short. Why should I spend my time with you!?”

Once you have your audience, you really need to convince them that you’re the one. This is done through words. Let’s see how Salesforce.com manages it…

When I hit the home page I’m greeted with the headline ‘The Leader in On-Demand Customer Relationship Management.’ Huzzah! I’m not quite sure what ‘on demand’ means, but I know I’ve landed at the right place. What else? Ah ‘Full-Featured CRM Starting at $65/User/Month.’ Wow! This quest may be easier than first imagined.

OK, so, it’s got me. Let’s have a scout around. To the left we have a little vertical bar that seems to list some products or services (there’s some natty little icons). What’s this all about…?

Let’s zoom in on the blue text here. ‘Customer relationship management (CRM)’; ‘customizing and integrating CRM.’ OK, I’m definitely in CRM heaven. I might go back and have a play with those links later.

But what about the rest of the site? Towards the base of the page we have some clean navigation elements…

I’m not sure what the button refers to… some kind of ‘no software’ campaign? We’ll let that one slide for now. But what’s this: a whole section ‘About CRM’? Perfect. Ah, and a page describing ‘What is on-demand?’ That’ll help. Also I can see some stuff on CRM best practices and some success stories. I feel very, very good about my search choice now.

And there’s more. At the very bottom of the page, there’s a whole bunch of navigation that’s kind of twinkling at me. Let’s take a closer look:

Wow – that’s all about CRM. OK, I’m on board. Now, where to go first?

In the middle of this page we have a useful piece of ‘demographic’ navigation that presents a bunch of links relative to who I am. Now, forgive me for gushing, but his company really seems to care about me. OK, so I’m a business manager of a small-ish firm. They have a small business success kit. Let’s go browse that…

Of course, my journey here is highly idealized but the methods used by Salesforce.com are 100% sound. Through sensitive use of labels, link titles, headlines, and navigation techniques, they’ve grounded me in an instant. The approach is like a conversation with a great salesman – a series of small but salient words that nudge and cajole me along into a deeper relationship with the site.

Let’s look at them again:

• Trust adjuster #1: Use a descriptive headline in a banner (or strapline under your logo) to tell the uninitiated user exactly who you are. If you’re upfront about this you’ll snare the people you want and drive away the time wasters.

• Trust adjuster #2: Use your descriptive copy in your key navigation – primary and secondary. This will further consolidate your validity.

• Trust adjuster #3: Use your descriptive copy in all key links on the page. If the page has been styled right, then these will be rendered in a different colour to the rest of the body text, and so they’ll leap off the page.

• Trust adjuster #4: Where possible, make your navigation personal. Find ways of segmenting your content so that you can help users navigate in a way that’s meaningful to their life rather than yours. And pepper this navigation with your descriptive copy.

• Summary: to establish trust on a first visit you need to pay lavish attention to your copy. It’s what you say and how you say it that counts.

The flip side of this is that all of the above is GREAT practice for search engine optimization (SEO). With SEO, the job is essentially the same: you need to convince Google et al that you’re relevant to a search query. With SEO, however, the thing you need to impress is a piece of software (a ‘spider’ that crawls your site) rather than a human being. The good news is that they tend to read a web page in much the same way as we do. They’ll get to know you through your language and how you use it. So, to encourage Google to categorise you properly, you need to deploy keywords in strategic parts of your pages – headers, subheads, links, bold text, footers, etc. There are variations on this theme that will help, but that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

How to Test for Usability Before Making Public Commitments

OK, so that’s how you design and write for usability. The next section will help you to plan your work before you commit anything to code (an hence save you money!).

If you’re managing a web site project of any scale or importance (and let’s face it, they all are), then planning for good usability is a non-trivial task. How confident are you of making the right navigational choices for an average user that doesn’t exist? Right, me too! So this is where we get testy.

The idea of usability testing usually conjures up images of iris scanning, men in white coats and lengthy bills. But it doesn’t need to be this way.

Usability Testing on a Budget

Let’s take a step back here. What do we want to achieve through testing?

We want to…

• Generate ideas on how our content should be organized. This should be done at the earliest possible point in the planning

• Stress test your pages before they’re committed to code. This should be done at the same time you’re creating page designs, so you can give the designer a semi-concrete site map to build her creative ideas upon

• Try out our site on the uninitiated (ie, the ‘average’ user, fresh from a Google search) before it goes live. This should be done as soon as the site is built – ie, in ‘Alpha’ mode, but not yet public

Here’s how we do these things cost-effectively…

Generating ideas on how to organize your content

This is an easy one. It involves a bunch of Post-it notes, some address cards and a couple of colleagues.

Firstly, gather a couple of members of your project team in your boardroom and brainstorm a list of every single piece of content and every user service (eg, a search tool, a web form, a shopping cart) that you want to see in the new site. Make this exercise sub-atomic: get as much detail as possible – no piece of content is too small. Resist the temptation to bring order to any of this, just dump it all out on a flip chart.

Secondly, transcribe this ‘brain dump’ list onto Post-it notes, one piece of content per note. Place the pile of notes on the conference table (again, unordered). Then play a game of organizing. In turn, each of you picks up a note and sticks it on the wall in groupings that you debate and construct as you go. So, I pick ‘Press release’ first and stick it up. Dave picks up ‘White paper’. We discuss and decide they’d go well together because we have a hunch we’re going to need a ‘Resources’ section. When you’re finished, you should have a rough site map. Go home and sleep on it (remembering to tell the cleaner not to remove the Post-its!) and then review and edit it the next day. When you’re happy with it take a photo of your newly-decorated wall.

Finally, to test your thinking with a wider audience, tear the Post-its down and recreate just the primary level of your map on the wall. Then invite a couple of colleagues who are not on the project team to pick up Post-its at random and place them within your meta-structure as they see fit (like pinning the tail on a donkey, only without the blindfold). Take notes as they do this – they’ll be full of questions and you’ll want to ask them stuff too. Why did they put press releases in the ‘About us’ section? … and so on.

Once you’ve been through this exercise you ought to have a good grasp of how to organize your content. The next step is to commit this to a real site map. You can use a natty drawing application for this, or Powerpoint or Word. Whatever, the important thing is that it’s clear.

Stress testing your pages before they’re committed to code

At this stage, your site is ready to go into full design mode. Your designer has been briefed and now you have a site map to give to her. As a next step in the creative process you should ask her to produce some wireframes – at least one per section, plus a couple for your most critical pages (eg, buy stuff, sign up for something, etc).

(Wireframes are line diagrams of page layouts. They’re not designs, they’re just rough concepts to inform the direction that a design may take and the functions of key pages. As such, your designer ought to be happy to create them as they will simplify her design process.)

Keep in mind that your goal is to keep the build process on track and within budget, so your aim is to eliminate any nasty surprises ahead. As a piece of collateral, wireframes are great for this. As well as focusing the design effort, they’ll help your implementation team to code effectively. They’ll show people where on the page a form should be placed, how a button should be rendered and so forth. Wireframes make your build process less woolly.

But they’re also great because they’ll give you something to test. To do this, grab some colleagues to act as guinea pigs. Let’s say you have a collection of six wireframes to play with – one for the homepage, one for the products page, one for the search page, etc. Your job is to hand them out and ask your test team to do a couple of imaginary tasks, like ‘go fetch the latest press release’, ‘go send me a message’, and ‘find our contact number.’

Obviously, these actions are hypothetical, but the important thing is to talk as you go – get your testers to give you a stream-of-consciousness commentary on what they are doing as they mentally maneuver around the pages, and at the same time pepper them with questions about what they’re doing. At the end of this process you’ll have a far stronger idea about how well your pages will perform. If you’re unhappy, then change stuff. Then freeze the wireframes and get your designers and implementers to crack on.

Try out a working site on the uninitiated

The next step is to test a working version of your site. This is best done at the ‘Alpha’ stage before launch, whilst you still have time to make improvements.

What does this involve? Well, it’s pretty much the same as your wireframe tests, only with a working site. Facilities-wise you’ll need some more colleagues, a couple of PC’s, a quiet room and a notepad. The goal is to ask people to do some pre-conceived (important) tasks, have them talk through the process, ask questions and then compare results. You need to learn why Mike took a different route to signing up for a white paper than Shelley, and then extrapolate some lessons. Can we make the paths any easier? Did the guys suggest new ways? Did they do what we asked them to in unexpected ways? Is it worth applying any new logic to the site?

And that’s it: usability testing on a budget.

Conclusion: Think Like a Nutter, Make Like a Magpie

It’s funny. The best user experiences are the hardest to create. It takes a slightly manic and enquiring mind to care about and cater for the myriad ways that people will interact with your web site.

When all’s said and done, you can’t afford to make assumptions – there is no average user to design for. Rather, it helps to think around the issues like a nutty, schizophrenic half-wit who’s never used a computer before. Because if you can make your site work for this person then it really ought to work for everybody else.

A tough challenge? I hope so, or at least I hope you don’t fit this profile!

Difficult it may be, but at the same time there’s comfort to be found in crowds. You’re not the first person to take on this challenge. It’s likely that your competitors will have already overcome similar problems, and other firms in other marketplaces will have established some good usability conventions. So don’t reinvent the wheel.

Life’s too short – just follow their lead and – like HMV – make like a magpie and borrow a little. Your users will thank you for it!