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?

We’ll tell you more about that in our next article.

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.

The title tag determines the name of a web page. Title tags are mostly visible in Google and in the browser.

Google
The page title Google shows is a page’s title tag. The same goes for Bing.

Browser
The title tag appears in the browser title bar and the browser tabs. When you add a page to your favorites or when you share a page via social media, the title tag is what apppears as the page title.

Is the title tag important?

You bet it is. The title tag is one of the most important things to get right if you want to do well in Google. It’s not the only thing but if you neglect your title tags you’re making it very hard on yourself.

Tips for a good title tag

1. Use no more than 66 characters

• Search engines only show a limited number of characters of the title tag. Google shows the first 66 characters. After that, it simply adds an ellipsis (…). If you want your title tags to look professional, don’t use more than 66 characters.
• Short titles are easier to read than long ones.
• The less words there are in your title tag, the more value Google attributes to each word. As a consequence, it’s easier for a keyword to score well in a title tag of 4 words than it is in a title tag of 8 words. This is called keyword density.

2. Make sure your title tag accurately describes your page

• The title tag should contain the keyword you want to score with for that page.
• Make sure you use that keyword somewhere on the page itself.
• Use a keyword your visitors use. It’s nice to do well in Google but if it’s with a word nobody uses it’s not really going to do you any good.

3. Think about what you want the page to do

• Make sure the title tag and content of the page correspond with the reasons people visit that page.
  ‘Netbooks: reviews of the fastest models’ will appeal to a different audience and create different expectations than ‘Cheap netbooks’.

4. Put the keyword first

• Google reportedly attributes more value to the first word in a title tag than the last one.
• Jakob Nielsen’s research shows that the first 11 characters determine whether someone continues to read on or not.

5. Don’t forget to mention your brand name

• Putting your brand name in the title tag isn’t all that important if you’re a small company. But if you’re one of the leading players in your field, it’s a good idea to mention your brand name in your title tags.
• Wa advise most companies to put their brand name last. Only on your homepage should your brand name be first.
• If you’re an absolute top brand that the majority of people knows and trusts, it can be interesting to start your title tags with your brand name.

6. Separate your brand name from the page title

• Use a vertical dash (|) or hyphen (-) to separate your brand name from the actual page title.

7. Write attractive title tags

• If you stuff the title tag full of keywords, you’ll probably score well in Google. But it will make your title tag unattractive and people won’t click on it. So you’re kind of missing the point.
• For a lot of people, the title tag is their first introduction to your brand. Make sure you make a good first impression.
• Your web page’s title tag appears in a list with other search results. Make sure it stands out.

8. Unique for every page

• Each page of your web site should have a unique title tag. If you can’t decide what a page is really about, how is Google supposed to know?

How can you adapt your title tags?

That depends on your website. Hopefully, you’re using a content management system (CMS) that lets you adapt the title tag of every page manually.

If you’re choosing a new CMS, make sure it allows you to do that. If you want to do well in Google, it’s vital.

More tips?

Do you have some more tips for good title tags? Feel free to add them in the comments section.

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.

If you’re offering 2 or more similar products or services, people should be able to compare them easily.

It’s the vendor’s job to help people pick the product that suits their needs best. That’s what people expect, offline as well as online.

We’ve written about this before in ‘4 product comparison best practices’.

Don’ts

Hide the differences

A typical problem in product comparisons is that differences between products aren’t immediately apparent.

First Choice Power is a good example of a site that doesn’t tell people what the difference is between products but makes them look for it.

What’s the difference between Simply Better Price Plan 24 and Simply Better Price Plan? The description is pretty much identical.

On closer inspection I can tell the first one’s a 24 month plan and the other one’s a 12 month plan. They both promise a ‘guaranteed low price’. Is it the same price for the 24 month plan as for the 12 month plan? I have no idea.

Inconsistent order

Comparing products is only handy when the comparable characteristics are nicely lined up.

Nuon obviously thinks that would be making it too easy. That’s why they put “(Up to) £ 100 annual Direct Debit discount” respectively 1st, 2^nd and 2^nd. So you can look for it, instead of just see it.

No prices

You’ve probably noticed in the previous examples that companies like talking about price without actually telling customers what their product costs.

While that’s pretty creative, it’s not what people want. People want to know how much something costs. So tell them. Price plays an important in a customer’s decision making process. The more open you are about price, the easier it is to convince people to buy your product.

Fluffy copywriting

Web writers should not be paid by the word. Good web writing is brief and concise.

Describing your products in long, flowery sentences is not a good way to go.

Vertical

Keep scrolling to a a minimum to make comparing easy. Put similar products next to one another instead of underneath one another.

Belgacom lines up its products vertically. The comparable characteristics of the various products are never visible at the same time, which makes it harder to compare.

AGL makes it even more difficult. Not only do they list their products vertically, they only show the product details of one product at a time, at mouse-over. Not the greatest strategy if you want to make comparing your products easy.

Good examples

Tables

A table with 1 line per characteristic is the easiest way to compare products. If you can do this for your products, do it. Surfers love it. It’s clear, it’s easy. Combell understands.

Visual emphasis

The more expensive the product, the more room it gets at Combell. The expensive products also have a higher star rating. Visual tricks like that really work. Or are you intuitively attracted to the sad little one-star product? I didn’t think so.

Highlight the popular product

If you want to play into people’s herd instincts, it’s a good idea to highlight the ‘most popular’ product. The example below is from Shopify.

More explanation in a tooltip

At Basecamp they take it one step further. Not only do they highlight the most popular solution, there’s a tooltip with extra information on the various features. (Pity they only have a tooltip with extra info for the most popular solution.)

Most expensive product first

A/B-tests show that putting the most expensive product first does wonders for your revenue. Basecamp gets it right in that respect as well.

Blocks

If a table isn’t ideal for your products or if you think it’s too boring (trust me, it isn’t) you can always go for product blocks.

Telenet shows a fairly good example of these product blocks. The important product characteristics (price, speed, volume) stand out and are easy to compare. Still, a table would be even better.

And now for a totally unbiased example from a company that offers usability services. Product blocks with the characteristics in the same order in each block, to make comparing easy.

Photographers know that the eye gaze direction of the person in a picture dictates the eye gaze direction of the person who’s looking at the picture. It’s in just about every book on photography ever published.

What does this mean for your website?

If you use pictures of people on your website, make sure they’re looking at something you want your visitors to look at as well.

Pictures of people looking straight into the camera bounce the viewer’s gaze right back. Sure, they draw people’s attention. But that in itself really doesn’t do anything for you, does it? Unless of course you prefer people to look at the pictures on your site rather than the ‘Buy now’ button. If that’s how you roll, be my guest.

Example 1: hair product ad

Most people instinctively prefer the bottom picture. It looks more natural than the slightly contrived sideways glance in the top picture. The heatmap however tells a different story. The top picture directs the viewer’s gaze to the brand name on the product. Hmm… which picture should I use in my campaign? That’s a no-brainer really, isn’t it?

Example 2: cute baby

If the baby looks straight ahead, people mainly focus on the baby’s face (”What a cutie!”). The text on the right doesn’t really get a lot of attention.

If the baby looks at the text, the visitors’ eye gaze pattern changes. The text gets a lot more attention. And so does the brand name in the bottom right…

For people who aren’t familiar with heatmaps: what you see is the result of eyetracking research that follows the eye gaze of people. The red zones indicate areas that were looked at by 80 to 100% of people. In this case, the research was done with 106 people by the Australian UsableWorld.

Example 3: banner with or without headshot?

The excellent site Which Test Won recently showed this example. Which banner got the biggest conversion rate?

You chose the banner without the headshot? Excellent choice. It got 65% more sign-ups than the other one.

Does that mean pictures of people don’t work in banners? That’s a going a bit too far. Look where the banner guy is looking. Wrong place. It would have been interesting to see a test with a version where the guy in the headshot looks at the call to action button…

Conclusion

Having people look straight into camera works fine for family snaps but not if you want to put the pictures on your website.

What else is important if you use pictures of people?

• Use real people. Eerily perfect models with teeth whiter than the driven snow raise suspicion rather than confidence.
• Avoid the clichés. “We’re an IT-company. Let’s use pictures of nerdy guys behind computers.” Actually, let’s not.
• Don’t forget to link the picture to your product or the message you want to convey.

1. Page fold: myth or reality
   A hot topic if ever there was one. Is the page fold a myth? Do or don’t people scroll? Everything you’ve always wanted to know about the page fold and page length.
    
2. Stop the presses – we’ve got a new website!
   Don’t bore people with messages about your new website. It’s not just inappropriate, it could cost you customers.
    
3. Screen resolution statistics and tips
   Which screen resolutions do people in Belgium use to surf the web? And what does that mean for your website’s layout?
    
4. 48% of visitors on e-commerce websites don’t buy due to lack of usability
   iPerceptions’ research shows that 48% of the people on e-commerce websites doesn’t buy due to lack of usability. Even worse: 38,5% of the people who visit a website with the intention to buy, don’t succeed in doing so.
    
5. 13 quotes that show the customer isn’t ready for a good website
   Sometimes a client says something that makes it clear to us usability professionals that they are simply not ready for a good website. 13 quotes that make our blood boil. Also read a lot: 14 quotes and explanations
    
6. User-friendly error messages: 7 tips
   A lot of websites make usability mistakes on their form pages. And that costs visitors. On a form page that’s extra painful because if you lose a visitor there, you loose a very valuable visitor. A visitor who’s willing to make the effort to get in touch with you or perhaps even to order something. 7 tips for user-friendly error messages.
    
7. 11 tips to turn your visitors into customers
   My colleague Karl Gilis’s presentation with 11 tips to turn your website visitors into customers. Lots of eye-opening examples. Warning: you may not always like what you see. But it is the truth.
    
8. Google Maps: cases from travel websites
   Google Maps is great. But only if you use it well. People seem to put stuff on Google Maps pretty much without thinking about it. We show some good and bad examples from travel websites.
    
9. Gender error
   According to Citroën I’m suffering from a ‘gender error’. Should I panic? Wear more make-up maybe? Stuff some of those silicon chicken cutlets down my bra? None of the above. It seems I simply forgot to tell them whether I am a MR, MISS or MRS. Phew.
    
10. Browser statistics
    Which browsers and operating systems do people use to surf your website in Belgium? Is Firefox catching up with Internet Explorer? Is Chrome as popular with housewives as it is with geeks? And what about the Mac guys and girls? Are they going to take over the world at last?

Everybody who shops on the web compares. They don’t just compare products from different vendors, but also different products from the same vendor.

This comparison behaviour goes for visitors of both b2c and b2b websites.

Allow users to compare

Comparing is a top task so make sure it’s easy to do on your website.

If you make it hard to compare your products, there’s a good chance your website visitors will not become customers.

What do your visitors expect?

• Main characteristics of the product or service on the product page, pereferably as a bulleted list.
• An overview of the similarities and differences of comparable products on 1 page. It’s really annoying if you have to get out pen and paper to write down product characteristics and then look for the differences between the products.

What do you need in order to compare?

• Clearly differentiated products or services. If you’re not sure what the difference is between product A and B, how is your customer supposed to know?
• If you want to compare products in a meaningful way, you need to know what the deciding factors are for your customers. Seems easy, right? Wrong. In about half of the projects we do, the company doesn’t know what their customers deciding criteria are.

What if you don’t meet these criteria?

• Make sure you do!

The choice is simple: adapt or lose customers.

Less than 10 products or services to compare?

Basic principle: all on 1 page

A search feature or wizard is not needed here. Your users probably aren’t rocket scientists but they aren’t idiots either.

Option 1: table

• Users love this. If it’s in any way possible, try this.
• Recent tests show that putting the most expensive products first is the most effective.

Top row: good examples by Shopify en Combell, lowest to highest price. Basecamp (bottom row) does slightly better: from highest to lowest price and with extra information on mouse-over.

Option 2: separate blocks

• Clear heading.
• Main characteristics in bullets, preferably in such a way that it’s easy to compare the different products or services (a.o. by the same order and approach).
• Price.
• Each block should be clickable in its entirety.
• Line up blocks horizontally whenever possible. That creates a better overview.

The blocks on the Telenet website offer a pretty good overview.

More than 10 products or services?

Facets

All products on 1 page with faceted search on the left.

2 good examples of refining results by faceted search: Bol.com (left) en Booking.com (right)

7 things to keep in mind about faceted search

1. Put the faceted search on the left. You can put it on the right, but less people will notice it. You can put it at the top of the page as well, but that will push the actual results down and that’s not ideal.
2. Limit facets to the main product characteristics. Don’t cram every detail in there.
3. Take your customers’ view on what the product’s main characteristics are. Remember: what you think, doesn’t matter. It’s all about your customers.
4. Make selecting and deselecting the facets easy.
5. It should be impossible for users to make a selection that delivers zero results.
6. In many cases, it’s helpful if the user can order the results list (alphabetically, by price, by size, …).
7. If there are more than 20 products in your list, it’s best to go for numbered results pages (cfr. Google).

Detailed comparison

A more detailed comparison, that sums up all characteristics of comparable products in a table can be very handy for certain products.

More on product comparison

• Trends in pricing tables
• 50 examples of pricing tables
• Best practices for faceted product search
• The basics of information architecture

Other options?

Have you seen other good examples? Maybe you came up with one yourself? Feel free to leave a link to it in the reactions or send us an email.

Want to know more about how to make good home pages, overview pages and detail pages?
Join us at one of our usability workshops.