One of the greatest features of the Internet and websites is that you can track nearly everything that your users are doing.  This is impossible with all other forms of media.  Taking advantage of this fact is easy to do and free.

1.    How many people visited your site last month?

If the answer is “I don’t know,” then you’re behind the curve.  Web analytics are free (http://www.google.com/analytics) and essential to proper site design and marketing.  If you don’t know which of your content is popular, or where people are dropping off your site then you won’t be able to make the necessary adjustments to improve the site.

2.    What is the most popular content on your website?

As above, you should be able to identify key areas of your website and how frequently they are visited.  You can then build upon these successes in future content iterations so that you are giving your visitors what they want.  Deploying a content management system to manage your site will make gathering this kind of statistics extremely easy.  Because this information is readily available and farily black-and-white, you need to begin relying on this data and stop relying on assumptions that things are effective or that you know what visitors are doing on your site.

3.    Are you collecting user information on your site (name/email at least)?

If you have a website then you should give your users the opportunity to give you their personal information.  They’re on your site for a reason already and often don’t mind sharing this information if they know they’ll get something out of it like a coupon they can bring into your store, or a holiday discount, or just a quarterly newsletter from your company saying what’s going on.  This is a great way to remind past customers about you and to encourage them to come back to the site as well.  With so many tools out there that enable you to create an ongoing dialog with your customers, you should take advantage and give your visitors and customers what they want.  Please note that there are laws regulating how you contact people from online forms and there are also best practices.  Be sure to do your research before emailing people.

4.    Do users have the ability to respond to, or rate any of your content?

Gone are the days of websites being one-way streets.  People want to share their opinions and thoughts and you should listen.  Giving your customers the opportunity to rate your content products often scares business owners and managers.  After all, what if someone says something bad about your products?  First, these applications allow you to moderate comments made, so you can manage visitors that just go nuts and type all kinds of horrible things.  However, if a user legitimately has a concern about one of your products or services wouldn’t you rather fix the issue?  People know you aren’t perfect and if they see that you are responding to the needs and concerns of your customers then they will realize that your goal of keeping them happy is being met.  Also, this might let you know if some of your content or products are just plan crappy and allows you to adjust your business accordingly.

1. Design
2. Navigation
3. Technical Attributes
4. Content & Updates
5. Tracking, Metrics, Feedback

Next:  Evaluation Conclusion

Properly written, frequently updated and easy to find content are critical to the success of your website.  Think of your website as a living organism and the content its food.  In order to keep your site healthy and looking good you need to feed it on a regular basis.  Well fed sites rank higher in search engines and drive repeat traffic.  Content starved, or more specifically update-starved sites fall by the wayside in search engine rankings and give people no reason to come back.

1.    Is your content searchable?

If your website was written from scratch then it’s likely that you don’t have a search.  People expect that function and you should give it to them.  There are some modules you can add to static sites, but your best bet is migrating to a content management system where searching is a built-in function.  This is especially important if you have lots of, or complex content.

2.    How often do you update your website?

I can’t tell you how many times I ask this question only to hear “never”.  Believe it or not, people want to hear what your business is doing, so tell them!  Beyond just informing your customers that you are alive and your business is busy doing things, search engines will love you if your content changes regularly.  The more it changes the more they’re forced to come back because it’s in their best interest to stay current also.  If your content never changes, your site will invariably be ranked lower than some with frequently updated content.  There are numerous ways to keep your content fresh and we will discuss some in the next installment.  Suffice it to say that if you are never updating your site then you are probably getting very few repeat visitors and your search engine rank is very low.

3.    How do you let people know about the updates?

Supposing you are actually updating your site, the next challenge is to figure out how to let people know.  This is another topic of discussion for the next installment, but in short, you need to let people know on your site that content has been updated (cross-linking and self promotion) and externally that content has changed via other outlets like social media, partner sites and blogs and more.  Some changes like adding inventory is not as critical as other updates like press releases but the objective for all of them is to drive new and repeat traffic to your site.

4.    Was your content ported from your company’s printed marketing materials to the web?

Web design is different from print design and unless a person with web experience made the translation, your web content might not be up to par.  It is common for companies to take pamphlets, flyers, newsletters and other print media and try to convert the content word for word to their websites.  This is bad practice.  What you can do is take the ideas and concepts that you are writing about as well as the overall design theme and build your website around this, but just copying and pasting is not advisable.  Content for web needs to be written slightly differently and most certainly formatted differently in order for it to make sense.

5.    Are you advertising other people’s stuff on your website (i.e. do you have banner or other ads on your site)?

We will start with the one exception to this.  If you are running a website whose entire existence is to generate ad revenue through traffic then clearly you need ads for other people’s things on your site.  However, if you are a standard business or a corporation and you have banner ads on your site then you need to print up all of those ads and paste them on your building or storefront for everyone to see because that’s all you’re doing on your website.  The people that design these ads are building them to attract people to their sites.  If they go to their site then guess what, they’re no longer on yours.  The $.05 generated by the click is probably not enough to offset the cost of a lost customer.  Stop advertising for other people.

1. Design
2. Navigation
3. Technical Attributes
4. Content & Updates
5. Tracking, Metrics, Feedback

Next:  Tracking, Metrics, Feedback

The best design and navigation in the world is worthless if it requires a specific browser or application to run it, or if it generates errors at any point while visitors are on the site.

1.    Does any page on your site take more than four seconds to load?

Four seconds is a long time when you’re trying to just get to some information.  Imagine it taking four seconds for you to flip the page in a book.  Reading it wouldn’t be any fun.  Your website is no different.  Test it on fast and slow connections to see how everything loads.  Properly written code, limited scripting, proper use (not over use) of graphics and good hosting all contribute to the page load speed.  If any of your pages are taking this long to load then fix them.  People won’t complain about them, they will just leave and find somewhere else that has content that loads at a proper speed.

2.    Does your site force people do download plugins to work properly?

The only plugin that you should ever think about using on your website is Adobe Flash.  If users are required to download anything else then your site doesn’t work right.  People aren’t on your site to do anything but get information or buy things.  Stop making them do more work than is necessary to accomplish these tasks.

3.    Are you using Microsoft FrontPage or Word to create web pages?

If the answer to this is yes then you can skip the rest of this series and go to the part where we discuss complete redesigns and rebuilds.  FrontPage is fine for kids doing school projects.  It is not an acceptable tool to build professional websites.  FrontPage and Word violate a great number of standard web rules and put in absolutely huge amounts of code where none is needed.  This makes your pages extremely slow and frequently they don’t work on non IE browsers.  Again, if you are using FrontPage or Word then it’s time for a rebuild.  You will love some of the other tools that are out there and they’re no more difficult to use than what you are used to.

4.    Are you using any kind of content management system to manage your website?  If so, what?

Content management systems (CMS) are pieces of software that reside on the web server which help you manage the structure, navigation, design and content on your website.  If you are currently just uploading pages via FTP then odds are that you are not using a CMS.  You should be.  CMS have built in search engine friendly features and have the ability for you to drop in plug-ins and modules that extend and expand the function of your website with little or no coding.  They also allow full searches of your content by default and offer a host of features that make your content easy to manage and update.  The best part is that many of them are free (Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, DotNetNuke).  The days of editing your web pages in DreamWeaver, FrontPage, or other HTML editors are over.  This is a subject that there are thousands of articles about, but in this case not using a CMS is not good.

5.    Did you know what your website looks like in browsers other than Internet Explorer?

Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari all have sizable market shares and all display content differently and you should absolutely test your site in all of them.  If you have not and don’t want to install a bunch of browsers on your computer just go to http://browsershots.org/ and type in your URL.  It will display the site for you and let you see how it looks in multiple browsers.  Do not, however, assume that your visitors are coming to your site only on Internet Explorer.  A sampling of browser statistics from November 2009 is:

(Data from http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)

1. Design
2. Navigation
3. Technical Attributes
4. Content & Updates
5. Tracking, Metrics, Feedback

Next:  Content & Updates

Good navigation is critical for three reasons.  First and foremost so your visitors can find what they want.  Second, so search engines can find and organize your information in their indexes.  Lastly so you know where to put new information easily and quickly.  The key to success with your navigation is your ability to categorize and organize your information into sections that make sense and then your ability to add both information and new categorizations over time with minimal effort on your part.

1.  Does your navigation scheme make sense to someone that knows nothing about your company or products?

If you are a paint company and your navigation scheme looks like a color wheel this might seem cute and fun, but is impractical and probably doesn’t make sense to many of your non-professional painters.  Try http://www.bow-wowbooks.com/.  While this site has any number of other issues, its complete lack of navigation makes it impossible for visitors to get to what they need.  This is the opposite of what you should be trying to do.  Your goal is to get people to the content they want as fast as possible.

2.  How many clicks does it take you to get from the homepage to critical information?

You may have heard of the “Three Click Rule” in which users should be able to retrieve their desired information within three clicks.  On small sites this may be true, but the underlying concept of taking time to consider critical paths is really what this is all about.  A well constructed navigation and well organized and commented content allows for this.  This also means that you should always be thinking about what “critical information” is to your visitors.  This information might change and if it does, you should be aware of this and adapt.  If you don’t know what visitors are looking for, or haven’t even tried to get to it yourself then it’s going to be hard to make these determinations.  Sit down at your own website and pretend to be a customer and find the information, or have someone that isn’t intimately familiar with your business do this and observe them.  If you, or they are getting frustrated or lost then so are your customers and guess what, they're going elsewhere.

3.  Do you have to manually update HTML or other code in order to add a menu item?

Having to manually update code to add pages or menu items is extremely error prone.  You don’t want visitors browsing to broken pages.  In addition to being error prone, having to manually update code to add pages is time consuming and unless your HTML is properly formatted, might also make your site very non-search engine friendly.

4.  Do you have any broken links, or Under Construction pages on your site?

Broken links are like having a door in a store that leads into a brick wall.  It doesn’t take walking face-first into one very many times before customers go elsewhere.   Having "Under Construction" is as bad, or worse.  If your content isn’t available, then it isn’t available. Either write the content and post it, or don't put up links until you do have the content.  Imagine going to CNN's website to look for an article only to find out that the only part that was written was the title and the rest of it is "coming soon."  You wouldn't go back.  Your visitors are no different.

5.  Did you perform any usability testing on your navigation scheme before launching your site?

This might sound daunting, but it isn’t.  Grab a couple friends, family members, co-workers and have them each attempt to do the same task.  Observe them and see how they accomplish it and then ask them to comment.  Such tasks might be “locate product X” or “submit a request for service Y” or “purchase twenty widgets.”  Ideally you do this before launching your site the first time, but if your site is already live then still have them do it.  After these tasks are done ask them not only how easy or difficult was it to do, but how they feel about it.  What you find might be eye-opening.  Not everyone looks for information the same way and people react differently  to any difficulties they have trying to do these tasks.  Your goal is to make your site easy to navigate and use for everyone, not just you.

1. Design
2. Navigation
3. Technical Attributes
4. Content & Updates
5. Tracking, Metrics, Feedback

Next:  Technical Attributes

Let’s face it, if your design sucks people won’t stick around. Period. Why would they? You wouldn’t shop in a store with cluttered shelves, carpet on the walls and a crazy person in the back popping up to remind you that you’re the millionth visitor when right next door is a store selling the same goods and services with clean, well organized stock, friendly service and no distractions. People are visiting your website and in their minds your website is a direct reflection of the quality of your business. Crummy website = crummy business. The inverse is also true and something you can and should take advantage of. If you’re a small business with a stellar website you have a great opportunity to put yourself on a level playing field with the big boys.

1. It is immediately apparent to a casual visitor what your company does (have a non-employee do this)?

At first, asking a question like this might sound absurd, but it is If by just scanning your homepage a visitor cannot immediately determine the purpose of your site and your business then you are doing something wrong. Plus, if a real person can’t tell what you do then it’s fairly certain that search engines also will have no clue what you do and therefore will rank your page lower than you would like.

2. Does your logo look professionally made? Be honest.

If you didn’t pay a professional to do your logo and instead used either a pre-packaged one or had a friend or relative do it for free then there is a very good chance that your logo looks like it was done by an amateur… because it was. Remember that done right, your logo will provide you with [good] brand recognition. People often balk at spending a few dollars here, but this logo will affect the design of both your online and your printed materials and if it starts off looking bad then you can expect subsequent marketing materials to follow suit.

3. Is your site at all [handicap] accessible?

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has published guidelines (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/) to use to ensure that your website can be browsed by individuals limited or no sight, vision and movement. In order for many of these people to browse the web they need the assistance of special tools that either magnify the screen or read the content aloud to them. While it may sound like a daunting task to make your site accessible, the truth is that by at least working toward a base level of accessibility you are helping all of your visitors. The core guidelines basically state to:

Separate structure from presentation. This means don’t make your entire site in Flash, or out of images. This also means use proper underlying tags to format and frame your content.

Provide text and text equivalents. This means that your site should have text (duh) and that any images on your site are tagged with text describing the images. This is good for accessibility as well as to make your site search engine friendly (SEF). Doing this kills two birds with one stone.

Make content understandable and navigable. This means using proper links on the site for navigation, proper headers and limiting your use of non-traditional navigation, linking and page orientation.

By following these guidelines when developing your site you are opening it up to a greater number of visitors as well as using proper techniques to make your site more understandable and usable for everyone.

4. Did you purchase images and graphics for your website?

If your website has clip art from your Microsoft Word, or images that you just found online and saved or simply contains no images then this is a red flag. As we mentioned earlier, your visitors can tell the difference between quality and junk and if you’re using clip art then you are leaning toward the latter. Secondly, if you just borrowed some images from other websites then you are stealing and breaking the law. Also not good. Purchasing images can be extremely cheap ($1-$10 each in many cases) and make your site look far more professional (probably because the images are done by professionals). Please note that when I say images, I do not mean only photos. This includes backgrounds, illustrations, etc.

5. Does your site have a consistent look and feel on every page?

If your site has five different sections, one for each line of products you sell and every section has different fonts, backgrounds and branding just so your visitors understand that they’re in a different section then you are not only insulting the intelligence of your visitors, but you have made a lot more work for yourself come time to update the site. Or, if you have simply hand-coded every single page and are not using any consistent template or formatting across any pages then you’re in real trouble when you want to add new content or change a layout.

The key here is to choose a format that works for what your objectives are and run with it. You can customize each page a bit with images and text, but being consistent is critical from a search engine optimization (SEO) standpoint as well as from a visitor sanity standpoint. If Sony can sell DVDs, computers, service plans and digital book readers (www.sonystyle.com) using the same formatting then your business can offer service X and widget Y using consistent formatting and styling.

1. Design
2. Navigation
3. Technical Attributes
4. Content & Updates
5. Tracking, Metrics, Feedback

Next: Navigation

Before we start

Our goal here is to help you think critically about your website and quite possibly think about your site in ways you never imagined. We will discuss such topics as SEF, SEO, analytics, information architecture and more, but none of these technologies or techniques matters if the average user (you) navigates to a website and your first gut reaction about the site is negative. So, the first step will be for you to open a new browser window, clear the cache (this is important) and enter the address for your company. After exactly five seconds have passed, close the window and record a number on a scale from one to ten regarding your overall impression of your website. Ten being the best site you’ve ever seen and one being the World’s Worst Website. This is also a good exercise to do with a neutral third party.

Your Score ______

Step 1: The Evaluation

I will suggest going through this process with someone else’s website first. You don’t have to write does your answers, but just read through this list while examining someone else’s site. This will get you thinking critically about design and data. We’ll get to yours soon enough. This is by no means a totally comprehensive list of questions you should be asking, but just some to get you headed in the right direction and to figure out if your site needs help, or if things are just fine.

In our next post we will begin to examine each of these topics and the importance of each relating to your website.

Design

1. It is immediately apparent to a casual visitor what your company does (have a non-employee do this)?
2. Does your logo look professionally made? Be honest.
3. Is your site at all [handicap] accessible?
4. Did you purchase images for your website?
5. Does your site have a consistent look and feel on every page?

Navigation

1. Does your navigation scheme make sense to someone that knows nothing about your company or products?
2. How many clicks does it take you to get from the homepage to critical information?
3. Do you have to manually update HTML or other code in order to add a menu item?
4. Do you have any broken links, or Under Construction pages on your site?
5. Did you perform any usability testing on your navigation scheme before launching your site?

Technical Attributes

1. Does any page on your site take more than four seconds to load?
2. Does your site force people do download plugins to work properly?
3. Are you using Microsoft FrontPage or Word to create web pages?
4. Are you using any kind of content management system to manage your website? If so, what?
5. Did you know what your website looks like in browsers other than Internet Explorer?

Content & Updates

1. Is your content searchable?
2. How often do you update your website?
3. How do you let people know about the updates?
4. Was your content ported from your company’s printed marketing materials to the web?
5. Are you advertising other people’s stuff on your website (i.e. do you have banner or other ads on your site)?

Tracking, Metrics, Feedback

1. How many people visited your site last month?
2. What is the most popular content on your website?
3. Are you collecting user information on your site (name/email at least)?
4. Do users have the ability to respond to, or rate any of your content?

Stay tuned for next week when I discuss each of these items in more depth and how each can help or hider your success online.

Next: Part 2 - Evaluate Your Website