Backwards Site Design
posted on May 17th, 2006
It’s not uncommon for people to go about things completely backwards when developing websites. Here is one example of what I mean by that:
- Making the assumption that every visitor will begin on your main page, and navigate through your site in the order that you set it up.
This is just simply not the case. Search engines rank each page of your site individually, so depending on what a person is searching for… they may arrive on your site at any one of your internal pages. For this reason, each page of your website should be a stand-alone resource and should contain both navigation and a call-to-action.
Try this: Log in to your stats and look at the keyword phrases that people used to find your site in the search engines. Try those keyword phrases yourself on Google, Yahoo and MSN. When you find your domain in the results, imagine that you are that searcher as you click through to your site.
Why did you click through?
Did you find what you were looking for?
Is there a call-to-action that matches what that searcher was looking for?
It’s quite an eye opener to walk through this process. Keep in mind that someone may start at the bottom, or at the end, or on some really strange unrelated page of your site. Not necessarily the main page - or what you consider the starting point.
Consider the ways that you can make each page of your website a stand-alone resource to enhance the visitor experience and increase your conversion rates.
Tags: site design, web development, web design tips, navigation
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This is so true, thanks for bringing it home. I guess we can get caught up in the set up and running of our blogs but not really think how the reader will access it all the time. I like the idea of making each page a stand alone resource, this is really what it is all about!