35% of visitors fail to achieve their goal when they visit
company websites! By following 2 simple rules, you can increase
your web-derived revenue by 1/3 or more!
Renowned website usability researcher, Jakob Nielsen, today (Nov
24) published results of his latest study. His test subjects
used 139 websites. On average, they failed to find what they
were looking for 35% of the time. Shockingly, 37% of users
couldn't even find company location details!
What was surprising was that users didn't give up. They
generally found the information they were after - but they found
it at a competitor's site!
So how do you stop potential customers falling into the hands of
your competitors? Nielsen is right when he suggests user
research. Yes, it's imperative that know what your users need at
your site. But what he doesn't say is how to structure your
website so it meets users' needs.
There are two golden rules:
Write first, build later Write to your customer Write first,
build later The real message on most websites is in the writing.
It makes sense, then, that the writing should determine the
structure.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for most businesses. For
them, the writing is an afterthought. They structure and design
their website first, then try to fit the writing to the
structure. This flies in the face of common sense. When you
speak to someone, you structure your speech around your message.
You don't decide on a structure, then change the message to suit!
For a truly usable website, you need to plan what you want to
say before you create the site - perhaps even write the whole
thing. The message - the writing - should determine the
structure.
Write to your customer So how do you decide what to write?
Firstly, don't think, "What do I want to say?". When you're
writing a website, you have to think, "What does my customer
want to know?". It's a very subtle difference, but it's the key
to engaging writing. And that's what you want to do... engage
the customer.
Most customers will want to know the basics:
What do you do? What benefit do you offer them? Why should they
choose your service or product? Why should they choose your
service or product and not your competitors'? What does it cost?
How can they contact you? Where are you located? Your website
has to communicate a lot of information. And to make matters
worse, you're going to have limited screen real-estate. Ideally,
your customer won't have to scroll - especially on your homepage
(all your information will fit within a single window). And you
can't fill the whole screen with writing, either. The design and
navigation elements take up about a third of the window, and you
should leave a bit for white space (you don't want to overwhelm
your customer). As a rule of thumb, you should expect to have
about 1/3 - ½ of the window at your disposal for the writing.
Chances are, right now you're thinking, "How am I going to fit
it all in?". Well, that's where your writing skills come in.
Choose your words very carefully...
Websites can be an extremely powerful piece of marketing
collateral. You can reach millions for just a few hundred
dollars. Unfortunately, your competitors can do the same thing.
It's a level playing field, but there are a lot of players. It's
important that your thoughts are structured, otherwise your site
will be a mess. If your message is clear, your site will be
simple and easy to use. It's all in the words...
8 More Reasons to Write for Your Audience... There are
approximately 550 billion documents on the web Every day another
7 million are added Workers take so long trying to find
information that it costs organisations $750 billion annually!
(A.T. Kearney, Network Publishing study, April 2001) Reading
from a monitor is 25% slower than reading from paper. (Sun
Microsystems, 1998) Helpful content develops site loyalty. The
average person visits no more than 19 websites in the entire
month in order to avoid information overload. (Nielsen
NetRatings in Jan 2001) 79% of users scan read when online (Sun
Microsystems, 1998) Information gathering is the most common use
of the Internet - 73% (American Express survey, 2000) 48% of
people use the Internet to find work-related information as
opposed to 7% who use magazines. (Lyra Research, 2001)
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