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What You Can Do To Increase User Friendly Browsing

By Vannesa Hereford


One of the secrets to making your website successful is to ensure it's as user friendly as possible. But the question for you may be: 'How do I do this'? And that's perfectly understandable. But this is an exciting time for you because this is truly a powerful thing. Different sites in different markets will sometimes have to try different strategies, but you can figure that out and make progress.

One of the most critical parts of building a highly successful website is making sure that the site is user friendly. It sounds like it should be easy but if you don't do it correctly it can be really terrible. If you do get it wrong you will know it because your bounce rate won't just be sky high, the traffic you do get won't stick around that long. Put some analytics in place so that you can start sussing out your trouble spots and how to fix them. It may even be a good idea to hire a professional auditor to make sure that your site is doing well in terms of user friendly criteria. Whatever may be going on, if you'd like to have a good business, you are going to take this seriously.

The one and only thing traffic wants to know after arriving on your home page is what's in it for them. The purpose of your home page is to create a feeling that being on your site is the right thing for them. No matter what the form of your content, it has to be solid and offer good value. Your content really should only be one click away but definitely less than three. If you violate this, then you know very well what the consequences will be.

The only other place that it does any good is on the left side of the website--either along it or in the lefthand column. You should not, though, put it over on the right hand column. So you can have either a two column site or a three column. When your site has three columns, make the lefthand column solely for navigation. You can place other information on the right hand side. For example, you can place ads or other kinds of smaller creatives or list whatever special offers might be running. This layout is the layout that is the most effective. You already know that you need to show that you are different than your competitors.

Make sure that none of your website pages are cluttered or hard to understand. There are all sorts of ways that you can make mistakes here. One of the most typical mistakes is to have too many ads. Each one is competition for your visitors' attention. But the emphasis is on reading your content, and that bring copy elements into the picture. It is important not just to master headlines but to create copy that is easily and quickly scanned. Site users will scan your copy, and how well it's presented will compel them to click through to other pages and stay on your site. You can't stress enough how easy it is for people to scan over your website.

People on your home page want to know what you have for them, so put something in the way of an offer. While you should avoid making your home page full of ads like most sites do, a few tasteful teasers to good presell copy is worth trying. Aside from that, make your offers very clear and super easy to understand, but remember you can place different sidebar offers on different pages, then test that. Lay it all out nicely because you'll have an optin box somewhere in addition to other ads, etc. You should not put them in peoples' faces, but on the other hand they do need to be seen.

Making mistakes is really easy, particularly in terms of content creation and in other areas. Some of the examples of this are your side bars. This is where things that also need to be promoted are going to sit--things like special offers, the opt-in boxes for your subscription list, etc. That means that it is important that your copy in these areas be as effective as you can make it. Try to avoid doing the same things that almost every other webmaster does--just putting up opt-in boxes and eBook graphics. That is what most people are used to seeing and ignoring. Smaller boxes in your side column with littler font copy and an email box is a great idea. Use smaller fonts but not fonts that are too small to see and make sure that you have written something different and compelling as well. Even when the site you've built is doing just horribly and nothing is working, you can turn it all around pretty quickly when you've got the right kinds of knowledge. Of course, having knowledge doesn't do much unless you know how to use it and how to use it confidently. The truth is that it is all up to you and how badly you want to build a highly successful business for yourself.




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