Usability and SEO

A good rule to keep in mind these days is that nothing stands alone. When it comes to website optimization, a lot of people conduct effective SEO campaigns but don't bother to put time and effort into the usability side of their website. Getting great, targeted traffic is useless if your visitors find your site hard to use. They might just end up leaving and not coming back. This will really damage your conversion despite the fact that you have good traffic. Conversion is a whole set of posts in of itself, so for the purpose of this conversation we'll just stick with the usability side of things. There are three main things you need to take into account when trying to improve the usability of your website: objectives, requirements, and structure.

Objectives

First and foremost it is important to figure out two sets of objectives: yours and your visitors. Your visitors might have objectives like finding low-priced surfboards for beginners and possibly some information on how to surf. Your objective might be to generate 10,000 sales within one year. Think of these carefully and make sure you understand the need you are trying to fulfill. Everything will fall out of these objectives so it's important that they accurately reflect what you and your visitors are trying to accomplish.

Requirements

Now its time to get a bit more detailed based upon the objectives that you came up with. What are the requirements that you and your users have? You may be able to offer 100 different types of surf boards on your website that are all available in 10 different styles. You may also want to provide things like accessories, instructional videos, or cool videos to get your visitors excited. Your users will have their own set of needs. They might be careful buyers and need some type of comparison tool to examine several surfboards at once, or maybe they need an online chat application for customer service. Once you have figured out the requirements that you and your users have, then you can move onto the structure phase.

Structure

By now you have an idea what you want to accomplish, what your visitors want to accomplish, and what you need to have in place. Now it is time to actually start bringing it all together. What do you want the user to see when they first enter your website and where do you want them to go next? Think about where all of your elements will be in the navigation process and decide what will be easiest for your visitors. If your customers need to compare products, figure out how that will fit into the browsing and buying process. The key here is to keep things simple while bringing all the elements together. Don't make your visitors think or struggle to get around your website. If your navigation is one step ahead of your visitors then they will breeze right through.

The end result of all this is that you'll have a website people aren't frustrated by. Your customers will find what they want quickly and efficiently, and ultimately more likely to convert. If you've done all the hard work in getting traffic, make sure you and your visitors get something out of it. This might seem like a gross simplification of the process, but the concepts work wonders. If you are looking for more information on usability you might want to check out The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett.

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