Had a bit of a scare this week. If you accidentally type in www.google.com/masp instead of www.google.com/maps, you get this:

Not really what you’d expect from Google.

What is a 404 error page?

A web server shows an error 404 if it is asked for the url of a page that doesn’t exist. Because the page doesn’t exist anymore, for example. Or because the user made a mistake in typing in the url.

A standard 404 error page looks pretty unattractive and isn’t very useful. The best thing you can do is create your own 404 page. On that page you should put your logo, main navigation, the message that the page the user is looking for doesn’t exist anymore, maybe a few suggestions and a search feature.

Practice what you preach?

What makes Google’s lack of a customised 404 error page so strange is the fact that they give tips about how to make your 404 pages more useful on their blog. An oversight? Or strategy?

A big thank you to Elja Trum of Photofacts.nl for pointing this out.

1. Belgium’s most user-friendly website (overall winner – public vote)

Chosen by the general public based on a short-list of 10 websites selected by a professional jury.

• 1st place: Karel de Grote-Hogeschool
  Web agency: Internet Architects
• 2nd place: KrisKras
  Web agency: Marlon
• 3rd place: UiT in Vlaams-Brabant
  Web agency: Statik

The jury’s comments on Karel de Grote-Hogeschool:

• Good information selection
• Clear overview pages
• Concise copywriting

2. Most user-friendly corporate or commercial website

Chosen by the professional jury

• 1st place: KrisKras
  Web agency: Marlon
• 2nd place: Newpharma
  Web agency: SmartValue
• 3rd place: Connections
  Web agency: Digipoint

The jury’s comments on KrisKras:

• Playful but clear graphic design
• Nice filter options to find the trip that suits you best
• The pages about a trip are very complete and well-presented

3. Most user-friendly government or non-profit website

Chosen by the professional jury

• 1st place: UiT in Vlaams-Brabant
  Web agency: Statik
• 2nd place: Sibelga
  Web agency: Marlon
• 3rd place: Karel de Grote-Hogeschool
  Web agency: Internet Architects

The jury’s comments on UiT in Vlaams-Brabant:

• Clear, intuitive graphic design
• Lots of relevant click-through options
• Fantastic search feature with excellent filters

Congratulations to all winners!

For more info on why these websites made it to the top, come back soon.

Usability Awards 2011

If you would like us to keep you informed of the start of the submission period for next year’s Usability Awards, please leave us your email address.
Inform me about the 2011 Awards

1. Are you registered or aren’t you?

On a website that has registration, the order process usually starts by asking you whether you’re registered or not. Trouble is, people often simply don’t remember.

You can improve that page by wording it a bit more friendly (’Returning customer / First-time buyer’ sounds slightly more human than ‘Registered / Not registered’).

Layout-wise you can also make it easier on the user. By putting the options close together, like Amazon does.

But it’s still an extra page that can create doubt and confusion. A barrier to completing the purchase.

2. Getting registered is a hassle

Getting registered or signing up is an extra step that consists of at least one extra field. Again, you can improve the wording and layout of your form to make it easier on users. But it’s still an extra step.

If you really want to mess with a user’s head, make him choose a user name that can’t be his email address. Laughs all around.

3. What about optional registration?

In some online shops, like Esprit, registration is optional. Slightly better than compulsory registration but you’re still stuck with the whole are you or aren’t you a already a customer question.

Apparently, you can also log in as a registered user at Booking.com. But it’s very unobtrusive. Booking.com doesn’t ask you to register while you’re booking. They just let you get on with it. You can register after you’ve completed booking your room.

It would be interesting to know the percentage of Booking.com customers who register. And how many of those actually log in when they come back.

4. Remembering user names and passwords

We’ve all been there. Am I a customer here or aren’t I? Which email address did I use to sign up? And which password did I pick, or worse, get assigned by the website? What the heck, I’ll just say I’m a new customer. Oh no, now they’re saying my email address belongs to a registered customer. Damn…

If anything, it’s a great way to drive customers to the competition.

You’re probably annoyed when other websites unnecessarily ask you to register or sign up. So why wouldn’t that be annoying on your site?

Why is registration bad for your business?

• Less people actually buy
  Because registration is such a hassle, less people actually complete their purchase.
  Don’t believe us? Read how leaving out registration made this website 300 million dollar extra per year or how it caused an 8,5% rise in online bookings on TUIfly.com (German).
• More support needed
  One of the top questions for the helpdesk of corporate websites where you need to register: I forgot my password.
  In online shops too, there’s a lot of time being wasted resetting user names and sending out forgotten passwords.
  Sure, you can automate and improve all that. But why would wou improve something if it’s easier for everyone if you just leave it out?
• Dirty data
  80% of surfers have more than 1 email address. There’s loads of dirty data in your database anyway. Lots of people will just use their other email address instead of going to the trouble of resetting their password.

What’s the alternative?

This will come as an absolute shock to you. Wait for it. The answer is: no registration.

If Booking.com sells more than 150.000 hotel stays a day without registration, not making people register doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Phony justifications of registration

Despite the barrier registration creates for users and the convincing case studies in favor of axing it, there are always people in IT or marketing who claim they ‘need’ customers to register.

They’re lying.

• “Without registration, a customer can’t follow up on his order”
  Sure he can: provide the user with a purchase code on the confirmation page and in the confirmation email you send him, together with a direct url and a customer service phone number.
  Ryanair does that. And I’ve heard they sell quite a bit online.
  In 1 year, Booking.com managed to get 6 million hotel reviews from people who’ve booked with them. Not by making people register. Just by sending them an email with a direct link after their stay.
• “Without registration, repeat customers have to fill out everything all over again”
  If you say it like that, that probably means you’re asking way too much from customers.
  And how many of your customers come back on a regular basis? Because it’s only for them that registration has a small benefit. For all other users, it’s a barrier.
• “Without registration, we can’t track users’ purchasing behaviour”
  Sure you can. Based on their email address (possibly in combination with their offline address) you can track people’s purchasing history. There’s no need for them to register.
  No wait, you’re right. If someone changes email addresses or moves house, you’re probably going to miss some purchasing history. But does that really outweigh the revenue you’re missing out on? Be honest, how often do you use that purchasing history anyway?
• “Without registration, customers will end up in our database twice”
  Registration won’t fix that. And Santa Claus isn’t real either. Grow up.

Is registration always a bad idea?

No, it’s not. For websites that focus purely on online services like online training sites or communites like Facebook a username and password are obviously necessary.

But please, use the email address as the username and don’t get too fussy about password restrictions.

What do you think?

Are we right? Can you think of any benefits to registration that outweigh the negatives? We’d love to hear from you.

The title tag determines the name of a web page as it appears in Google. The content of the title tag plays an important part in the ranking a page gets in Google and Bing.

2. What is a description tag?

The description tag is a text of maximum 155 characters long that says what a page is about. Because Google often shows the description tag, it’s a great tool to persuade people to visit your page.

In our article ‘what is a description tag and why is it so important’ you can read in detail what Google does with the description tag and when it is and isn’t shown.

3. Title and description tag create the first impression

When making a website, a lot of attention always goes to the look & feel of the website in general and to the homepage in particular. While this is certainly very important, it’s not true that you need to do this in order to ‘make a good first impression’.

For more than half of your visitors, their first contact with you is not your homepage. Or any other page of your website, for that matter. The first contact, the first impression, is made by the title and description tag shown in Google.

4. How can you find out what your title and description tags are?

There are lots of seo-programmes that can do this for you. But there’s also Google. Just type in ’site:’ followed by your domain name and you’ll get the complete list of the title and description tags of all your pages.

On the international website of Citroën, there’s room for improvement. The title tags are clearly not specific enough. For the description tag, they seem to have written some fluffy marketing nonsense and used that for most pages.

5. Tips for the perfect title tag

If you read our article 8 tips for the perfect title tag you should be well on your way to writing great title tags.

While you’re at it, have a look at our 4 examples of clumsy title tags too. Just so you know what not to do.

6. Tips for the perfect description tag

The description tag does not influence your ranking in Google. But it is essential to get people to click on your page, as this interesting user behaviour study on search engine results pages shows.

These 12 tips for the perfect description tag will help you write great description tags that will get more visitors to your pages.

7. How to track down doubles in your title or description tags?

Google doesn’t like title tags or description tags that are the same for more than one page of your website. It’s clear why: Google uses the title and description tags to find out whether or not a page has unique content.

The first thing you need to do is make sure every page of your website has a unique title and description tag.

The Google Webmaster Tools can help you track down doubles in your title or description tags.

Log in to Google Webmaster Tools and select your website (or add your website if you haven’t done that yet). Go to the left menu, click on ‘Diagnostics’ and then on ‘HTML suggestions’.

The report on this page gives you access to double tags and it also shows you the title and description tags that are too long or too short.

Do you know of any other best practices, tools or studies on the importance of the title or description tag? Please share them in the comments.

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.

Sounds promising, doesn’t it? I thought so. Untill I actually tried to get into the European website.

It didn’t work in Firefox, even though I was using the latest version.

Maybe it’s one of these sites that only work in Internet Explorer. Let’s give IE8 a go.

Nope. And it seems like the two guys in the picture are having the same problem. Those are not happy faces…

Internet Explorer 6 only

Wait a minute, what’s that? Internet Explorer 6 only? They’re kidding, right?

Apparently the people at Visa realised this is not acceptable. A few weeks after the first screenshot, they changed the page.

They are now working to add full support for multiple browsers. Isn’t that sweet?

Safety first!

Knowing what people search for on your site is very, very interesting.

After all, these people are already on your website. And they’re probably using your search feature because they can’t immediately find what they’re looking for. At least, that’s what we usually notice during user tests.

What do you have to do?

1. Make sure you can analyse the search queries on your website
   Earlier, we talked about how to hook up your own site search to Google Analytics.
   Of course there are other tools out there, but they’re often expensive and quite frankly not as good.
2. Analyse the list of most frequently used search words a couple of times per year
   Take into account spelling and wording variations and group these together. People looking for a ‘gun license’, ‘handgun license’ and ‘gun permit’ are all looking for the same thing. The filters in Google Analytics come in quite handy here.

Typical discoveries when analysing a search feature

• People look for things that appear to be hard to find through the navigation structure
• They look for things that aren’t on your website
• They type in old product names and even your competitors’ product names
• They don’t use the same words you do
• People can’t spell very well… at all

How can you turn that knowledge into a profit?

• Improve the structure of your website and your overview pages
  Bring the top tasks to the fore in your structure or draw attention to them by giving them a prominent place on the homepage and overview pages (also called landing pages, index pages or category pages).
  Rewrite your content where necessary. Make sure you create pages that are easily scannable.
  That way you improve your information architecture and overall website usability.
• Expand your content
  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should start churning out random content. Far from it. But, after you’ve deleted all the content people aren’t interested in (and there will be loads of it, trust me), you should think about creating content people áre looking for but that you’re not offering yet.
• Connect discontinued products to similar new products
  Don’t disappoint people who type in names of discontinued products or old product names. Tell them which current products correspond to those older products they already know and apparently still want.
  Do the same if people type in your competitors’ product names or product codes. People who do that are most likely not looking for that exact product but just something similar.
• Use the same words as your users or make your search feature smarter
  If your visitors don’t use the same words your website does, you’re the one who needs to change. Or at least expand your vocabulary. You can also make your search feature smarter by hooking it up to a thesaurus with synonyms.
• Take common spelling errors into account
  Depending on your search software (and your budget) you can automatically correct spelling errors or suggest alternatives.
  If you can’t afford to do that, and it turns out 1 out of 4 people use the same miss-spelling for a particular word, put that spelling error in the meta-data of the most relevant page, or use the wrong spelling on the page somewhere.

Examples

• Gun permit on government site
  On a government site, we noticed that ‘gun permit’ (and all its variants) was continually in the top 5 searches. Because guns aren’t exactly a popular topic, it wasn’t deemed very important and was put on the 3rd level of the structure somewhere. But it’s apparently one of the site’s top tasks.

• E-commerce site with unclear delivery information
  Almost the entire top 5 searches on this e-commerce site consisted of things like delivery options, shipping costs, payment methods etc. A clear indication these things needed to be clearer and not just tucked away under a link ‘Terms of sale’.
• Old product names and competitors’ product codes at a cable manufacturer’s site
  On the site of a leading cable manufacturer we noticed large volumes of searches on product codes and product names. Makes sense, right. But when we probed a little deeper, we noticed that a lot of the searches weren’t producing any results. Delving deeper still, it appeared that the product names were old names the cable cmpany didn’t use anymore but apparently the customers still did.
  User research taught us those people weren’t looking for support for the old products, they were simply looking for a replacement. They wanted to re-order the product.
  The solution: tell customers the old product name or code doesn’t exist anymore and show them the new products with similar characteristics.
  The result: an increase in sales.

You might also like:

• How to hook up your own site search to Google Analytics
• Navigation versus search
• Search results: layout tips
• Search = type-in field+ button

• What people use your search feature for says something about your navigation, homepage and overview pages. If those are all perfectly fine, chances are that very few people will use your search feature.
• Insight into what people are searching for on your website. Which words do they use? Do they use other words than the ones you’re using? Are there typical spelling errors lots of visitors make? Are they looking for things that aren’t on your website? Etc.

3 ways to analyse your site search data

1. Your content management system or search software has a built-in tool to analyse the search feature. In that case, you are very lucky. Unless of course it’s a crappy tool.
2. You’re best buds with the IT crowd and they’re more than happy to make you a tool to analyse your search data.
3. You use Google Analytics to analyse your website’s visitor behaviour. If that’s the case, do read on. (If you don’t have Google Analytics yet: make sure you do.)

Can you ‘hook up’ your search feature to Google Analytics?

• Enter a search query on your website, for example using the word ‘test’.
• Check whether the url of the search results page scontains your search query. (As shown in the examples below.)
• If it doesn’t, you’re in trouble. Go visit your friends at IT or call your web builder to fix this. That shouldn’t be very hard.

How do you hook up your search feature to Google Analytics?

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account and click on the name of the site of which you want to hook up the search feature. (This step is only necessary if you have more than one website.)
   
2. Click on the link ‘Edit’ on the right side of the page.
   
3. You’re now on the page ‘Profile settings’. Click the link ‘Edit’, in the top right corner of the block called ‘Main Website Profile Information’.
   
4. At the bottom of the page there’s a subheader ‘Site search’. Select the radio button ‘Do Track Site Search’.
   
5. More options will then appear. In the ‘Query Parameter’ field, you need to type in the parameter that’s directly in front of the search query in the url of your search results page. In the example of The Web Usability Blog that’s the letter ‘s’. In the example of Flemish Brabant it’s the letter ‘q’.
   
6. Unless you use faceted search, you’re done.
7. Don’t forget to save your new settings.

How can you check if it works?

• Click on ‘View reports’ in Google Analytics. There’s a navigation on the left now where you click on ‘Content’. After that, click on ‘Site Search’.
• If you see numbers and graphs, you’ve succeeded.
• If you don’t, read the instructions again…

What can you do now you’ve hooked up your search feature to Google Analytics?

If you know what people search for on your site, you can turn that knowledge into a profit. Read all about in our article ‘Analyse your site search to increase ROI‘.

Faceted search helps people to look for things based on criteria that are important for them.

In classic web navigation, the website determines the order of the choices. But this hierarchical structure is too limited for sites with a large product range or information offering. Different people often have different criteria in searching for the same thing.

Example: holiday homes

When I’m looking for a holiday home, a swimming pool is essential. For you it might be that pets are allowed or that it’s no more than 10 miles from a supermarket. All these things are important, but they’re not important for everyone.

The best way to solve this: faceted search. Sure, you could also go for an extremely advanced search feature, but I’d advise against it.

In this article we’ll discuss 4 design aspects of faceted search that are crucial for good usability.

Where do you put faceted search?

• Left is best
  Big sites like Amazon, eBay and Google put faceted search on the left. These sites probably have more visitors than you do. When big, influential sites do things a certain way, that creates a certain pattern of expectation for users. They expect you to do things the same way those big sites do it.Another compelling argument for putting faceted search on the left is that the left half of the page gets more attention than the right half. If you want your filters to be noticed and used, put them on the left. Apple does it too, on their website and in iTunes.

• Second-best: at the top
  You can put faceted search at the top, but it’s not as good as left. Mainly because it pushes everything on the page down. Which means less of your products are visible above the page fold. And even though people definitely scroll, they spend 80% of their time above the page fold.)In the Cnet example on the left, the search filters push the reviews below the page fold. Not good.

• Stay away from the right
  During our own user tests we often see that faceted search on the right side of the page is ignored by about half of the test users. People don’t look at the right side of the page very much, not even when you put the search filters there.

How do you indicate which filters are active?

• In the search filters themselves
  The best way to indicate which search filters are active is by making them stand out visually. Just like you’d do in a standard navigation (read tip 4 of our article on way-finding).Downside: if you have a lot of search filters, it can become difficult for the user to see all the active filters.

  Apple indicates which filters are active in a very clean and clear way. Booking.com looks slightly less refined but it is very clear.

• In a separate area above the search filters
  Probably the way most sites do it now. The advantage is that users get a quick overview of all the active filters. The downside is that the actual search filters get bumped down a little.

• At the top of the page
  Less popular but also possible. Put a sentence ‘x products for your search criteria:’ followed by the active filters. Put a red cross behind each filter to make it clear the user can undo his choice.This is especially handy if you have lots of search filters. Less experienced users understand how this works too.

How to undo a filter choice?

• Add an ‘undo’ x in the active filter
  A very clean-looking way that takes up a minimal amount of screen space.
   
• By adding a link ‘Clear filter’ to every filter category
  It works, but it sounds a bit technical and it’s quite clunky. Downside: it takes up one extra line. In this case it’s also quite unnecessary because it’s a system with check-boxes.
   
• By adding an item ‘All …’ to every filter category
  It’s not the most elegant solution but we’ve seen in user testing this works really well. Downside: it takes up one extra line.

• In the active filters summary
  Simply put a red cross behind every active filter if you put the active filters together at the top of the filter list or at the top of the page.

What if you want to allow more than one active filter within the same category?

• Check whether it’s really beneficial for the user.
• If it is, put checkboxes in front of the filters. That makes it clear users can select more than one item in the same filter category.

If you know any particularly good examples of faceted search, please share them in the comments!

You might also like:

• 4 product comparison best practices
• Product overview do’s and don’ts

Letting people know which site they’re on and where they are on that site is pretty basic usability stuff, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

1. Logo and company name in top left corner

Put your logo in the top left corner. If your logo doesn’t contain your company name, put your name directly underneath the logo. Do this on every page. That way, people immediately know whose website they’re on.

Don’t think putting your logo on the right side will make you special. Sure, you’ll be different, but not in a way people appreciate. You’re just making it harder for them to know which website they’re on.

Ogilvy puts its logo in the bottom right corner. Because that’s not where people expect it to be, it will take them longer to see it.

Not mentioning your name or logo at all is of course not the greatest idea either.

Without a logo or name in the top left corner, it’s not easy for visitors to know they’re on the website of the Museum for Industrial Archeology and Textile (MIAT) in Ghent.

2. Breadcrumb

A great way to let users know where they are on your website, is via a breadcrumb. A breadcrumb shows you where you are on a website by visualizing the site’s hierarchy, from the homepage to the current page.

You can find more details on what a good breadcrumb looks like in our article ‘Breadcrumb: 7 tips’.

3. Clearly visible page title

A page title has to stand out. Use a larger font size and perhaps even a different colour than your regular text colour.

Put the page title always in the same, clearly visible place: at the top of the content part of the page, left-aligned.

Use the same term as the one you use in your menu, or at least start the page title in the same way. Inconsistencies can be confusing.

The Belgian province Flemish Brabant puts the page title or header where it should be: at the top left of the page’s content part, in a larger font size and different colour than the regular text.

4. Navigation: active item in a different colour

Navigation plays a very important part in telling people where they are on a website.

An easy way to show users what main and sub-category of the navigation they’re in is putting the active category in a different (background) colour.

On the site of Amnesty International it’s very clear which main and sub-category of the navigation the user is in.

5. Title tag

Another small but not unimportant element that can help users determine where they are on a website is the title tag.

But thanks to our ‘8 tips for the perfect title tag‘ you already know everything about that.

The overview pages on the website of Antwerp art campus deSingel give the user an overview of, well, not very much. Except for a truly huge page title (if you’ve ever seen a bigger one, please let me know) there’s not a lot to see really.

Ah, but there’s a tiny link ‘Topical exhibitons’ just visible above the page fold! Yes, there is. Go ahead and click it. Nothing happens.

If you want to see the current architecture exhibitions, you’re going to have to scroll down.

Now there’s nothing wrong with scrolling, but on a page like this the current exhibition(s) should at least be partly visible above the page fold.

Why use up all that space for one creatively hyphenated word?

Thank you, Jan Seurinck for pointing this one out.

And the advanced search feature on Iha.com doesn’t make it any easier.

Then again, maybe it’s handy if you’re looking for a lakeside cottage in the mountains with a private swimming pool and sauna. Around the corner from an 18 hole golf course.

Maybe.

A client recently asked me: “Navigation, isn’t that a bit old hat? I mean, this is the time of Google. Doesn’t everybody just search?”

No, they don’t. Good navigation and good links are vital for the success of a website. A search feature is an added bonus, sure. But if you have one, it has to be as good as Google or even better.

Less than 5% uses the search feature

Google might be insanely popular but that doesn’t mean the search feature on your website is too.

On the contrary.

When we do visitor behaviour analysis (read: Google Analytics) we often see that the search feature is rarely used by more than 5% of a site’s total number of visitors. On our blogs the number of searchers is even lower: around 1,5%. On the website of a Flemish province we’re working for it’s just below 5%.

Things we know about search

During user tests we see the following happen time and time again:

• Most people only use the search feature after they’ve tried the navigation or the content links. Search is seen as the last resort.
• If people are looking for something very specific, like a product they know the name of, they’re be more inclined to search.
• Programmers and engineers use the search feature more often than ‘normal people’.

What if more than 5% of your visitors uses the search feature?

If the number of visitors that use your search feature is higher than 5%, that might be an indication that all is not well on your website.

Check whether your navigation is clear to your visitors. Do they understand the words you’re using? Do your overview pages contain the right links?

It’s also worthwhile to check on which page people start searching. And to see what it is about that page that might cause them to do that.

These rules obviously don’t apply to job sites, real estate sites, etc. where people basically come to search.

5 reasons to encourage people to browse rather than search

1. Most people aren’t very good at searching
   It’s quite shocking to see how bad some people are at formulating a good search query. Often they use words that are either too general, way too specific or just plain wrong.
2. Different words
   People often use different words than the website uses. They type in ‘night school’ for example, when the site talks about ‘lifelong learning’. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it usually doesn’t deliver great results.
3. Spelling errors are very common
   You wouldn’t believe the amount of ’sandels’ and ’sandles’ being offered on eBay when actually what these people are trying to sell are ’sandals’.
4. Most search features aren’t very good
   Most search features, especially the ones that come with a CMS, aren’t very good. The way of searching the data, ordering the results, accounting for spelling mistakes, … it’s all a bit depressing.
5. People who browse see more and buy more
   People who use the search feature look at less other pages after they’ve found what they’re looking for than people who browse. On e-commerce sites the shopping carts of browsers are fuller than those of searchers.

   On the other hand, searchers often have a higher conversion rate than browsers. That’s pretty logical, given that people who use the search feature know what they want and are often looking for something specific. And so not an argument in favour of just pushing any and every visitor towards the search feature.

Which brings us to the interesting subject of hooking up your website’s search feature to your Google Analytics account. Because there’s loads of interesting information to be found there. But we’ll talk more about that later.

Meanwhile, you might want to check out these articles

• Search = type-in field + button
• Layout tips for search results

As soon as your chosen user name contains certain, shall we say ‘improper’, letter combinations Lego delicately points this out to you. And then forces you to choose a different user name.

It’s good to be careful. Just don’t be too careful.

And ahem, Lego… if you’re really that worried about your squeaky clean image, maybe you should pick a figure with a less suggestively crooked smile. Just sayin’.

Many thanks to Anthony Bosschem of Youreca, who put us on to this beauty.

But how do you write a good description tag? These 12 tips should point you in the right direction.

1. Use no more than 155 characters

Google shows only the first 160 characters of the description tag. After that, it simply adds an ellipsis (…). If you want to play it safe, don’t use more than 155 characters. Don’t forget: spaces and punctuation marks count as characters too.

2. Use keywords you want to score with for that page

Google only shows the description tag if there’s a sufficiently strong content relation between the description tag, the user’s query and the content of the page.

If you want Google to show your description tag, be sure to include the page’s keyword(s) in it.

3. Don’t create false expectations

Everybody likes to have loads of visitors. But it’s actually more important to get the right visitors.

Luring people to your website with vague promises or inaccurate description tags will work against you in the long run. Sure, you might get more people to click on your result in Google. But if you can’t deliver on your promise, they’ll be gone in a hurry. And they won’t come back.

4. Tell the user what to expect

The description tag needs to tell the user what the page is about. It should be a concise summary of your page.

5. Think about your target audience

Hopefully, every page on your website has a purpose. Some pages can be informative, others might be pages where you want to sell a particular product. Think about the goal of your page and the kind of people you want to attract. Make sure the description tag reflects that.

With our article ‘Information architecture: the basics’ we want to reach people who don’t know a lot about information architecture.

Our product page ‘Information architecture’ wants to attract people who are ready to make use of our services to improve their website’s information structure.

6. Write properly

Reading your description tag should be a pleasure, not a chore. So don’t just pile up the keywords but give people a proper indication of what the page is about.

You don’t necessarily have to write full sentences but do make sure it’s easy to read.

7. To the point

You’ve only got 155 characters. That means there’s no time for beating about the bush. Make your point in those 155 characters.

8. Don’t just repeat the page title

The description tag gives you 155 extra characters to explain what a page is about and to get people to click on your result in Google. Don’t just repeat the title tag, use those 155 characters to give extra information. (Read our 8 tips for the perfect title tag)

9. Being commercial won’t hurt you

There’s no shame in being commercial. If you know there’s one thing that makes your page stand out from the competition’s, say so.

You offer a best-price guarantee? Say so. Better yet: include the product’s price in the description tag.

Or include your phone number: “Order your tickets online or call 03 333 33 33”. Convenient for people who don’t have time or who are surfing on their mobile and need info fast.

If you offer a free online quote for a particular service, that’s a great way to end your description tag: “Get a free quote online”.

10. Unique for every page

Create a unique description tag for every page. Great for Google and for your visitors.

11. Use the right language

Make sure the description tag is in the same language as the page. Seems ridiculous to even mention but on multi-language sites you often see the description tags are all in one language.

12. What about the description tag of a language choice page?

That’s a hard one. Don’t write ‘Choose your language’ or ‘Language choice’. That says absolutely nothing.

Instead, say what your company does in your site’s main languages.

More tips?

Feel free to add more tips of your own in the comments.

What do you mean, this route is not available?
Has the road gone missing?
Was it destroyed by an earthquake?
A tsunami?
Has it been temporarily moved to a parallell universe?
Help!

Related articles

• Gender error
• 7 tips for user-friendly error messages

The description tag is a piece of html code that’s meant to give a short – you guessed it – description of a web page. The description tag is at the top of the page in the <HEAD>section of the code.

In code, a description tag looks like this:

<meta name="description" content="Short, riveting description of your web page." />

Not visible on your web page

The description tag of a web page is not visible on the page itself. That’s why a lot of companies don’t pay it much attention.

Google shows the description tag

Google likes the description tag. If a web page has a description tag, Google shows it, provided these 2 conditions are met:

• Semantic similarity between the description tag and the content of the web page
• Significant similarity between the user’s search query and the content of the description tag

Example 1

I looked for ‘title tag’. Google shows the page’s description tag because it contains my query ‘title tag’.

Example 2

I looked for ‘page title’. Because the description tag does not contain my query, Google doesn’t show it. Instead, Google shows a sentence fragment on the page that does contain the query.

What does Google do if you don’t have a description tag?

If a page doesn’t have a description tag, Google usually shows sentence fragments on the page that contain the user’s query.

If your website is in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and your homepage doesn’t have a description tag, there’s quite a big chance that Google will use the description of your website in the DMOZ.

Example

Cortex abc is in the Open Directory Project. This description was made by someone at Open Directory Project.

Because the homepage of Cortex abc doesn’t have a description tag, Google uses the description of the Open Directory Project database.

And apparently that description was written quite a while ago. If you visit Cortex abc’s website today, you can see it doesn’t really fit the description anymore.

Does the description tag affect my ranking in Google?

No, it doesn’t. Google ignores the description tag’s content when it comes to ranking. The description tag will not help you to score better in Google.

Does the description tag matter, if Google doesn’t use it for its ranking?

Yes, it absolutely does. Which result people click on in Google is affected by the result’s title and the extra bit of information that appears underneath the title.

Thanks to our 8 tips for the perfect title tag you should have the title pretty much covered.

The ‘extra bit of information’ that Google shows about a page can be the description tag. Good copywriting can convince people to click on your page rather than your competitor’s, even though he is maybe ranked one or two spots higher than you are.

How do you write a good description tag?

Good question. Let me get back to you on that one.

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.

The great thing about a content management system (CMS) is that it makes it really easy to create and publish content on your website.

So that’s what most webmasters and editors do: they create and publish content like there’s no tomorrow.

Cause it’s fun. And it’s what they’re being paid to do.

They’re often judged on the amount of content they produce. The number of pages and articles they put online. A nice and easy box to tick during the annual evaluation talk.

Managing content is boring

If you’re responsible for the quality of your company’s website, your main task should not be publishing new content. You should be managing and improving the content you’ve already got.

It’s less fun than creating new content. But it’s vital if you want to have a website that works.

It’s like Gerry McGovern says: “You’re not being paid to have fun. You’re being paid to run a good website.”

6 essential questions and tasks for every content manager

If you can answer yes to the following questions, you’re a good content manager.

• Is the content on your website up to date? Are you sure there’s not a single page you haven’t looked at in over a year? (For convenience’s sake, we’ll leave your news and blog articles out of this. Even though ideally you should have a look at those once in a while as well.)
• Are there no pages with overlapping or contradictory content on your website?
• Are your texts clear? Are they written with your visitors in mind? Are they really? Did you research that or are you just saying yes because that’s what you think?
• Do you have a list of all pages that were hardly visited over the last 6 months? Did you analyse those pages and try to figure out the reasons why?
• Do you know the bounce rates of the 100 most popular pages on your website? Have you looked into the pages with unusually high bounce rates and developed alternative pages? And then checked to see if those performed any better?
• If you’ve got landing pages, have you checked whether they are really contributing to your website’s goal? Have you tried changing them? And then checked again?

Can you answer yes to all of these questions?
Congratulations, you are either a great content manager or a fantastic liar.

You can only answer yes to less than 3 questions?
Don’t sweat it. Your competitors aren’t doing any better.

If you would do better though, that would really make a difference. Not adding new content on your website or doing a flashy new redesign.

Yeah but, isn’t that why we got a content management system?

Management’s reaction to content-related issues often is:”We’ve invested heavily in a state of the art content management system. We don’t have to do all this stuff by hand now, do we?”

Yes, you do. A CMS allows you to publish content and to assign it to a particular place or places on your website. You can add a publishing date and an expiration date as well. Hurray.

But that’s about as far as it goes when it comes to ‘managing content’.

A CMS won’t tell you that the page you’re writing is a piece of fluff nobody is interested in.

A CMS won’t tell you that what you’re writing looks suspiciously like 5 other pages you’ve already got.

A CMS won’t tell you which pages are really working for you and which ones are just dead weight.

A content manager’s job

• 80% of a content manager’s time should be devoted to managing and improving existing content
• 20% should go towards creating new content

You don’t like that? Tough.

Related articles

• Information architecture: the basics
• 8 writing tips to increase the impact of your website

Which provides us with a good excuse to also show you some examples of what not to do.

1. The root of all evil

2. Must remember to enter title tag. Very important!

3. Final countdown? Final homapge!

4. Friendly, but not really saying much

As you can see, our 8 tips for the perfect title tag could be useful for some people.

Have you seen a title tag that made you laugh? Or cry?

Share it in the comments or email me.