Just what kind of impact does your website design have on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? It’s easy to think of your layout and usability as totally unconnected with your search engine rank, but the truth is that all of these factors play a subtle but important role. Getting the visit is the first obvious step. But keeping the user on your site and encouraging them to browse your products is an essential part of SEO which will have a direct impact on your average time spent on site and therefore your search position. By following this simple checklist, you can be sure to use your design to maximise your SEO and chances of making that conversion into a sale!

No Second Chances for a First Impression – Establishing Trust

They say that a book is judged by it’s cover, but this is also true for your website and products.  Most people will have decided whether they feel comfortable purchasing from you within the first 30 seconds, before even browsing your site! First impressions are not only important to be taken seriously in your industry, but are especially important for businesses taking payments online. You are asking potential customers to trust you with their credit card details, and even the slightest doubt in a customers mind can cause them to look elsewhere. Be mindful of your industry, take a look at competitor websites in your industry. How does yours measure up? 

There are a number of neat ways you can further bolster your first impression. Could you include testimonials or positive feedback somewhere within the pages? Are you approved by any major dealers, trade organisations or perhaps have any awards, logos or stamps of approval which might be tidily included in the design of your pages? Perhaps you have worked with a particularly big client which the public might recognise. All of these devices can be used to give your website professional feel.

Behold! A Call To Action! Just How Usable is Your Layout?

Remember that your website is here to server a purpose – we want your visitor to pick up the phone or write an email and place an order. Just how easy is for them to contact you? Are your contact details clearly visible on every page? Remember that it is just as easy for a visitors to click back as it is for them to click ‘contact us‘ in the menu!

Navigation plays a key role in the usability of your site. You may view your website on a day-to-day basis, so it makes sense to you. But people have a very short attention span on the Internet, and the easier you make it for them to find what they want, the longer they will stay! Perhaps you could get a second opinion from a fresh pair of eyes that does not regularly view your website? Take all feedback very seriously!

Greater numbers of links between pages are almost always better to include than too few. If you discuss a topic in the text itself, don’t be afraid to include links to relevant pages when you use important phrases (even if these pages are already linked to from the navigation menu itself!). Think of your website as a shop, the more connectivity you have between paths, the better your traffic will flow. Do not rely exclusively on your navigation menu!

Avoiding Any Barriers

I often see people attempt to control this first impression with a ‘welcome’ page (or ‘splash page’) which is usually displayed before the homepage. It may seem like a good idea, but pages like these usually present an extra barrier for search engines to get around, and it moves your products one extra click away from your customers! Also, a lot of traffic will not enter your site from the ‘front door’, but will land on an inner page, making the whole thing rather pointless. There are some exceptions where this extra page might be helpful – multinational companies or businesses with multiple offices may wish to direct people to a particular branch or language website. Or perhaps just different departments of a very large company.

Bear these points in mind when next reviewing your design and you’ll not go far wrong. If in doubt, simply give your website to someone else to test and listen to their feedback carefully. As we enter 2010, I predict we will see a lot of new websites as companies prepare for the new year. If it has been a while since you last did some interior designing, perhaps now is a good time to consider a website revamp?

However, now online shopping baskets and wish lists are getting better, with intuitive internal searches. I decided to try to use their websites as on-line dynamic catalogues. Last year when I tried it, I was left feeling frustrated at the slow responding sites and poor search results.

I had a look at what I call the top three sites; sites where I get the vast majority of my Christmas presents from – Boots.com, Tesco.com and Argos.co.uk. Last year Tesco impressed me the most of the three, showing more experience in the e-commerce market than the other two. Overall, I wasn’t surprised.

Boots.com, however I was massively disappointed at. The site was dated, hard to navigate and did not inspire me to part with my cash online.

This year I have seen huge improvement in all three websites. Usability of these sites seems to have been at the top of the agenda. Tesco.com has improved its search results (last year they were bringing up very random and irrelevant results), they have also thought of the user and spilt up gift ideas by price, which for me was excellent to see and very welcome!

Argos.com have improved the website by speeding up the time taken to access categories, and the search results. The navigation bar has been improved (I have been seeing vast improvement on the Argos site since last Christmas), and the searches have improved using better and more relevant keywords.

However they are still to improve the site by correcting misspelling of words entered into the search bar. They have also added the quick shop, for those who know the catalogue numbers off by heart. The categories of products have also been spilt by price and by age, which is a huge bonus for me, trying to buy computer games for nephews and nieces.

Boots.com – The whole website has had a massive and long needed overhaul, bringing the site up to date and splitting down to categories on the home page. However, when I dug a little deeper, I felt that the overhaul was not as complete as I first thought.

The categories were not easy to separate into price (there goes my budget!) until deep into the category, deeply disappointing, as Boots has to be my favourite gift purchasing destination.

When using the add to favourites for my gift ideas, the whole website crashed and lots all the gift ideas I had painfully browsed the site for. I was impressed by huge development on the site but still tempted back to browse through the Christmas catalogue.

So I successfully managed to create shopping wish list on Argos and Tesco, but unfortunately Boots has some way to go to tempt me out of catalogue browsing!