More SEO Myths about website usability

Marketing
1

22 Oct 2010

This article explains some SEO myths regarding users.
Myths:

  • Design And Optimize For The Statistically Average Searcher/User
  • I Am The User (this means you the developer/designer)
  • People Find/Use My Website All The Time; Therefore It’s User Friendly

The article recommends creating profiles of your types of users, getting feedback from those who visit your site (questionaires, user testing, analytics), and telling yourself that how you see and understand your site is not how visitors see and understand your site.

After all, the point of having your site searchable isn’t so people end up on your site, only to leave seconds later. It’s to get those searching for your content or product to find your site, quickly and easily find what they are looking for, and consume your content/product or do whatever they came there to do.

Users who are looking for your content or product but find your site difficult to use, or confusing may leave and never come back. Your competitors will welcome them.

2

Nice post, Stomme poes. It’s certainly a difficult exercise to see your site freshly (as if viewing it though your visitors’ eyes. It’s kind of the same with teaching, too, BTW.)

I recently showed a web page I’d made to my mother. It had a little bit of text and a contact form on it. I was quite proud of the page, and she was interested to have a look and try out the form. I looked over her shoulder as she surveyed the page. The text basically said—“please enter your contact details in the form below”.

I wanted her to try out the form. So I waited and waited, and watched the back of her head as she scanned the page, top to bottom, bottom to top, over and over again. Finally I asked her if she was going to fill in the form (as that was the main point of her viewing the page).

She replied, rather vexed, that she was trying to find the form, but couldn’t see it. Now, let me point out that the form was center page, with big, clearly defined labels and input fields, one above the other, with a big submit button at the bottom.

Finally, in frustration, I pointed to the great big contact form in the middle of the page.

“O, is THAT what you mean by a form?” she replied. “I wouldn’t call that a form. I was looking for something I had to print out and fill in. Isn’t that what a form is?”

I was dumbfounded, as my mother is an intelligent, highly professional woman and an experienced internet user.

It certainly made me think again about how I use language. This was my first real experience of usability testing, and a painful one, I must say. :smiley:

3

She doesn’t fill in forms on web pages?

Or, more likely, she calls web forms something else?

4

Yes, she’s done many, so it seemed to be the use of the word ‘form’. I must ask her again what she would call them, as I can’t remember what she said now (I did ask her at the time). It was such a shock to me that the word ‘form’ didn’t do the job, though.

5

Definitely ask her. She may use a term that’s rather popular among a certain population.

Similarly there was an older screen reader study done back in 2000 or maybe earlier… where people were confused by “skip navigation”. At that time, “navigation” wasn’t a commonly-used term, except by web geeks.