If you want to take your site to a higher level in business, then learn how to create a user friendly environment. Failing to do this will prove to be very costly and it's hard to imagine the lost opportunities. You'll need to make all your actions based on what is known to work and be effective. Continue reading so you can learn how to gain the upper hand with a user friendly business blog.
Your website needs to be user friendly if you ever want it to be successful. It sounds like it should be easy but if you don't do it correctly it can be really terrible. If you do get it wrong you will know it because your bounce rate won't just be sky high, the traffic you do get won't stick around that long. Before you can figure out what you need to fix, you need to make sure that your analytics are set up. It might even be a good idea to hire someone to perform an audit on your site in terms of user friendliness. Whatever may be going on, if you'd like to have a good business, you are going to take this seriously.
Quite a lot of research has been done that proves navigation ought to only be in one of two places. You are going to want to put it either on the top of or right under your header graphic.
Otherwise, it goes in your left column or down the left hand side. The area to avoid is the right handed side of your site. You can create a website that is either two or three columns. If you create a three column website, though, you need to make the lefthand column your primary navigational area. You can leave the right hand side for other sorts of information. For instance, you might want to publish ads, other kinds of creatives or whatever special offers you might want to offer to buyers. This layout is the layout that is the most effective. By now you know that it's important to prove that you're different than everybody else.
All of the pages on your website need to be free of clutter and as easy as possible to understand. There are so many ways to mess up on this. Perhaps the most commonly made mistake is overdoing it on the ads. Each one is trying to steal the attention of your traffic. What matters most, though, is that your content gets read and that is where the elements of copy come into play. So you can have clearly understand headlines and all your copy is written to be quickly and easily scanned. People will visit your site intending to scan but if you present the copy well, they are going to click through to the other pages and stick around on your website. The ease with which people can scan and skim your site cannot be stressed enough.
Thanks to sites like Pinterest, people are much more attuned to using images. Our eyes naturally notice any images, and they help to stop scanners from blazing through your content. What you also want to do is make them look good in your content for the best effect. Plus you can use the caption to reinforce a point you mention in the copy - there's a give and take along with leveraging all places where user eyes will go. What you also want to avoid is placing photos that are either neutral or irrelevant to the body copy.
Making mistakes is really easy, particularly in terms of content creation and in other areas. Some examples of other areas are in the side bar panels. The elements in this area all need attention too--things like the opt-in box for your email subscription list, special offers, etc. So your copy in those places has to be very effective. Just because most other website owners stick to tossing up graphics for eBooks and subscription boxes and leaving it that way does not mean that you should do it as well. That is what most people are used to seeing and ignoring. Smaller boxes in your side column with littler font copy and an email box is a great idea. Use smaller fonts but not fonts that are too small to see and make sure that you have written something different and compelling as well. Do your best to not fall into the trap of seeing user friendliness as a universal term or something for which you can optimize, though other concepts often feel that way. Changes are often made depending on the audiences that visit your website. There are always exceptions to the rules and you might be able to get away with a few things that other people can't.
Your website needs to be user friendly if you ever want it to be successful. It sounds like it should be easy but if you don't do it correctly it can be really terrible. If you do get it wrong you will know it because your bounce rate won't just be sky high, the traffic you do get won't stick around that long. Before you can figure out what you need to fix, you need to make sure that your analytics are set up. It might even be a good idea to hire someone to perform an audit on your site in terms of user friendliness. Whatever may be going on, if you'd like to have a good business, you are going to take this seriously.
Quite a lot of research has been done that proves navigation ought to only be in one of two places. You are going to want to put it either on the top of or right under your header graphic.
Otherwise, it goes in your left column or down the left hand side. The area to avoid is the right handed side of your site. You can create a website that is either two or three columns. If you create a three column website, though, you need to make the lefthand column your primary navigational area. You can leave the right hand side for other sorts of information. For instance, you might want to publish ads, other kinds of creatives or whatever special offers you might want to offer to buyers. This layout is the layout that is the most effective. By now you know that it's important to prove that you're different than everybody else.
All of the pages on your website need to be free of clutter and as easy as possible to understand. There are so many ways to mess up on this. Perhaps the most commonly made mistake is overdoing it on the ads. Each one is trying to steal the attention of your traffic. What matters most, though, is that your content gets read and that is where the elements of copy come into play. So you can have clearly understand headlines and all your copy is written to be quickly and easily scanned. People will visit your site intending to scan but if you present the copy well, they are going to click through to the other pages and stick around on your website. The ease with which people can scan and skim your site cannot be stressed enough.
Thanks to sites like Pinterest, people are much more attuned to using images. Our eyes naturally notice any images, and they help to stop scanners from blazing through your content. What you also want to do is make them look good in your content for the best effect. Plus you can use the caption to reinforce a point you mention in the copy - there's a give and take along with leveraging all places where user eyes will go. What you also want to avoid is placing photos that are either neutral or irrelevant to the body copy.
Making mistakes is really easy, particularly in terms of content creation and in other areas. Some examples of other areas are in the side bar panels. The elements in this area all need attention too--things like the opt-in box for your email subscription list, special offers, etc. So your copy in those places has to be very effective. Just because most other website owners stick to tossing up graphics for eBooks and subscription boxes and leaving it that way does not mean that you should do it as well. That is what most people are used to seeing and ignoring. Smaller boxes in your side column with littler font copy and an email box is a great idea. Use smaller fonts but not fonts that are too small to see and make sure that you have written something different and compelling as well. Do your best to not fall into the trap of seeing user friendliness as a universal term or something for which you can optimize, though other concepts often feel that way. Changes are often made depending on the audiences that visit your website. There are always exceptions to the rules and you might be able to get away with a few things that other people can't.
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