Two questions to remember when creating web content

How often do you think about your website? If you’re like most people, the answer is “not much.” That’s unfortunate, because your website is one of your business’s most important assets—and as the web evolves, the way visitors use your site, and their expectations once they land there, are changing, too. If you haven’t thought about your site in a while, it’s probably time for a tune-up.

Asher recently completed web usability studies for two clients, and the results have led to significant changes in the sites’ structure and content. The major tenets of web usability are well beyond the scope of this post (and better stated by Jakob Nielsen), but the key is to review every page on your site and ask two simple questions:

• What do you want the visitor to do on this page, and
• How do you facilitate that action in as few steps as possible?

That may sound simple, but visit a few sites and consider how few truly anticipate your needs and make it easy for you to interact with the people behind the page.

All of this is becoming especially important as we use the web more often to quickly access information and less often for in-depth reading. As Michel Agger says in “How We Read Online”:

“On the Internet, we hunt for facts. In earlier days, when switching between sites was time-consuming, we tended to stay in one place and dig. Now we assess a site quickly, looking for an ‘information scent.’ We move on if there doesn't seem to be any food around.” In other words, they decide what they want to know, pop in for a quick visit, and then leave. And there’s not a lot you can do to get them to stay—unless you let them have some control over the conversation."

Help your visitors get what they need and move on, and it’s more likely they’ll come back to you the next time they need something. But just like any other communication challenge, if you ignore their needs when constructing your message, it’s likely that they’ll ignore you right back.

--Anthony J.