Interestingly, two out of the nine cities received only one-sixth to one-fourth the response rate of the other seven cities.  Why? That was the question.

A Usability Evaluation of SERP Results

Like Sherlock Holmes honing in on the mystery, Jeffrey’s staffer pointed out that a prospective site visitor could either type in <the service> or type in <the service + a city>. Therefore, the search engine results page (SERP) for some of the cities had the client home page show up below the landing page specific to a given city. That is, for most cities, regardless of whether the city was entered in the search or not, the home page would appear above the city-specific landing page. However, for a couple cities, the home page would appear below the GEO targeted / city-specific page.

In all cases, both entries tended to appear in the top five or six listings, well within easy reading.

So, how should we analyze the problem of low conversion rates for the two cities?

First, Jeffrey’s staffer analyzed whether the two low conversion cities had SERP links consistently above the home page links. Turns out that indeed, when searchers added the city name to their search, only the two cities with low conversions had search engine results where the city-specific page appeared above the home page result.

Therefore, the low conversions resulted from the city-specific page failing to give a persuasive message and present the call-to-action in a convincing manner. These are usability problems, not SEO problems. Also, it would be impractical to “tune” the city-specific pages so they’d show up below the home page listings. We would need usability solutions to make the city-specific pages work as a conversion page.

Usability Comparison of Two Site Entry Pages

Wondering how conversions were done for most of the site-visitors, I looked at the home page and saw that a large “Request Information” box in the top right corner. It had nine fields asking for the usual name, address, email and desired training location (of nine cities available). Visitors looking to the left of the page saw a large inviting photographic image with a compelling benefit in text.

Meanwhile, the site web log shows if a site visitor completes the Request Information process, they have probably signed up from the home page. This is an interesting clue. Plus, the home page entertained the eyes.

Meanwhile, visiting the city-specific landing page was another experience. The page had a Request Information button on the left margin. It was modest with a pale pastel color, and not a large Request Information box at the top right like the home page.

Designing Web Usability

Here’s where usability meets SEO. SEO delivers the customer. But usability delivers the experience. For instance, what user experience does position give the site visitor? Which position captures attention better: a pale object to the left of the main content (and below the fold), or a more contrasting object to the right of the main content (and above the fold)?

Eye scan usability research shows that site visitors tend to jump to central page-content first. Add this to the traditional usability finding that users process text in a left-right, top-down pattern. Together, these facts suggest that objects to the right of the main focus will grab attention faster-especially if it is darker than the pale pastel object on the left column that also happens to fall below the fold.

Web Usability Testing Shows Reading Challenges

Furthermore, usability testers find people skip a lot of things when reading a page. Many times items on the left get interpreted as “navigation”. And if a site visitor does not want to navigate, they ignore items on left-especially if they’re below the fold.

Therefore, our first recommendation included placing a replica of the Request Information object to the right of the main content on the city-specific page. Also, it must appear above the fold.

A replica of the Request Information object serves two functions. Visitors who had already seen the home page would again see the same object on the city-specific page, and thus recognize it rapidly. This means they could effortlessly its presence and focus on whatever else was on the page. They could return to that object if they wanted more information.

Meanwhile, visitors who came to this landing page as their first experience of the site would see the large object as a clear invitation to Request Information-just as happened to the large percentage of “conversion” visitors on the home page.

Landing Pages Serve Both SEO and Usability Goals

For the record, we must acknowledge that the city-specific page serves a different function than the home page. The city-specific page must deliver the goods about the training services in the context of that city. Therefore, important content must appear high on the page to meet the site visitor’s expectations. This insures the page serves SEO goals of catering to city-specific searches.

Therefore, to support both SEO and usability goals, I recommended placing the Request Information towards the bottom right on the page, insuring that the title (Request Information) plus the top couple fields be clearly visible above the fold. This position acknowledged the site visitor’s need for textual and pictorial support about the specific city. But the lower-right position clearly supported the usability mission of providing a call-to-action for more information.  Being on the right side made the Request Information a logical actionable follow-up after the site visitor had read data on the training amenities unique to that city.

More Help from Usability Standards and Methods

There were a few other points that could help the city-specific page gain more conversions if it happened to be the first page seen by a site visitor. Here’s a list that illustrate the usability definition of web design standards…

1)      Make the text more scannable. Usability research and usability testing clearly show that site visitors want to minimize reading when information foraging. Support for scanning comes from bullet lists and numbered lists. The page had some bullets (good) but also large paragraphs (hard to read).

2)     Include more headers. Research shows that headers help people remember site content better. It also helps them scan for topics of special interest. Do you find the headers on this blog useful? They also support your SEO goals by elevating the importance of the phrases for search engine metrics.

3)     Use larger font. When I paste text from this site into my Word document, it comes up as 8.5 point font. I know that font point size shows up differently according to your monitor size and screen resolution. So point size is not the “final word”. However, the font caused me to work harder than other sites I saw on my same laptop. Other sites came out as 10 points or 11 points. Note the research finds that 20% of any group fails to have 20/20 corrected vision. So your audience has vision problems even before they see your site.

4)     User dark font. On our reviewed site, the font was grey. Usability research shows that the foreground font should have a 90% difference in brightness compared with the background. Grey font just doesn’t do it. Check out this online contrast checker. You enter the RGB or Hex values of your web color and get a contrast read-out: http://www.snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html

5)     Understand how users interpret your words. This issue reflects the usability practice of understanding the “mental model” of the site’s audience.

Remember the “Request Information” button I said was in a pale pastel and also below the fold? The button appears inside a box (with the same pastel color) on the left side. Although the top portion of the box appears above the fold, site visitors failed to use the button, even though the button said “Request Info”. Why?

First, we see that the header for that box says “Contact Us”. Ask yourself, how does “Contact Us” give the same compelling call-to-action as “Request Info”? While I can’t speak for all site-visitors, common web usage convention suggests that “Contact Us” lacks the compelling power of “Request Information”. The later phrase actively invites action. The former reminds us of all other web sites where “Contact Us” serves as a catch-all for product problems, web-master messages, as well as complaints about service. Certainly, in that context, Contact Us fails to communicate “Request Information”.

I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of how usability science contributes to support SEO goals. All eCommerce sites require conversions. SEO provides the opportunity. Usability methods deliver the customer. Both disciplines serve the customer.

This guest post was written by Dr. John Sorflaten, PhD, CUA, Certified Professional Ergonomist (CPE) who in addition to a degree in Cognitive Psychology, has over 25 years of experience as a certified usability specialist.

SEO Design Solutions has the distinct pleasure of working Dr. Sorflaten to provide a unique suite of SEO and usability consulting services provided through on page website analysis and review. This convergence of SEO and usability provides clients with in-depth solutions to funnel visitors to the appropriate conversion objective, reduce user anxiety and enhance the user experience.

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Designing Web Usability

Herein appears the illusion of “design”. Everybody is a designer—and this includes you (the SEO expert) and the other guys over there in the other office: the coding experts.

But only usability designers focus on designing for your site’s target audiences. When you fail to talk to real end-users, you end up talking to yourself or your buddies at work. When that happens, what you think is “user-friendly” to one or two people in your office becomes wild-ass “user-antagonistic” to thousands of real site visitors. Failure happens when the coders or other so-called “designers” just talk to themselves about hypothetical end users out in the web world.

The serious usability designer applies a usability methodology that includes identifying “user groups” or various target audiences. After conducting interviews to carefully define tasks people need to do, then you go about designing web usability into your site.

Usability Methods

Adoption of usability methods means end-users see their own vocabulary on your site (not your stakeholders’ abstract jargon). They see that your site uses the metaphors or “mental model” that guided their actions in the past (not some fantasy generated by ivory tower specialists). Therefore, interacting with your site feels familiar. “Familiar” translates to “I like” your site.

Usability Standards

Furthermore, by adding usability standards your website usability work creates consistency in the use of controls, placement of controls, and choice of words like “Go” or “Submit”. That consistency means “usability standards” makes life easier for site visitors. They don’t have to keep relearning how to navigate your site or figuring out your terminology.

Web Usability Testing

Better yet, you have also done some usability evaluation. For example, let’s assume you have two web audiences for your car sales sites: techno-geeks and average car buyers. Best practices suggest that you select about 10 test participants for each audience—a total of 20 people. Then you should create a sequence of tasks that will take about an hour per person. One hour reflects the limit of focused attention. You probably have a sequence of ten important tasks that must be easy to complete.

You tell your test participant “We are not testing you. We are testing this web site.” You say this to remove anxiety and restore normalcy to your participant.

You also say “Please tell me what you are thinking” throughout your ten tasks. This is how you find usability problems. You write down the problems and decide how to prioritize efforts to re-design around the problems.

We call this process “web usability testing.” Ten people from each of those two groups will help you uncover about 85% of the problems—given results of prior published research on how to do usability testing.

Putting “Usability” Into the Job

You’ve just read a description of usability methodology. Here’s the question for people writing job descriptions. (Ah, we’re back to our introductory paragraph.) Is web usability closer to SEO goals or to the goals of your friendly neighborhood coder?

You have one lifeline to answer! Want to get help from the audience? If so, you’ll hear much louder applause for associating usability with SEO work than with coding work. SEO folks need to know the end-user vocabulary and mental model for a given task or search quest. What do coders need? They need to know the best Flex, the best Java-script, the best HTML and best C++ in town.

Usability as a Specialty for SEOs

If a coder spends time on interviewing users to get system requirements, they waste their client’s time and cheat them out of the best coding possible. Same goes for coders designing user interfaces.

That said, see below for a job listing from a reputable company in Iowa City, IA: ACT—the American College Testing people. They want a coder who is a usability person. They want it all. Who wouldn’t?

But this job description fails both disciplines. Take a look below. For contrast, I made the coder stuff bold and the usability stuff italics. Some words refer to both jobs. I made those words both bold and italics.

The word “design” becomes ambiguous in this context. So I bolded it and italicized it. “Design” can refer to either coding or usability. Because this job description clearly asks for end-user application interfaces and menus, it’s also clear the HR recruiter assumes if you design code, you can also design great user experiences.

The word “test” becomes equally mysterious. Yes, you must test code for bugs. And yes, you should test the usability of an application. (Did the writer even think of that? We don’t know.)

We leave it to you to decide if usability should be left to coders. But more importantly, we know you are an avid SEO advocate. You know what’s at stake in designing web usability. Let’s not leave it to coders for whom usability is a part-time job, if that.

Usability methods and usability standards support your SEO efforts. Usability supports conversion through ease-of-use. And, after all, your SEO work brings people to the site. Why not assure your maximum conversion by designing web usability?

Here’s that job listing from ACT (bold=coder work; italics=usability work; bold+italics=both):

Title: Senior Systems Analyst, Research
Skills: RDBMS, programming, data analysis

Perform all essential aspects of large-scale reporting systems including the design, analysis, enhancement, modification and documentation of all stages of the projects. ACT is a not-for-profit, nationally recognized leader in assessment and information products whose culture values work/life balance. Typical work-related activities include:

• Design, implement and manage program service databases.
• Design and develop system specifications for program services.
• Receive and clarify data mining, data analysis and large system project requests.
• Identify, select and transfer data needed to complete a project.
• Design and implement programs to perform desired analysis.
• Design report output formats.
• Design, implement and maintain database entry/edit screens.
• Design and implement end-user application interfaces and menus to perform various operations.
• Maintain documentation of files, programs and systems.
• Develop large scale automated “canned” reporting systems.
• Modify, enhance, and maintain new and existing systems.
• Coordinate tests and observe initial use of new/modified systems.
• Test and configure 3rd party UNIX software packages.
• Make hardware/software requests and justifications.
• Prepare training materials.
• Exercise discretion and independent judgment in decision making.
• Assist in developing goals and objectives for the area.
• Assist in the hiring and training of personnel.
• Maintain a high level of confidentiality.

This guest post was written by Dr. John Sorflaten, PhD, CUA, Certified Professional Ergonomist (CPE) who in addition to a degree in Cognitive Psychology, has over 25 years of experience as a certified usability specialist.

SEO Design Solutions has the distinct pleasure of working Dr. Sorflaten to provide a unique suite of SEO and usability consulting services provided through on page website analysis and review. This convergence of SEO and usability provides clients with in-depth solutions to funnel visitors to the appropriate conversion objective, reduce user anxiety and enhance the user experience.

John brings a wealth of experience to the table and is a thought-leader on the vanguard of usability executed in tandem with applied SEO on a granular level to build a robust, yet practical site structure to holistically enhance design, user engagement and ROI / sales conversion.

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