Usability and Navigation: Improve Your Site Packaging

Last week, we started talking about the packaging and formatting of sites. Here are the previous posts:

• How?s The Packaging And Formatting Of Your Site?
• Blog Design: Improve Your Site Packaging

Today, we’ll talk about usability and navigation. How’s the visitor experience on your site? Is it easy to find stuff?

Highlight Your Best Content

First impressions count, so make sure new visitors can easily find your best content. If you publish new content regularly (you should), you need to highlight your best articles especially your more timeless ones.

I looked at the top 3 make money online blogs according to 45n5. (The list is great idea and linkbait, by the way.) Notice how each of the top 3 blogs highlights their best content.

1. Problogger

Cool widget on the home page:

Rotating banner above the fold that points to quality content for newbie bloggers:

2. John Chow

Popular articles section above the fold:

3. Shoemoney

Favorite posts section above the fold:

Know Your Audience

Some people have complained about John Chow’s blog design having too many ads. But his audience is internet marketers. This audience is used to seeing busy site designs with ads, email subscription boxes, and widgets above the fold.

If you’re not in the make money online niche, you probably shouldn’t use a design like John Chow’s. Most other niches have an audience that is not as online-savvy, tech-savvy, or ad-tolerant as internet marketers. In these niches, your site design has to be simpler or your visitors will get confused and leave.

Go to the other sites your target audience is visiting especially the popular and profitable ones. Then, use a design that’s similar to those sites.

Be Clear on Your Call to Action

The call to action is the action you want a visitor to take.

If you want more RSS subscribers, put your feed above the fold with a big RSS button. If you want to build your email list, place an opt-in box with an attractive picture above the fold. If you want more digg votes, insert a digg button in your content. If you want your visitors to buy an affiliate product, write a review about it. Then, in the review, cut out all the AdSense and only link out to the product.

You can have too many calls to action on any given page. It’s better to focus on a few actions or your visitors will get confused and leave. Internet users want to know what they’re supposed to do on a webpage. Help them :)

So, don’t put 3 AdSense blocks, 4 AuctionAd blocks, 20 social voting buttons, a poll, your twitter feed, and 20 technorati tags in one article. Simplicity is beautiful and leads to better conversion rates.

Fast Loading Time

Slow loading times can be caused by many things like images (too big, wrong file type), too many plugins, too many scripts running, and bloated CSS code.

For non-programmers, check out this article: 6 Ways To Speed Up Your Site.

Also, for more complex issues, ask a programmer to streamline your code to make your site run faster.

Conclusion and Feedback

Don’t ignore web usability. It will help you make more money. Your visitors will recommend your site to others if they have an enjoyable experience on your site. Also, they’ll become repeat visitors.

What other tips do you have for improving usability and navigation?