Your website should focus on your users’ top tasks. Unfortunately, lots of websites don’t do that. They put everything they have ever done and more on their website. Result: a website with loads of pages nobody’s interested in.

Is that really so bad though? I mean, a user can ignore those pages he’s not interested in, right?

Theoretically, yes. But in practice, those extra pages make for a more complex navigation stucture, more links and more choices.

Which makes it hard for people to find what they’re looking for.

If your website focuses on the stuff people really use it for, there will be fewer pages and people will find what they need a lot faster. Because there’s no clutter to distract them.

Less is more. More conversion. More satisfied visitors. More return on investment.

Use Google Analytics to track down rarely visited pages

I’m using Google Analytics as an example because it’s the most widely used tool. You can of course use other analytics tools as well.

1. Define a period that’s suitably long

For a first analysis, I usually take 6 months. That way, I minimise the risk that the results of my findings will be brushed aside by people who blame the holidays, the weather and other stuff for the lack of visitors on ‘their’ pages. Heck, if your website is heavily subjected to seasonal changes, make it 12 months.

2. Go to ‘Content’ and choose ‘Top Content’

On this page, have a look at the total number of unique pages that were visited in the period you defined and check this number against the total number of pages on your site. If the second number is far greater than the first, I’ve got some bad news for you: you’ve got lots of pages nobody ever visits.

3. Click on ‘Advanced Filter’ at the bottom

Don’t worry. There’s nothing advanced about what we’re going to do.

4. In the dropdown ‘Filter’, select ‘Unique Pageviews’

I choose ‘Unique Pageviews’ because ‘Pageviews’ is somewhat artificial. If a person visits the same web page 5 times during 1 visit, Google Analytics counts that as 5 pageviews but only as 1 unique pageview.

5. Enter a number

For a first analysis, I usually want an oveview of all pages with less than 50 pageviews over a period of 6 months. I think that’s being quite generous…

You can of course change this number to 100 or more.

6. Click on ‘Apply Filter’

Nearly there. On the screen you see now, you can already tell how many pages have been visited less than 50 times.

7. Sort by ‘Unique Pageviews’

This sorts the results by the number of unique pageviews. The standard setting is on the total number of pageviews. For our report, that’s not quite ideal.

8. Save report

For some strange reason, Google doesn’t allow you to save the settings of your filters. (In case you can and I’m missing something: do enlighten me.) As an alternative solution, I click on ‘Add to Dashboard’ at the top of the page. That way I can quickly access this report from my homepage (the dashboard).

What do you know now?

You know which pages have been visited less than x times in the period you defined.

Hopefully that number hasn’t left you shell-shocked. We had to tell a customer recently that over 80% of their web pages were visited less than 50 times during the past 6 months…

Not the greatest news to deliver, but they took it really well and decided to dedicate the next 12 months to managing existing content rather than creating new pages.

Is ‘barely visited’ reason enough to get rid of a page?

Not always, but it does give a good indication. Apart from the cold, hard figures there are other things to take into account:

• Conversion rate
  If the conversion rate is (much) higher than average, you need to wonder why that page isn’t visited more often. Is there a way to get more people to visit that page?
• Because you have to
  Sometimes, but only sometimes, that’s a valid reason. Not because your boss tells you to but because it’s a page you have to have for legal reasons for example.
• User research
  Interviews with customers, the analysis of your search feature and other methods of user research can help you to find out what your visitors top tasks are.

  We always advise to combine logfile analysis with one of these methods: logfiles can only tell you what people do on your website, not what they’d like to do or can’t find.

  If one of your visitors’ top tasks is the same as one of your site’s least visited pages, you know there’s a lot of work to be done.

What do you do with rarely visited pages?

• Delete
  For most pages at the bottom of this list: just hit the delete button. That news article you write 2 years ago will not be missed. Goodbye and good riddance.
• Cluster information
  A lot of sites use 10 pages where instead they should just have 1 page. Pull yourself together and have the courage to get rid of the stuff nobody’s interested in. Trim the fat. Stick to the essentials.
• Reactivate
  Reactivate the interest in pages that have a high conversion rate or are actually one of your visitors’ top tasks. Some possibilities: put a link on the homepage, give it a more prominent place in your navigation, rewrite the page, create more links to the page, etc.
• Leave them to rot in your website’s darkest holes
  This only applies to those pages you need to keep for legal reasons.
  Take care to bury them really deep where they’re not likely to bother people.

You might also like:

• Information architecture: the basics
• CMSs don’t manage websites, people do

Need some help?
Start with a content review or one of our information architecture or user research services. Or just give us a call on 0032 (0)3 293 39 96 or send me an email.

10 years ago I thought so. More specifically: I thought I knew everything.

Surely my usability expertise, my deep knowledge of information architecture would be enough to find and solve all the usability issues on every possible website?

Without research you can never truly know your users

10 years of user testing have made me a bit more modest. Okay, a lot more modest. Expert knowledge alone is not enough.

Does that mean I’m not a good usability expert? Hell no. I think I know more about web usability and information architecture than anyone else in Belgium. (Non-Belgian readers, please suppress that giggle.) Actually, that’s a lie: Els knows more about it than I do. See, I told you I was modest.

And still, despite all of our combined expertise, we often say things like ‘That depends’, ‘We’ll have to ask your customers that’ or ‘We’ll have to test that’.

Usability rules are not stone tablets

A lot of web designers and programmers resent those answers. They like it when everything is fixed. That makes it nice and easy.

Admittedly, Jakob Nielsen’s rules, the interface pattern libraries you see all around and even the usability tips we write on this blog, sometimes suggest it’s all black and white, clear-cut.

Wake up call: it isn’t. Usability isn’t that thing you read about in books. To fully understand usability, you have to see real users in action.

There are lots of rules and often those rules are right. But sometimes they’re also flexible, open for interpretation. Quite often the things that we as experts thought might cause problems end up not troubling users at all, while the things we thought wouldn’t be too much of a problem cause half of the test users to trip up.

Is that because we’re stupid? Because we’re not really experts after all?

I don’t think so. And our customers, who gave us a client satisfaction score of 100% in our latest audit in 2009, obviously don’t think so either.

Content and structure are determined by your visitors

When it comes to your site’s information structure and your content, the rules don’t really help you much. They get more than a little vague.

A few examples:

• Use words that your visitors understand for your menu labels
• Put the 3 to 5 things that matter most to your visitors above the page-fold on a detail page
• Start every page and every paragraph with the most important information you’ve got

While these rules are all true, they’re also very theoretical. Which words do your visitors understand? What exactly are those 3 to 5 most important things according to your visitors?

Pretentious

In all modesty, we think web builders or information architects who claim they don’t need to involve real users because ‘they know what’s best’ are pretty pretentious.

Sure, those web builders’ and information architects’ common sense will probably keep their customers safe from all too big disasters. But is that really good enough?

User research gets you facts

Are you really so all-knowing that you know what people exactly want to know about a hotel, an airconditioing unit and an oil-free compressor? And a forklift, a handbag and a car loan?

Really? Wow, you must be making around 10.000 euro/hour. Congratulations!

In all fairness, nobody knows those things. The only way to find out what your visitors really want is by doing user research. That doesn’t have to be ridiculously expensive. You can do some of it yourself. A good online survey and interviews with potential or existing customers will already point you in the right direction.

Facts trump opinions

One of the biggest advantages of user research is that it gets you facts. The case for the information structure you present to your client is a whole lot stronger if you can base your decisions on facts rather than just your own opninion. Data from logfile analysis, survey results, user test videos – those are things that make compelling arguments, not your opinion.

Gathering facts is the main reason why we push clients to include user research in their project. Agreed, it costs a bit more when you’re doing it, but it sure saves time on meetings full of endless discussions based on nothing more than opinions.

Related articles

• Webdesign process: is the customer king?
• Information architecture: the basics

What do you think?

Are we right or are we right? Feel free to disagree.

You’re probably thinking that should be a statement instead of a question. Well… yes, the customer is king. And no, he isn’t really.

One of the main reasons a lot of websites fail to deliver is because they’re made according to the specifications of the company that ordered it. Don’t get me wrong. It’s good for a web builder or usability expert to find out what the customer wants. But it’s not enough.

We tell most of our customers at the start of a usability project that it doesn’t really matter all that much what they think or want.

What we think doesn’t matter that much either.

It’s not your customer’s opinion that counts, it’s his customers’ opinion

You don’t make a company’s website for that company. You make it for that company’s customers.

Their needs and expectations are what matters. A website can only be truly successful if it caters to the needs of its visitors, not to the needs of its owners or makers.

Finding out what visitors want is crucial if you want to base your functional analysis and information architecture on facts rather than feelings.

Companies know their customers

Yeah, right.

That’s what I thought. But 10 years of experience have taught me that a lot of companies know surprisingly little about their customers.

Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. Ask your customer (or yourself if you’re a CEO, communication or marketing manager) questions like:

• Who visits your website?
• Why do people visit your website?
• Why do people buy your product and not your competitor’s?
• Why do they buy product x and not product y of the same series?
• What are your potential customers’ 10 most frequently asked questions?

It’s amazing how often companies don’t know the answers to these questions. Or how often the answers start with “I think” or “According to us”.

Which basically means “We don’t know”. Time for user research to make sure you can start your answers with “We know”.

User research

How do you find out what people want from a website?

That’s easy: you ask them. And you check what they’re already doing on your site.

A few user research methods we use:

• Logfile analysis
  Logfiles can tell you what people are doing on your website. They can’t tell you what they’d like to do or what they can’t do.
• Keyword analysis
  Analysing the keywords people type into your search feature tells you what people are looking for on your site and which words they use.
• Customer contacts analysis
  Ask everybody in your company who comes into contact with customers to keep track of the questions they ask so you know what the 10 most frequently asked questions are.
• Online survey
  An online survey is a great way to find out more about your visitors’ profile and what they’re looking for on your website. A short survey with the right questions still gets loads of responses.
• Interviews
  Interviews with potential and existing customers are vital if you want to get details about what they really want from your website.
• User tests
  User tests will show you what people like and dislike about your website and your competitors’.

Is user research always interesting?

Absolutely. You always learn something new.

Of course you don’t always have to use all the methods we described. Our advice is to choose at least 1 analytical method (logfile analysis, keyword analysis or customer contacts analysis) and 1 other method.

Don’t get carried away with the number of people you interview or do user tests with either. Around 10 people is plenty, unless of course you have a huge website with loads of different target audiences.

Examples

• Environmental government agency
  The agency thought their website was mostly visited by 2 types of visitors:
  - Farmers and environmental professionals looking for scientific data.
  - Companies looking for information on environmental permits.
  Research showed these assumptions were wrong. Sure, 20% of visitors were companies and around 3% were farmers and environmental professionals. But about 75% of visitors were regular people looking for information on air and water quality in their area and tips on how to be environmentally friendly.

• Air conditioning manufacturer
  Our customer thought the website was very important for engineering companies, architects, etc.
  Research showed these people rarely visited the website. The real visitors were end customers looking for information on air conditioning. And they weren’t too impressed with sales arguments like ‘titanium air filter’ and ‘only 69db’. Their main reasons to buy a particular air conditioning unit were things like ‘it’s really quiet’ and ‘it fits with our decorating scheme’.

• Hospital
  The hospital we worked for was convinced their website had to inform people about medical conditions and treatments. User research told a different story. People were mostly looking for contact information, phone numbers of doctors and visiting hours. As a matter of fact, more people used the website to look for information on the cafeteria than information about a medical condition or treatment.

• Scientific research institute
  User research showed that the visitor profile was very different depending on the language version of the website. The Dutch version of the site was mostly visited by teachers, students and non-scientists, looking for general information or didactic material. The English version of the site was mostly visited by staff and scientists from other research institutes and industry, looking for information on specific research projects or scientists’ contact details.

So don’t talk to the customer?

Of course you should. Talking to your customer is always important.

But don’t just talk to the CEO or the web manager. Talk to people from all divisions of the company so you can find out what their expectations are about the website.

And always, always check the company’s wishes and expectations against those of the people it’s all about: the website’s visitors.

Conclusion: talk to your customer and his customers

What does all that talking get you? An excellent view on what the website should and shouldn’t do and what the visitors’ top tasks are.

The end result: happy website visitors. Which in turn leads to a happy customer for you.

Care to share your experiences?

We’d love to hear from you.

1. “Why we want a new website? We don’t like the old one anymore.”
You don’t have to like your website. Your visitors have to like it. Unless you have evidence (logfiles, user tests, ROI …) that your visitors don’t like it, don’t change it.

2. “Interactivity is very important to us.”
I meet a lot of customers who think ‘interactivity’ is the holy grail. They want a forum and a chat room and a blog… They don’t seem to realise that’s not necessarily what people want from a utilities company.

3. “We know what we want. Our web team has had a brainstorm session about it.”
No amount of brainstorming can tell you what your customers want. Never has, never will. Stop brainstorming and start gathering facts.

4. “We’d like a big visual at the top of every page.”
P-lease. Unless you’ve got a website that’s dedicated to photography or graphic design, big visuals are not what people are looking for on your website. Also, big visuals tend to push the actual content on the page down. Down below the page-fold. A dark, damp place some people simply do not like to visit.

5. “We’ve already chosen the technical system. Now all we have to do is get the content in there.”
The importance of a good information structure and quality content is still hugely underestimated. As Gerry McGovern (www.gerrymcgovern.com) said in his column of November 2008: “Content migration-and its first cousin, website “redesign”-are all about pouring sour old milk into new portal jugs.” It’s still the same old stinky milk, people.

6. “Our advertising agency has already made the lay-out. All you have to do is make the tree structure.”
Graphics never take precedence over content. Lay-out never comes before tree structure. The lay-out of a site needs to be adapted to the structure and content, not the other way around. And ‘advertising company’? Not webdesign company? Eeeek!

7. “Where in the menu is the procurement division?”
When designing a tree structutre for a big company with many divisions, especially an intranet or extranet, there’s always a point when the various departments or divisions within the company start looking for ‘their’ part on the website. “It isn’t there”, I have to tell them. Because nobody’s looking for a division, they’re looking because need to find a form or a specific procedure. And that’s a lot easier in a structure based on user needs than a structure based on a company’s internal structure.

8. “That’s a very sensitive issue in our company.”
Some companies are very, very sensitive. Don’t talk too loud in their presence or they might start to cry. Depending on the company or organisation, different things can be ’sensitive’. Product comparisons are often a sensitive issue, I find. Not even comparisons with other companies (heaven forbid!) but of a company’s own product range. Because they don’t like saying that product X, which is 2 times the price of product Y, actually does have a longer battery life and more interesting features. Because, if they don’t make it easy for the visitor to see that, he won’t find out. Right?

9. “Prices on our website? No way.”
This one is completely self-explanatory, I’m afraid.

10. “We really think we need a news section.”
Oh really? Because you have so many interesting things to share with your visitors? In that case, go ahead. Or because you want a place on your website where you want to tell people who the new marketing manager is? In that case, I’ve got some news for you: people don’t care.

11. “We’ve positioned the product like that for 10 years. We’re not going to change it.”
That might be the case if you’ve sold that product in actual shops before. But if user tests show that, online, people don’t ‘get’ your way of selling that product, you have to change it or be prepared for disappointing online sales figures. On the web, it’s adapt or die.

12. “That word doesn’t really fit our corporate image. We don’t want to use it on our website.”
I really hate it when people say this. Probably because I’m not a big fan of the words ‘corporate image’. (But I’ve said them, haven’t I? Ha!) Usually it means a company doesn’t want to use a simple, down-to-earth word that regular people like you and me use but instead want to use a fancy, corporate-speak word. Like, I don’t know, ‘buying’ instead of ‘procurement’.

13. “Our web builder/ IT department says that isn’t possible.”
Okay, this one can go either way. Sometimes it really isn’t possible. But many, many, many times it totally is. It’s just not easy to do. Or fun to do. But it is possible. Boring and hard work, but possible.

Since writing the post and publishing it, I heard another one at a recent meeting. An oldie, but apparently still used by some communications agencies.

So here’s 14. “We want to turn it into a portal.”
What is that anyway, a portal? If I’d ask you all for a definition I’m sure I’d end up with many different ones. Why do so many companies want to have a ‘portal’? Does website not sound fancy enough? I’m all for websites, not portals. But hey, that’s just my opinion.

Do you have a 15? 16, 17, … Feel free to share!

When an existing client says something like that when you’re in the middle of the project, things are a little harder. Fortunately we’re not easily deterred. We just keep on preaching that usability gospel.

Our favourite quotes

1. “Why we want a new website? We don’t like the old one anymore.”
    
2. “Interactivity is very important to us.”
    
3. “We know what we want. Our web team has had a brainstorm session about it.”
    
4. “We’d like a big visual at the top of every page.”
    
5. “We’ve already chosen the technical system. Now all we have to do is get the content in there.”  
6. “Our advertising agency has already made the lay-out. All you have to do is make the tree structure.”
    
7. “Where in the menu is the procurement division?”
    
8. “That’s a very sensitive issue in our company.”
    
9. “Prices on our website? No way.”
    
10. “We really think we need a news section.”
     
11. “We’ve positioned the product like that for 10 years. We’re not going to change it.”
     
12. “That word doesn’t really fit our corporate image. We don’t want to use it on our website.”
     
13. “Our web builder/ IT department says that isn’t possible.”