I’m in the middle of a huge revamp for three sites, so I’ve been looking at these CSS and design inspiration portals quite a bit to get some fresh ideas. And that is when I came across a site that made me feel like I found a hidden treasure on the web.
But before I tell you what I found, I would like to talk a bit about SEO, usability and user experience - three ever so often contradicting terms.
My point of view is that, provided that you’re trying to sell a product or a service on your website, there is absolutely no point in tons of traffic from SEO or any other form of internet marketing if this traffic doesn’t convert into customers at some point.
So you have the traffic, and it is highly targeted. Now you need a website that is able to guide your visitors to where you want them to go, and do what you want them to do. To do that, you need a website that is exceptionally easy to understand for your potential customers.
The definition of usability can be narrowed down to:
- It requires less mental effort to use
- The frequency of mistakes using it is less, or when the mistakes are less disastrous
- It is more powerful, where “more powerful” means that it can be used to do more or do it faster
- It is more learnable, that is, when a person can figure it out quicker
To make your web site stand out in the crowd, you need to offer your visitors something special. You need to give them a unique user experience that makes them go “Yeah, baby! This is what I was looking for” (and it doesn’t need to involve a lot of bare skin).
The difference between usability and user experience is huge. With usability, you should make your product fool proof. With user experience, however, you’re after triggering feelings. For a website, we’re talking about:
- Environment
- Colors moods
- Audio feedback
- Visual feedback
- Trust
- Branding
- Show-off effect
- Usefulness
- Practicality
- Emotional effect
- Etc…
Doesn’t this sound a lot like a pure flash site to you?
So how do you combine these three? For a website promoting a service or product, the ultimate goal is to have the visitor buy it. To make the customer buy it, present as few options as possible so he or she can’t click the wrong button.
When using Google AdWords for example, you have the benefit of making a landing page specifically geared towards that specific product or service, thus you do not confuse the user with menu options for other products.
The landing pages must be as specific and targeted as possible. Promote one product. Period.
MarketingSherpa has, in my humble oppinion, the best book out there about optimizing landing pages, and I highly recommend it. Honorable mention for great info on user behavious on websites also goes to PoynterExtra.org and their Eyetrack III survey.
PPC campaigns are easy like that. You throw up your campaign, have a landing page to match and use ClickTracks, Site Catalyst, even Google Analytics or any other decent web metrix tool to measure your success.
I’ve seen landing pages go down by 20% in their exit rate only by tweaking copy and imagery ever so slightly, so if you have the budget, use A/B testing and tweak the pages, cause this can make a huge difference.
SEO is way more difficult, but I believe the company I used to work for, Bodog, despite that it seems like they’re taking a hit in the SERPS right now, has done an exceptional job at combining SEO, usability and user experience. Very few, if any in that industry comes close in my opinion.
For a multidiciplinary online gambling site, they are able to funnel their visitors efficiently to the intended target destinations. Not only from the main page, but also in the SERPS.
Make a search on “poker” or “online casino” in Google, and, although now on page 2 for those terms, you’ll see that their first listing list the product channel main page.
My favourite product channel page on Bodog is the Casino main page. It is as clear and as straight to the point as you can possibly get, and you also have a lot of supporting pages and content available as well.
Bodog also gives you a unique user experience in their exceptional branding efforts. Maybe they should’ve spend a bit more on internet marketing and had a few champagne bottles less at their last celeb party, but I hope you see my point about combining SEO, usability and a unique user experience.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The site I found belongs to a Dane called Thomas Baekdal, and has a load of interesting articles on usability and technology.
Sverre Sjøthun
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