What is the point of driving traffic to a website if you send them away from bad design once they get there? Sure, SEO is important but so is usability, creating a frictionless user experience, having a unique selling proposition, compelling call to action and appeasing layout to complement the SEO process holistically for online marketing and conversion.
Last year I had the pleasure of meeting Sandra Niehaus (from Closed Loop Marketing), Tim Ash (from Sitetuners) and Kayden Kelly (from Blast Advanced Media). Since that time I haven’t really stayed in touch, but after reading this stellar post from Sandra Niehaus over at Dr. Ralph Wilson’s wilsonweb.com on Button Balance and using Design to Differentiate and Prioritize Buttons, this inspired us to crack into a few aged posts from the archives discussing the culmination of SEO and Usability.
If you haven’t discovered WilsonWeb.com or taken the time to peruse their pages, I assure you might get lost for hours reading post after post, due to the wealth of information presented.
Take Your Design to The Next Level
A website should fire on all cylinders; this process begins from sculpting each facet from the original intent of the page by clarifying that intent with a distinguished title to entice readers who skim search results to transitioning to the post-click marketing phase and ensuring there is a clear conversion path or suggested conversion objective to funnel the reader’s attention.
This critical ratio of 1/3 SEO, 1/3 direct response, 1/3 usability should collectively harmonize the user experience to create a favorable impression during their tenure of their various interactions within your website.
When you think about what there is to lose vs. what there is to gain through usability and conversion optimization, hiring a professional is worth every penny. Consider that an entire business quarters worth of effort for new business acquisition could be completely eliminated just by lowering bounce rates and corralling visitors to pages built to mirror their intent and increase conversion.
Below are links to posts from our SEO Web Design and Usability category from the past few years as well as expert usability advice from our colleague Dr. John Sorflaten a seasoned usability expert with roots dating back several decades on the topic.
- Usability Solutions to SEO Challenges
- SEO Web Design, Usability and The Power of Impression
- SEO Concerns about Usability in Organizations
- What is Superior SEO Web Design?
- The Psychology of a Click Through
- SEO Design, Relevance and Appeal
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