Tags |
|
|
Links |
|
|
Casual Articles - 3 Proven Techniques for Improving Your Website's Usability
Every internet business needs traffic.No matter what business you have, extra 100, 200 or 1000 visitors per month will benefit YOU with extra sales and cash in your bank account.A website with no traffic is like a shop in a desert where even birds don't pay a visit.And the result follows, that site never makes a single red dime.Getting targeted traffic to a site is the toughest part in building a profitable internet business, I am sure you know that.And this is something you have to do consistently, each and every single day.Once you stop promoting your website your site traffic will fall back to zero or just stay where it is right now.The biggest reason most web businesses fail is due to lack of traffic.If your site is not making money, I bet it is everything to do with your marketing and nothing to do with your product or website.A site with a decent copy will make hoards of money if you feed it with continuous flow of non-stop lazer targeted traffic.You can use my 6-step system right now to get non-stop surges of instant life-time traffic and credibility.1. Create approximately 50 quality articles in your niche.Put a resource box below your articles with
2. Recruit the participants. This will take the most time, and can be the most frustrating part of the test process. You have to find people to participate (which can be tough, particularly if you need to match specific demographic profiles), and then you need to schedule them. Then, some will cancel, some won’t show, and some will be great test participants. The best way to get a feel for the person is to talk to them directly more than once over the phone. TIP: Be sure to call the person the day of the test to remind them about it.
3. Script the test. You’ll want to have an intro script, the test script, and a post-test survey. The intro script serves as a checklist of things you want to be sure to cover with the person before you start the test. TIP: During the part, try to focus on making the person feel comfortable giving their opinion, and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next part, the test script, is a checklist of the actual things you want the person to do. This i
Having an online business opportunity strategy may sound like something very complex and yet it simply saying on other words how you are going to approach the subject of making money online.Nobody would dream of going into a war or fight without a strategy. Every sports team will have a game strategy long before they face their opponents. Strategy is even more important when it comes to an online business opportunity. There are several reasons for this. One is the fact that there is so much happening online that it is easy to get distracted by anything, including a hot new business opportunity that is not right for you. With a good clear online business opportunity strategy, it becomes easy to avoid these pitfalls and to remain focused on what you want to do.A sports team will usually pick a strategy that is based on their strength and not their weakness. They will usually opt for something they know they are capable of doing better than their opponents. It is the same with an online business opportunity strategy. Your online business opportunity strategy must be based on your strengths, special skills and abilities. That is the only way you will be able to win on the net where you will be competing with the whole world.<
What further confuses this is typically a lack of clear insight into your website’s performance. For example, how well does your website convert visitors into buyers? What are the key decisions that visitors must make on your website? Do you give them the information and tools necessary to make those decisions?
This article will help you focus on 3 proven techniques for improving your website’s performance: website analytics, usability testing, and personas. Exactly how you choose to implement these techniques is obviously up to you. However, one thing is guaranteed: all three techniques help you get closer to the people who visit your website: their needs, their desires, and their behaviors. This information is critical if you plan to optimize your website’s usability to achieve your goals.
1. Measure Progress with Website Analytics
Many companies mistakenly install a standard “website statistics” program and only get a group of standard reports. Typically, these reports do very little to help you judge the true effectiveness of your website.
Want to get a jumpstart on creating your own website analytics? Just follow these 3 simple steps:
1. Begin with the end in mind – start with your objectives. Define your website marketing strategy objectives (i.e. “Increase the number of qualified prospects coming from web search engines”), and what you want your website visitors to do to reach those objectives (i.e. “See our listing in the top 10 in Google and click on it)
2. Get in touch with your visitors’ behavior on your website. Track how many unique visitors you get, and how long they stay on your site (including how many pages they view). You want all of these numbers to be going up, since that means you’re getting more visitors who are staying on the site longer. You are maximizing the odds that they will do what you want them to do.
3. Develop your conversion rate. Track how many visitors do the key action you want them to do and compare this number to your total visitors. This helps you determine your conversion rate. For example, if 15 out of 100 visitors requested more information from you (and that is one of your objectives), then your conversion rate for information requests is 15%.
Once you have these key website analytics in place, you can start to evolve your tracking and look for trends to optimize for. Here are two examples:
Regardless of what you want to achieve, getting to website usability first starts with solid website analytics. Why? Because website analytics force you to identify those areas that matter most, and identify how well or poorly you are doing in them. Once you know this, you are armed with key data that can help you focus your efforts and determine where things like usability testing can help the most.
2. Leverage Usability Testing
Usability testing is where you take people who would use your website, and actually watch them using it. Typically, you ask the person to do things on the site, and you watch either over their shoulder, behind a one-way mirror, or via a second computer where you can see what’s being recorded on the test computer.
It’s amazing how many things you can make better on your website just by watching people use it. Yet, as you get into it, you may find that hiring a usability professional for a testing project can be unnecessarily expensive. Usability professionals are helpful, since they typically have substantial expertise in planning and conducting tests, as well as interpreting test results. However, usability testing does not have to be fancy or formal: people are going to give you their opinion whether you’re sitting in a research company or at Starbucks. So be careful when hiring a professional that seems to make the testing process complicated or costly. When someone does this, it’s usually only for their own financial gain.
To successfully conduct a usability test, just follow these 5 steps:
1. Define your objectives. Begin with the end in mind. What do you want to accomplish with this usability test? Do you have specific areas of your website that you want to improve? If so, this is a great way to get ideas on how to make those areas better. Are you planning on rolling out a new area of your website? A usability test is a great way to do a “trial run” before the big launch.
2. Recruit the participants. This will take the most time, and can be the most frustrating part of the test process. You have to find people to participate (which can be tough, particularly if you need to match specific demographic profiles), and then you need to schedule them. Then, some will cancel, some won’t show, and some will be great test participants. The best way to get a feel for the person is to talk to them directly more than once over the phone. TIP: Be sure to call the person the day of the test to remind them about it.
3. Script the test. You’ll want to have an intro script, the test script, and a post-test survey. The intro script serves as a checklist of things you want to be sure to cover with the person before you start the test. TIP: During the part, try to focus on making the person feel comfortable giving their opinion, and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next part, the test script, is a checklist of the actual things you want the person to do. This is
Home Based Business for WomenA home based business has become a way of life for many of us. To have a work from home business success story, I would like to give you an insight on how to start a home business and and some of the pros and cons for women working at home. I started my first business in 1993. I had been a medical transcriptionist for 13 years and the hospital I was working for at the time was closing its doors. I also knew there had to be a better way for single women raising children (as was the case with me) to make a substantial living and work at home. About one year into the business it was time to hire some help. This was a struggle for me in terms of the exact point I actually could hire someone and not "cut my nose off to spite my face". Hiring your first employee or independent contractor is all timing. Once my business was established, I tried conventional advertising in newspapers which was prohibitively expensive and I found that word of mouth (based on my reputation in my field of expertise, medical transcription) was more successful.The first thing you would need to do when starting your home based business is to decide how far you want to go with it, what are your
1. Measure Progress with Website Analytics
Many companies mistakenly install a standard “website statistics” program and only get a group of standard reports. Typically, these reports do very little to help you judge the true effectiveness of your website.
Want to get a jumpstart on creating your own website analytics? Just follow these 3 simple steps:
1. Begin with the end in mind – start with your objectives. Define your website marketing strategy objectives (i.e. “Increase the number of qualified prospects coming from web search engines”), and what you want your website visitors to do to reach those objectives (i.e. “See our listing in the top 10 in Google and click on it)
2. Get in touch with your visitors’ behavior on your website. Track how many unique visitors you get, and how long they stay on your site (including how many pages they view). You want all of these numbers to be going up, since that means you’re getting more visitors who are staying on the site longer. You are maximizing the odds that they will do what you want them to do.
3. Develop your conversion rate. Track how many visitors do the key action you want them to do and compare this number to your total visitors. This helps you determine your conversion rate. For example, if 15 out of 100 visitors requested more information from you (and that is one of your objectives), then your conversion rate for information requests is 15%.
Once you have these key website analytics in place, you can start to evolve your tracking and look for trends to optimize for. Here are two examples:
Regardless of what you want to achieve, getting to website usability first starts with solid website analytics. Why? Because website analytics force you to identify those areas that matter most, and identify how well or poorly you are doing in them. Once you know this, you are armed with key data that can help you focus your efforts and determine where things like usability testing can help the most.
2. Leverage Usability Testing
Usability testing is where you take people who would use your website, and actually watch them using it. Typically, you ask the person to do things on the site, and you watch either over their shoulder, behind a one-way mirror, or via a second computer where you can see what’s being recorded on the test computer.
It’s amazing how many things you can make better on your website just by watching people use it. Yet, as you get into it, you may find that hiring a usability professional for a testing project can be unnecessarily expensive. Usability professionals are helpful, since they typically have substantial expertise in planning and conducting tests, as well as interpreting test results. However, usability testing does not have to be fancy or formal: people are going to give you their opinion whether you’re sitting in a research company or at Starbucks. So be careful when hiring a professional that seems to make the testing process complicated or costly. When someone does this, it’s usually only for their own financial gain.
To successfully conduct a usability test, just follow these 5 steps:
1. Define your objectives. Begin with the end in mind. What do you want to accomplish with this usability test? Do you have specific areas of your website that you want to improve? If so, this is a great way to get ideas on how to make those areas better. Are you planning on rolling out a new area of your website? A usability test is a great way to do a “trial run” before the big launch.
2. Recruit the participants. This will take the most time, and can be the most frustrating part of the test process. You have to find people to participate (which can be tough, particularly if you need to match specific demographic profiles), and then you need to schedule them. Then, some will cancel, some won’t show, and some will be great test participants. The best way to get a feel for the person is to talk to them directly more than once over the phone. TIP: Be sure to call the person the day of the test to remind them about it.
3. Script the test. You’ll want to have an intro script, the test script, and a post-test survey. The intro script serves as a checklist of things you want to be sure to cover with the person before you start the test. TIP: During the part, try to focus on making the person feel comfortable giving their opinion, and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next part, the test script, is a checklist of the actual things you want the person to do. This i
Use your imagination and you will find many uses for streaming audio. There has never been a better time to get started adding streaming audio to your web site. Audio can take your website to new heights. Here are some things to get your thought process flowing.Personal: Adding streaming audio to your personal site makes a lot of sense and can be a whole lot of fun. Image your loved one opening your blog to find audio buttons there. Upon clicking the buttons she hears happy birthday in your voice coming over her computer speakers.Newsletter: Sending out your newsletter with links back to your web page with streaming audio on it should increase your conversion rates. This type of multimedia is pretty new and should make your subscribers orders come alive.CD Sales: Musicians and bands now have a worldwide audience to sell their music to. No longer does a local band need to stay that way. You can sell your Cds anywhere.Book Your Band: Adding audio buttons to your band web site is an excellent way to get more gigs. You can save a lot of money by no longer having to send out promo kits. Send the promoter that is considering hiring your band to the band website to listen to your music rather than mailing out a CD.<
Once you have these key website analytics in place, you can start to evolve your tracking and look for trends to optimize for. Here are two examples:
Regardless of what you want to achieve, getting to website usability first starts with solid website analytics. Why? Because website analytics force you to identify those areas that matter most, and identify how well or poorly you are doing in them. Once you know this, you are armed with key data that can help you focus your efforts and determine where things like usability testing can help the most.
2. Leverage Usability Testing
Usability testing is where you take people who would use your website, and actually watch them using it. Typically, you ask the person to do things on the site, and you watch either over their shoulder, behind a one-way mirror, or via a second computer where you can see what’s being recorded on the test computer.
It’s amazing how many things you can make better on your website just by watching people use it. Yet, as you get into it, you may find that hiring a usability professional for a testing project can be unnecessarily expensive. Usability professionals are helpful, since they typically have substantial expertise in planning and conducting tests, as well as interpreting test results. However, usability testing does not have to be fancy or formal: people are going to give you their opinion whether you’re sitting in a research company or at Starbucks. So be careful when hiring a professional that seems to make the testing process complicated or costly. When someone does this, it’s usually only for their own financial gain.
To successfully conduct a usability test, just follow these 5 steps:
1. Define your objectives. Begin with the end in mind. What do you want to accomplish with this usability test? Do you have specific areas of your website that you want to improve? If so, this is a great way to get ideas on how to make those areas better. Are you planning on rolling out a new area of your website? A usability test is a great way to do a “trial run” before the big launch.
2. Recruit the participants. This will take the most time, and can be the most frustrating part of the test process. You have to find people to participate (which can be tough, particularly if you need to match specific demographic profiles), and then you need to schedule them. Then, some will cancel, some won’t show, and some will be great test participants. The best way to get a feel for the person is to talk to them directly more than once over the phone. TIP: Be sure to call the person the day of the test to remind them about it.
3. Script the test. You’ll want to have an intro script, the test script, and a post-test survey. The intro script serves as a checklist of things you want to be sure to cover with the person before you start the test. TIP: During the part, try to focus on making the person feel comfortable giving their opinion, and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next part, the test script, is a checklist of the actual things you want the person to do. This i
“Get an introduction to the venture capitalist.” It’s good advice. It just isn’t always possible, or even likely. Many outstanding entrepreneurs with equally outstanding financing proposals simply don’t have The Introduction. Unsolicited, and un-introduced, financing proposals are typically tossed into the dog pile or slush fund or circular file. In most venture capital firms it is the job of a new member of the firm, typically someone with a freshly scrubbed MBA, to weed through that pile, toss out unlikely candidates and pick out any projects that are worth looking at. So the first barrier is a young, ambitious, very well educated, inexperienced person who wants to make a good impression on the partners in the firm.Getting out of the Dog PileAbout 90% to 95% of the proposals in the dog pile are tossed. Some of the top reasons for tossing proposals at this stage include:Sloppy appearance. Loose pages held together with a paper clip, smudges on the pages, yucky colors – these are all quick “toss me” clues. This is typically the very first thing that the reviewer notices, so the appearance has to be commanding.Too little information. A 1-2 page summary is very nice IF it
It’s amazing how many things you can make better on your website just by watching people use it. Yet, as you get into it, you may find that hiring a usability professional for a testing project can be unnecessarily expensive. Usability professionals are helpful, since they typically have substantial expertise in planning and conducting tests, as well as interpreting test results. However, usability testing does not have to be fancy or formal: people are going to give you their opinion whether you’re sitting in a research company or at Starbucks. So be careful when hiring a professional that seems to make the testing process complicated or costly. When someone does this, it’s usually only for their own financial gain.
To successfully conduct a usability test, just follow these 5 steps:
1. Define your objectives. Begin with the end in mind. What do you want to accomplish with this usability test? Do you have specific areas of your website that you want to improve? If so, this is a great way to get ideas on how to make those areas better. Are you planning on rolling out a new area of your website? A usability test is a great way to do a “trial run” before the big launch.
2. Recruit the participants. This will take the most time, and can be the most frustrating part of the test process. You have to find people to participate (which can be tough, particularly if you need to match specific demographic profiles), and then you need to schedule them. Then, some will cancel, some won’t show, and some will be great test participants. The best way to get a feel for the person is to talk to them directly more than once over the phone. TIP: Be sure to call the person the day of the test to remind them about it.
3. Script the test. You’ll want to have an intro script, the test script, and a post-test survey. The intro script serves as a checklist of things you want to be sure to cover with the person before you start the test. TIP: During the part, try to focus on making the person feel comfortable giving their opinion, and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next part, the test script, is a checklist of the actual things you want the person to do. This i
The really nice thing about private label products is that they give you a solid foundation for beginning to create your own product.You can change the title and the book cover. You can sell it with resale rights as a viral ebook, with your links in it. Resale rights give the purchaser the rights to sell the product only, not to change any of the text or links, so it can pass virally through the internet steadily increasing the exposure of your affiliate links.- Produce an audio or video version of the product, if this is relevant. Not all products are suitable for this, but many are.- Break the product up into sections and sell each section on a minisite or as a viral product in its own right. Thus, rather than offer one viral product for sale you could have two or more form the same content. Each part will appear unique to the search engines, thus helping exposure in the listings.- You could use the content to produce a series of free reports, each containing your affiliate links, and use these as a free offering to anyone who fills in your opt-in form. You could use it as a prominent offer on your squeeze page or even your splash page if you are promoting a related product from a minisite.There
2. Recruit the participants. This will take the most time, and can be the most frustrating part of the test process. You have to find people to participate (which can be tough, particularly if you need to match specific demographic profiles), and then you need to schedule them. Then, some will cancel, some won’t show, and some will be great test participants. The best way to get a feel for the person is to talk to them directly more than once over the phone. TIP: Be sure to call the person the day of the test to remind them about it.
3. Script the test. You’ll want to have an intro script, the test script, and a post-test survey. The intro script serves as a checklist of things you want to be sure to cover with the person before you start the test. TIP: During the part, try to focus on making the person feel comfortable giving their opinion, and reiterate that any feedback is good feedback. The next part, the test script, is a checklist of the actual things you want the person to do. This is followed by the post-test survey, which allows you to ask the person questions, and later compare those answers to what they said during the test.
4. Conduct the test. This is the fun part! You sit down with the person, and walk them through the test scenario. Some tests benefit from close “hand holding,” while others benefit from letting the person do whatever they think is right. It completely depends on the objectives, and they information you want to collect. In either case, the best thing to do is to record both the person and what they do on the computer. TIP: Be sure to compensate the person for their time.
5. Report the results. The best way to report the results is two-fold: First, do a quick, one-page or less recap of each session immediately after the test. That way, the information is still fresh in your mind. TIP: Include a picture of the user in your recap, since it will help make that person’s feedback “come alive.” Next, take the information collected during testing, and create 1 to 4 “personas” – user profiles that explain the type of person, what they need from the website, what issues they encounter frequently on the site, and what can be changed to help them. This will help you explain the results to others, and you can reuse these personas later when you are adding or updating areas of your website.
How many people should I test?
For most usability tests, you can learn the maximum amount by only testing ten people. Too many more and you’ll start to see too many recurring patterns. If you go less than ten, you might miss things or not see enough of a pattern.
3. Develop Personas
Let’s face it - no one reads a 20-page usability report from cover to cover. It just doesn’t happen. Usually, key decision makers ask for “recap” presentations, and then “latch on” to one or two key points from the study, quoting that point over and over again.
This presents a great opportunity: why not give those key decision makers something memorable? Enter personas.
Personas are a way to get everyone involved thinking about the actual people who visit your website. What Personas are:
Fake people based on real data
What Personas are not:
Reporting usability testing results as personas is a great way to:
1. Get key decision makers on board with the persona concept
2. Communicate web site issues in the context of the people actually using your site
Creating personas from usability testing data is time-consuming, but very valuable. Just look across the data for key trends: what common roles, goals, and actions do you see? Can you group the feedback along those things? You’ll quickly start to evolve a handful of personas which can be refined over time. Add a name and a few pictures of that “person” and you’ll be on your way to creating a more user-focused website experience.
Again, exactly how you choose to implement these techniques is obviously up to you. Even small steps can make a big impact. You don’t have to have super-sophisticated website analytics, test your website with 100 users, or develop extremely detailed personas. Every step you take in these three areas, no matter how big or how small, will help you get more from your website, and your website marketing strategy.
HTTP = HTML link (for blogs, profiles,phorums):
<a href="http://www.casualarticles.com/article/85109/casualarticles-3-Proven-Techniques-for-Improving-Your-Websites-Usability.html">3 Proven Techniques for Improving Your Website's Usability</a>
BB link (for phorums):
[url=http://www.casualarticles.com/article/85109/casualarticles-3-Proven-Techniques-for-Improving-Your-Websites-Usability.html]3 Proven Techniques for Improving Your Website's Usability[/url]
Related Articles:
Empty Mailbox: The Truth About Mail Order and Direct Mail Businesses
Get the Media to Use Your Photos and Press Release
Bookmark it:
|