One of the secrets to making your website successful is to ensure it’s as user friendly as possible. Before you can achieve this, you have to understand what makes a site have these features. Once you learn all that is involved with this, then you can go about making it happen. And another thing you should include in your efforts is testing what you do = general and specific guidelines that are well known.
Today is just the beginning of another part of your journey in online marketing, so let’s get started.
If the term “above the fold” is new to you, what we mean when we use it is the things people see immediately upon arrival on your website. This means what you see before you have to start scrolling. The area that is above the fold is where the vital information and vital elements of your page need to go. Those are the things that you almost want to force upon your visitors before they move on. It’s perfectly sensible of course and yet it’s a thing that most website owners don’t seem to understand at all. You are going to need to evaluate just how well your site does this. If you need to redesign your home page to be better here then you should do that–that is how important it all is. Always remember that the most important thing you need to do–the thing you need to do before you do anything else–is communicate what you’ve got to offer. Make sure that none of your website pages are cluttered or hard to understand. Sadly this is a place where most people miss the mark. Having too many advertisements is just one of them. They are all trying to get your visitors to look at them. What matters most, though, is that your content gets read and that is where the elements of copy come into play. You need to actually understand headlines and your copy need to be easy to scan. Site users are going to scan your copy and the manner in which it is presented is going to make them want to click on to your other pages and stay on your website. There is no such thing as too much emphasis upon the ease with which a person can skim through your website.
Content creation and other site elements are danger zones for mistake making, that’s for sure. One of the most common areas is your side bars. This is where things that also need to be promoted are going to sit–things like special offers, the opt-in boxes for your subscription list, etc. That means that it is important that your copy in these areas be as effective as you can make it. Most webmasters are going to just toss up an opt-in box and a graphic for their eBook–do not be one of them. This is something that most people are so used to seeing that they tune them out. Placing a smaller box in the side column with some copy typed in a smaller font as well as the email field is just one way to set yourself apart. Use smaller font but not too small, and write something different and compelling. Making your business blog user friendly is a high ROI effort because that’s what it can lead to. You’ll be tracking what your visitors are doing, and you should see the difference if you do things properly. It’s all up to you as to how much effort you want to put into this – so work hard on it.