SEO and Web Marketing: What is Important to Human Customers?
Eighth in a series of articles on SEO and website marketing appearing every Thursday.
We have talked about what is important for search engines but it is also important to talk about what is important to customers. Anyone who comes to your website is a customer or a potential customer.
There are three things that are highly important to customers to the point of which they tend not to even think about them. If you have them then you’ll do fine, if you don’t then you need to rework your site immediately.
You might be shocked by what I think is the most important thing to customers: loading speed.
That is correct; loading speed is the most important thing to the viewers of a website. In other words can the customer download the page and bring it up quickly.
Don’t believe me? Think back to how many times you have gone to a website and you waited for graphics and or a flash intro to load and it has taken so long that you hit the back button.
Let’s face it; people today have zero tolerance for waiting. If they have to wait on your website they are going to leave.
The second most important thing is to insure that the site is clear with what it is about. The website should not be a guessing game of what it is about. A home page or landing page should not be crammed with unrelated information, such as logos of partner companies, anniversary of employees or other negligible information.
Humans coming to the website want to know what the website is all about as quickly as possible with as few distractions as possible. A confusing site will drive people away in droves.
The third most important thing is easy of navigation of your site. This is not just links and menu items, it also means can the customer find the information that they are looking for. Here’s an example: if the price of an item is hidden / buried under many pages how long do you think before the customer will give up trying to find this information?
What do these things have in common? It can be summed up by saying people want…. SPEED! If they can’t find what they are looking for quickly and easily they will leave before you can say “back button”.
Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, web site, website, web marketing, b2b, business-to-business
This article was first published November 24, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog
Eighth in a series of articles on SEO and website marketing appearing every Thursday.
We have talked about what is important for search engines but it is also important to talk about what is important to customers. Anyone who comes to your website is a customer or a potential customer.
There are three things that are highly important to customers to the point of which they tend not to even think about them. If you have them then you’ll do fine, if you don’t then you need to rework your site immediately.
You might be shocked by what I think is the most important thing to customers: loading speed.
That is correct; loading speed is the most important thing to the viewers of a website. In other words can the customer download the page and bring it up quickly.
Don’t believe me? Think back to how many times you have gone to a website and you waited for graphics and or a flash intro to load and it has taken so long that you hit the back button.
Let’s face it; people today have zero tolerance for waiting. If they have to wait on your website they are going to leave.
The second most important thing is to insure that the site is clear with what it is about. The website should not be a guessing game of what it is about. A home page or landing page should not be crammed with unrelated information, such as logos of partner companies, anniversary of employees or other negligible information.
Humans coming to the website want to know what the website is all about as quickly as possible with as few distractions as possible. A confusing site will drive people away in droves.
The third most important thing is easy of navigation of your site. This is not just links and menu items, it also means can the customer find the information that they are looking for. Here’s an example: if the price of an item is hidden / buried under many pages how long do you think before the customer will give up trying to find this information?
What do these things have in common? It can be summed up by saying people want…. SPEED! If they can’t find what they are looking for quickly and easily they will leave before you can say “back button”.
Thu, Nov 5, 2009
Conversion Optimization, Traffic
Written by: Eric Gerds