Donovan-Wright Associates

What the heck does THAT mean?

It means: With usability, the focus for product (website) design and evaluation is on the user. It’s all about what the user thinks, does, believes; “…the user’s perception of the quality of the product, based on the user’s ease of use, ease of learning and relearning, the product’s intuitiveness for the user, and the user’s appreciation for the usefulness of a product” (Carol Barnum). Of course, since we’re talking websites, do substitute the word “website” for “product.”

Another big piece of this usability thing is the user’s satisfaction with the website. Maybe it’s easy to use, easy to learn, and generally useful, but if the user doesn’t like it then it doesn’t make it in the usability arena.

Okay, let’s move on.

Search Engine Optimization

Also known as SEO, is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine” Rustybrick.com).

Once again, we have that magic word “user” in this definition. But I just know you’re looking at me cross-eyed right now wondering how in the world these two concepts relate, or not!

Let me explain.

Back to Usability

Ideally, usability occurs at two stages in the website development process: in the design stage and after the site is launched. In the design stage, the purpose of the site needs to be clearly articulated: are you trying to sell a product? Generate leads? Lighten the service load for your customer service department?

Sounds simplistic, doesn’t it? But you’d be amazed how many sites out there are this sort of amorphous bowl of Jello that never take a solid definition or give the user a clear sense of what they’re about.

After figuring out purpose, you need to define your audience. Granted, that’s not easy to do on the web, and it’s something you might need to do after you launch. But still, during the design phase you’ll have a target user in mind, it’s just that the actual user may be quite different. Once your site is up, put a survey out there to find out as much as you can about users: age, sex, job, reason for visiting your site, education, and so on.

Before you get to far into your design, prepare a prototype of your site and try to find at least one, preferably two or three people who represent your target user. Sit them down at the computer and have them test it. Here are some ways you can approach this testing:

• Let them just “play around” and either speak their impressions into a tape recorder or make notes about the site’s ease of use and overall design.
• Give them a series of goals they must achieve – they must figure out the steps and tasks themselves. You should look for the number of errors they make and missteps they take along the way.
• You demonstrate the site to them and then conduct a focus session to gather their thoughts and opinions.

Now this next statement is going to be a real “duh,” but the idea is to take their comments and experiences and incorporate them to improve the design of your site. Once the site is truly live and operational, you should do the same thing again with a larger sample of users.

All right, I’m sure you’re thinking that we still haven’t explained how this relates to SEO, if it even does.

Onward to SEO

Let’s first talk about a few principles of SEO. As you probably know, the goal of SEO is to improve your website’s ranking when a user performs a web search using specific, relevant search terms, or keywords. Web searches are one of the primary drivers for web site traffic, so the corollary here is, to get users to your site to use it in the first place, a high ranking in the search engines is a real plus.

In order to perform well with the search engines, your site needs to have a relatively high PageRank: preferably 5 or above on a scale of 1 to 10. The factors that go into achieving a high PageRank include:

• Internal site links that work and clear site navigation
• Informative, well-written site content
• Effective use of keywords in page HTML tags, headers, and copy
• External links to your site from quality web sites

There’s more to SEO than this, but that’s for another article, another time.

Putting It All Together

By now you’ve probably gathered that usability and SEO are not one in the same. But they certainly go hand-in-hand, and one really cannot function well without the other.

First, one of your site’s main usability factors is its navigation system: can users find their way around the site? Are all the links working? Does your site have a site map? From the SEO standpoint, as we’ve seen, a clean, effective navigation system is a must, and a site map ensures the SEO spiders can crawl around your site with ease. The user must always come first, but in designing your navigation system, you are really working for both users and search engines. By making it easy for your users to navigate your site, you do the same for the search engine spiders.

Second: good site content – if your site is going to be usable and pleasing to your users, it’s going to have good, solid, well-written content. The search engines require the same thing to increase your site’s ranking.

Third, by using keywords effectively for SEO purposes (description tag, title tag, header tags, keyword tags, body copy, and points of emphasis), you will also be providing consistency in the terms you use on your site, which will make it easier to understand and follow for your users.

Last, good, strong external links to your site are a wonderful way to build your site’s traffic, as well as a testimony to its quality. But the web credo regarding users is “they’re always just a click away” from leaving your site. And this brings us to the crux of the matter: you can get them to your site with a high PageRank and good SEO principles, but you’ve got to keep them there with good usability.