It is odd that you pretty much never hear folks talking about usability and websites. People seem to get so engrossed with traffic and other matters but usability does not seem to be on the majority of peoples’ radar. If your site is not so “usable,” then essentially people will not want to use it – meaning stay there, or come back – meaning not very sticky. We all want our visitors and readers to return to our sites. You will need to have a clear picture of what your visitors are doing as soon as they land on your site.
The only way for nearly all of us to have some grasp of our website is through tracking visitor actions. The basic approach is to discover where your site is under-performing; once done, you analyze the location and begin creating adjustments. When you think about it, that approach is not so advanced, but it does work well if you do it. So you want to make use of the most robust tracking program you can find. A tracking script monitors site visitors; they all do that but many have a lot more cool bells and whistles. You will want to know the how, where and when of traffic flow in addition to time spent on each page. A robust tracking script will enable you to observe your visitors and look for trails and signs they were on your site.
When you indulge in the overall process of increasing site usability, you are optimizing. Essentially you will be improving what is achievable for your most desired result on your site. When you are ready to make changes on your site, then you need to perform testing. The vast bulk of people just use split testing, and that is fine since it does work well. Multivariate testing is much more powerful and different than split testing. If you are unsure about what to test, in that case you can start with what you think is the most important aspect of a page. Nevertheless, if you are tracking and notice visitors are constantly exiting on the same page, then that is a huge clue that a specific thing on that page is inducing them to leave. The sensible approach to optimization and testing is to discover where your site is weak so you can fix it.
This process of enhancing does require time, but if you are serious about developing a business it is worth doing. Once you start seeing good results, you will likely be happy with yourself for having accomplished it. You will get your conversion rates to a satisfying level, and that is what this is all about. The end game is increased success and continual business growth.
1/30/2011
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