Web Marketing Usability Principles
Summer, 2001
Recent statistics from the Nielsen/Netratings service indicate
that the top three most visited web sites are search engines,
portals or directory sites. Nine out of ten web users visit
these sites at least once a month; one out of three uses one
of these sites at least five times per month. Considering these statistics in light of the reported 167
million web users in the United States make it obvious that
these types of web sites are an important addition to an
overall marketing strategy. Using the web to introduce your
company or organization to people interested in your products
and services is one of the lowest cost ways to reach new
customers. An effective strategy uses the web, along with
other forms of media, to specifically target those prospects.
A good search engine strategy can reach the market niches
found in those millions of web users that are not addressed by
other medias like direct mail and print advertising. Driving
large, indiscriminate amounts of web site traffic should not
be the goal of a search engine strategy. The goal is to obtain
targeted traffic, from prospective customers who are already
interested in your information, because they've just taken the
time to look for it on a search engine. Search engines, portals and directories use a constantly
changing variety of technologies and methods to catalog and
rank web sites and web pages. Generally, search engines use
technology-driven indexing and cataloging methods, to list web
sites, while directories use human editors to develop and
maintain web site catalogs. Regardless of the methods used to
create these indexes, their overall goal is to help web users
find the web sites that feature the information they need.
Attention to the four basics of marketing usability in your
page design can help search engines achieve their goals,
which, in turn provides your web site with traffic from good
prospect customers.
Page Title
Include an HTML page title on every page of your site. The
title should be approximately 40 words or less, and should be
relevant both to the content of the page and to the user of
the information. If there is no title present, most search
engines will display either the URL of the page, or will
indicate that the page is untitled. You lose an important
opportunity to bring your prospective customer to your web
site through the poor use or omission of the Title tag on a
web page.
Meta Tags
The two key elements for web marketing usability are the Meta
tags for Keywords and Description.
Description
If you had to describe your company, product or service in 50
words or less, and those 50 words were the only chance you
were going to get with a prospective customer, what would you
say? How would your buyer describe what they're looking for on
your web site? That is the content you need in the Meta
description for your web site. Some search engines display the
Meta tag description to users as the description of a web site
in the list of results for their query.
Keywords
Once again, think like your audience. Even better, ask them if
you can. Using the wrong keywords will not deliver the
targeted traffic you want. While registered trademarks,
positioning statements, slogans and taglines are all marketing
communication tools that have a very useful place; it is
unlikely that your customer will use those words or phrases to
search for your company, product or service. Search engines
catalog your keywords and associate them with your page.
Most search engines limit the keyword field to about 1,000
characters and 80% of users conduct searches in lower case
letters. So, don't worry about the quantity or format of
keywords, spend your time focusing on the quality of the
words. Generally, phrases work better than individual words in
generating qualified traffic. After you've completed your
keyword list, take another look at your Meta description and
page title. Are any of the keywords featured in the title or
the description? Keep in mind that these are the phrases your
user is typing into a search engine in an attempt to find you.
If those all-important words are present in more than just the
Meta keyword section, it's more likely you'll be found.
Content
The average user spends less than one minute on any given web
page. On the web, readers skim content. That's what makes
online copywriting and web content organization so
challenging, and the first paragraph or 100 words so
important. Take a look at the content the user will first see
when they visit your page. Do those first 100 words include
any of your Meta keywords? Is the content formatted as HTML
text? For marketing usability purposes, the answer to both
these questions should be "yes." If a search engine sees that
your keyword or phrase is also in your page title and in your
page copy, it will deem your page more relevant to the user's
search. Search engines cannot read graphical text, so if
important content is included as a graphic, rather than HTML
text, it will not be cataloged. Additionally, some search
engines will use the first text of a page as the page
description in a list of search results.
While the primary purpose of your web content is to engage
your user and satisfy their needs, the needs of your user and
the requirements of the search engines are not that far apart.
If the content is designed, written and formatted in a manner
that is most useful for your customer, it is likely that it
will also be useful for search engines.
Graphics
Since search engines cannot read graphics, important
information conveyed by your navigation graphics may be lost.
To remedy this omission, use the HTML ALT tag to describe your
navigation content. It's still a good idea to include
text-based navigation as an option on all your web pages. This
is especially important if you're using imagemap-based
navigation, instead of individual hyperlinked images. Some
search engines cannot follow imagemapped links, which prevents
them from indexing all the pages on your web site.
Remember, generally, if it's not HTML, few search engines used
by the majority of web users can read and therefore index it.
Key web content in multimedia applications such as Flash or
Shockwave, PDF files and other enhanced content may not be
usable from a marketing perspective. This can be remedied by
creating a search engine-readable HTML page that describes and
links to the non-html content. Provided that links to this
description page are found on other HTML pages within your
site, search engines will be able to find and catalog this
content. With nearly half of all web users reporting that they go
online to compare products, services, prices or get purchasing
ideas, it makes sense to use every opportunity to help users
find your company or organization online. Relying solely on
non-Internet medias to help users find your web site will
never help you reach the millions of web users out there.
Attention to the basic principles of marketing usability will
go a long way in improving the overall value of a web site to
an overall marketing strategy. For more information on
search engines and web marketing usability, contact us.
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