In my last article, I stated several facts about the importance of having a developed search engine friendly website. The website would be visually pleasing and at the same time optimized for high search engine rankings. It stated the differences between a designer and a search engine optimizer. It also stressed the important functions that both vocations respectively have on a website’s development. The article even offered some of my own personal design/optimization workarounds that can easily be applied to your current or next project.

What the article had failed to mention or discuss through, was the third party that plays a huge role in whether or not a website stays successful or washes away never to be seen or heard of again; referring to website’s users or visitors.

When developing and maintaining a website, one should not only remember to consider a search engine friendly design, but also the users and their interactions within the website. For the most part, your website’s usability should be considered equally if not more important than all other aspects of your website… this includes the design, layout, and marketing strategies.

So what exactly is usability? Well, user-ability or usability, in essence, is the degree to which a user can successfully learn and use a product to achieve a goal. In this case, the product would be your website and the goal would be to find what he or she is searching for in a timely manner. As a way of assisting you to create a true user experience, consider adding the following user-friendly design and marketing suggestions into your current or next project.

• Use Search Engine Marketing - Actually a very basic principle, yet for some online merchants it’s a fairly complicated subject. To break it down, having a website without search engine marketing, for example, can be compared to opening your business out on some back-country road and the road only ties two farm towns together. Sure you may find a few stray consumers that manage to find and walk through your door, but not too many.

  Therefore by including search engine marketing into your website, you have converted your business to a much wider and more populous audience, such as Times Square, New York City contrary to the back-country road. Instantly your business is exposed to several hundred thousand people each day, ensuring your business to be successful. In addition, search engine marketing delivers targeted traffic. Thusly, that is like insinuating that every man, women, or child that stepped onto your equivalent of Time Square, are specifically in search of the products or services that you provide.

  In conclusion, by marketing your products and services through search engine marketing, you ensure for your customers a faster and easier solution to their needs that will result in your profit. This is indeed a very important factor in maintaining a true user-friendly experience.
  
  

• Create Proper Landing Pages - Having just covered “search engine marketing”, there is something to be learned specifically from Pay Per Click landing pages. A landing page, a page that the searcher lands on when they first enter a website, provides yet another opportunity for you to step up to the plate and deliver a more user-friendly experience.

  It is very important to direct your Pay Per Click traffic to a page that clearly outlines the information the searcher was looking to attain. You would only waste their time by sending them through the home page or some other non-related page. Website usability is great when you provide your visitors with the information that they are in search of in a very timely manner. Therefore, the more time that you waste making them search, the greater the chance that they will become annoyed and eventually move on to other search listings.

  People that use search engines to find products or services provide you with information about themselves and how far they are in the buying process. For example:

  If a person were to do a search by using a very general term such as “MP3 Players” than it’s probably safe to assume that the person is indeed researching the subject and is not quite sold on any particular brand or style as of yet. My suggestion would be to create a specific landing page that would outline several MP3 players that you carry. This intern would help the customer to find one that best suites their needs.

  On the contrary, if a person were to search for “20GB Dell DJ” than it’s quite obvious that they know exactly what it is that they want to purchase. However, they still would be in search of the right place to make their purchase. In this scenario, I would suggest that you do all you can to convince your visitor that you are worthy of their business. Simply send this type of traffic to a page that highlights elements such as your low price, low shipping rates, shipping options, return policies, privacy policies, and that you maintain a secure shopping environment.

• Highlight Shipping Rates - In most competitive industries, shipping options and rates have become just as much of a selling point as the product’s actual cost. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to highlight or advertise your shipping rates on your homepage and landing pages. You should even offer specialty savings on shipping rates to entice and retain potential customers to buy from your store.

  More and more customers have abandoned their shopping carts. There are instances where website visitors would leave in the middle of the “check-out” phase. Some of these lost sales can be contributed to a website’s shipping rates. This key fact makes sense because on most websites, the only way you can determine how much your shipping and/or handling fees are going to be would be by going through the actual checkout.

  Website owners need to understand that shipping options and rates are very important bits of information to their website’s visitors. By highlighting the information up front you, again, can deliver a true user-friendly experience.

• Use A Proper Navigation System - One of the most effective ways to help your visitors find the information, products, or services that they desire is to equip your website with a navigation system that is easy to find, understand, and use. It is encouraged that you create a navigation system that resides across the top of the page, or one that flows down the left side of the page. Both instances are quite common, as well as practical.

  In addition, your navigation system should not change from one page to another. By doing so it will most-likely create confusion, which is what you are trying to avoid. Therefore, maintain the same layout, link order, and color sequence to prevent any sort of misdirection on your part.

• Use A Proper “Call To Action” Phrase - After you have helped your website’s visitors to find what they are looking for in a timely manner, it becomes your obligation to make them feel as if they were in 100% control of their shopping experience. In general, online shoppers will almost always feel in control as long as they are not pressured in any way. Finally, give this last bit of information half a chance and it will convert more of your website visitors into customers.

  The “call to action” phrase, the phrase that will direct online shoppers to add an item into their shopping cart, will outwardly reflect on a website sales and conversions. Taking that into consideration, use the phrase “Add to Cart” or an “Add to Cart” button as your “call to action” whenever possible. “Add to Cart” is something that is well recognized and understood to be a part of the buying process (both online and offline).

  Should you choose to use other phrases, such as “Buy Now” or “Order Now”, you risk that your website visitors will feel pressure. This is what you do not want to happen. Statements such as these will be seen as bold and forceful. Subsequently, your visitors feel as if they MUST buy then, rather than just adding it to the shopping cart. Also, statements such as “Buy Now” and “Order Now” give finality to the process when possibly not intended. Instead of adding an item to the shopping cart, the statement now suggests that your visitors will be transferred directly to the checkout where they must now make a purchase.

  In the offline world, a person would not go into a super-market or a retail store, find the first of many items they want to buy, buy it, and proceed to reenter the store to continue shopping for the rest. This is an un-natural behavior. Instead, people add items into their shopping carts as they find them, and when finished, they then proceed to the checkout. Your website’s “call to action” phrase should suggest nothing different.

In conclusion, online shoppers have come to expect a few distinct shopping principles which revolve around the few usability suggestions stated within this article. They have come to expect that search engines will outline the most relevant websites on the Internet according to their query, and then by clicking on a listing they will arrive directly at the information they are seeking. They have come to expect a shopping environment where they feel 100% in control. Most of all, online shoppers understand that they do not have to settle for less. In fact, online shoppers are sold by intriguing offers or deals. Ignoring these few shopping principles will be very hazardous to on your online efforts.