Category: Web Design

Why you should Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Posted on by Simon

We’ve written in the past about the carousels that exist on the top of a LOT of websites and why we think they’re bad. I thought though that it was worth expanding on a related concept when it comes to web design: that of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). Simply put, I’m advocating less is more.

Wait a minute, how is this related to carousels I hear you ask? Well, because generally they are used when a business doesn’t want to focus on one clear unequivocal message. They’re a hedge: “Lets show users 5 different messages and maybe one will hit home” (it won’t).

Equally, here I’m suggesting focussing on what the majority of your users actually need to see and do, rather than a ‘throw the kitchen sink at it’ approach to your website. Follow the Pareto Principle…

The Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle, is a simple yet powerful concept, more commonly known as the 80:20 rule.

The 80-20 rule suggests that 80% of outcomes are driven by 20% of causes. Business management expert Joseph M. Juran introduced this principle, naming it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. In 1906, Pareto discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population.

Juran further developed this principle after noticing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden produced 80% of the peas.

The 80-20 rule is frequently applied in business as well…

  • 80% of the work is done in 20% of your time
  • 80% of sales come from 20% of clients
  • 80% of sales come from 20% of sales staff
  • 80% of attention is spent on 20% of the web page

The numbers might vary a little in the real world, but arguing that it might actually be 70:30 in your case isn’t really the point. The key thing is that focusing on the key cause and effect relationships helps you prioritise your time and resources on what really matters

Why is this important for Web Design?

Orienting your website to the key tasks that users are looking to carry out can deliver a massive impact to your business.

Benefits for Your Website Visitors

First, here’s how it benefits your website visitors: 

  • Streamlined User Experience: Your visitors get to enjoy a clean, simple site with minimal distraction – helping them stay focused on the main goal or call-to-action.
  • Improved Engagement: With fewer distractions, users are less likely to click away, keeping them engaged with your content.
  • Faster Load Times: A simpler site means faster page response times, enhancing the overall user experience.
  • Higher Quality Content: By focusing on essential elements, you’ve got more time to refine and perfect them – providing visitors with higher-quality content.

Benefits for You

Even better, implementing this onto your website is a win:win. Here’s why it makes sense for you:

  • Increased Conversion Rates: With a more focused design, you’ll see higher rates of subscribers, opt-ins, members, and customers.
  • More Calls-to-Action: A larger percentage of users will engage with your primary call-to-action, boosting your site’s effectiveness.
  • Lighter Workload: By concentrating on the crucial 20%, you’ll reduce your workload and free up time for other important tasks.
  • Simplified Design and Maintenance: Fewer elements on your site make the design and management process easier.

The impact of this can be significant for both usability and for business success:

Quick Case Study – Liverpool City Council

When Liverpool City Council redesigned their website, they relentlessly focussed on the top tasks its users carried out – reducing the site from 4,000 pages to 700.

The results were incredible – with an increase of 400% in people transacting online and substantially fewer support phone calls. A fantastic outcome for a local council needing to save money by making better use of its website. 

Five Simple Steps to 80:20 Your Website

Identify Your Main Goals: Determine your website’s 20% – the main goals or call-to-action that matter most, and will have the greatest impact on the users’ experience. Make sure you’re focussed on what matters to the customer, rather than management!

Refine Your Design: Streamline your site’s design and interface to make sure the vital 20% of elements are prominent and emphasised. Eliminate unnecessary components that could clutter the design or distract users. The goal is to create a clean, focused interface that directs attention to what matters most.

Prioritise User Experience: Ensure that the key elements you’ve identified are optimised to deliver the best possible user experience. This might mean improving navigation, enhancing accessibility, or just making sure the design is intuitive and user-focused.

Balance Aesthetics with Functionality: While a visually appealing design is important, the 80/20 rule suggests prioritising functionality. Focus on ensuring that the key elements are not only attractive but also highly functional and easy to use – creating a website that is both appealing and effective.

Evaluate Effectiveness: After making changes, you need to determine if they’ve been successful. Measure the results – ideally using split testing to assess whether your updates are successful.

Need some help? Getting an outside perspective is great for helping focus your business.

Talk to us about the techniques we use to uncover the key tasks that your website should be focussed on.

p.s. We weren’t talking about YOU at the top of this, obviously you’re not stupid – that’s why you’ve read this post all the way to the end!

How much should a website cost?

Posted on by Simon

I had a call the other week from a potential client that wanted to know what we charged for a website, but got frustrated when, rather than giving an immediate number, I asked them what they wanted the website to do.

“Why can’t you just give me a price?” They demanded.

Well, in short, because if you want a website that actually works for you, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s unwise to pay too little” 

John Ruskin 1819-1900

A wise man was John Ruskin – and despite it being said a long time before the Internet, it’s a quote with a lot of relevance to web design. 

Racing to the bottom

Over the last few years, there’s been a relentlessly downward push on the cost of websites and we’ve now reached a point where there are a huge range of prices being quoted: tens of thousands of pounds from big London agencies down to just a few hundred pounds by smaller one man bands. 

Now competition is no bad thing. It’s good for customers – and If it means that web companies profits are squeezed a bit, then that’s the nature of the market.  

However, this rush to the bottom has another effect – corner cutting. Many of the web designers working in the market know technically how to build a website, but they don’t know how to make that website engage your customers and drive them to buy from you. 

Instead their customers often get a website by numbers. One that ticks the basic boxes but doesn’t provide value for money. 

The work to create an effective website is significant.

It means taking time to understand the products and services being sold, researching the customers, carrying out user testing, creating an information architecture that meets the customer and clients needs, laying out the content required for each page and writing the copy, producing (or searching for), editing and optimising images, building the website, designing the look and feel, testing, bug fixing, putting it live and making sure the old website has been smoothly migrated to the new one. 

The idea that all these tasks can be properly carried out for a few hundred pounds just isn’t realistic: it would mean a day rate less than the minimum wage – before the costs of business development and post-launch support are taken into account. 

Depende*

The title of this article was ‘how much should a website cost’, so it’s only fair I actually answer the question! The short answer though is “it depends”. 

The cost of a new website can vary a lot depending on what you need, who does the work, how it’s delivered and how much time they put into it.

Here are some factors that affect the price, and an idea of what you’d get for your money…

Design & Development

Web design typically falls into two parts: working out how the website should look, and then building it.

A lot of small developers use a pre-built template and customise that to fit their customer’s requirements. This is obviously a lot quicker and cheaper than designing and then building something from scratch, but you’ll have a less flexible website.

Equally the complexity of the user journey adds costs. A simple blog is fairly simple compared to an e-commerce site that requires product pages, checkout, thank you emails, fulfilment and more. Integration into third party systems, event ticketing all take extra effort – and even simple functions like a contact form, mean a couple of hours of extra styling to look good and work on all devices.

Roughly speaking then, you should probably think about:

Type of Website:

  • Simple Personal Blog: £100 – £500
  • Small Business Site: £500 – £5,000
  • E-commerce Site: £1,000 – £10,000
  • Complex Custom Site: £5,000 – £50,000 or more

Approach to Design:

  • Template-Based Design: Cheaper, around £100 – £500
  • Custom Design: More expensive, around £2,000 – £10,000 or more

Features and Functionality:

  • Basic Features: Such as contact forms, image galleries, etc., usually £100 – £500 extra
  • Advanced Features: Like booking systems, member areas, or custom integrations can cost £500 – £5,000 extra

Content and Marketing

It’s not enough to build a site, it’s got to engage users and get them to act. You can write content yourself, but you’ll find that getting expert help to ensure that the messages resonate with your users is well worth the investment in the long run. You should also make sure that your content is optimised for search engines so that traffic can find your site more easily, and consider content marketing or paid advertising campaigns to drive traffic – all of which carries cost.

Don’t forget about photography too. Whilst you might be able to get away with your own pics taken on a mobile, have a look around at other websites. Often as not, you’ll notice that good photography makes a huge difference to how professional the end results appears.

Content Creation:

  • DIY Content: Free, but time-consuming
  • Professional Content: Somewhere between £50 – £500 per page

SEO and Marketing:

  • Basic SEO: £100 – £500
  • Advanced SEO and Marketing: £500 – £5,000 +

Ongoing Costs

Once you’ve built a site, that’s not the end of it. There are some basic recurring costs you can’t avoid: Domain Name rental (normally between £10 and £20 a year), and hosting – renting a server (or part of one) where your website will be held. You can buy cheap hosting from about £5 a month, but you’ll typically find a reliable fast server (particularly for busy sites) will cost more.

Most websites also need to have maintenance updates regularly, to stay ahead of virus and hackers, and to make sure that they stay compatible with operating systems. You’re also likely to want to change things once in a while and may well look to have expert help changing and optimising your website for you. it’s possible to do all of this yourself, if you’re reasonably confident technically though.

Maintenance and Updates:

  • Monthly Maintenance: £20 – £150 per month
  • Website Updates: £20 – £1,000 per month

Domain and Hosting:

  • Domain Name: £10 – £50 per year
  • Hosting: £40 – £300 per year

So, depending on your needs, you might be able to get a website live spending just a few hundred pounds – especially if you’re happy to do a lot of the work yourself. Equally, a complex, highly optimised, custom website could be well into 5 figures.

Sound a lot? Well, yes it is. And clearly some businesses, particularly those just starting up, may not be in a position to invest that amount of money.

But, if you’re an established business and believe you can’t invest a few thousand pounds on your website, then maybe you should relook at your business plan and see if your business is as viable as you think it is. 

Alternatively, you might want to look at why (even in this Internet-centric age) your website isn’t that important to you? Is it that your existing website just doesn’t deliver value to you?  If so, perhaps you should ask yourself why that is?

Paying too little

Back to our friend John Ruskin. In the full quote, he goes on to say:

“When you pay too much you lose a little money, that is all.

When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing you bought it to do.  The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot.  It can’t be done.  If you deal with the lowest bidder, it’s well to add something for the risk you run.

A website fit for you

Whatever your budget, we’re happy to have a chat, so feel free to get in touch.

We can either put together a package that fits your budget and needs or, if we don’t think we’re the right fit for you, we’re happy to give you advice about how to best get a website that meets your requirements and suits your wallet!

Contact us

*Forgive the inside joke: we did some consultancy in Brazil a while back (I know – tough gig), but the answer to pretty much all of our questions from one of the locals to our translator there was a very expressive ‘it depends’ in Portuguese, and it’s kind of stuck.

Why We ♥ WordPress

Posted on by Simon

Curious has been using WordPress for (pretty much) all the websites that we’ve ever produced.

There’s a bit of snobbery out in the Internet and everyone has a view as to the ‘best’ platform to use – some swear by Shopify, others thing that going headless is the answer, other tribes will scoff if you venture away from just using pure HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Everyone has a view on their ‘best’ solution, so we thought it might be good idea to explain why we’ve landed on ours.

But first, a caveat.

For reasons that will hopefully become clear, we think WordPress is pretty great. That doesn’t mean though that it’s the only answer to a web development problem. It really depends on what you need from your website.

Very often, the platform isn’t that important. What’s more key is presenting your users with clear messaging, and delivering a smooth user journey, so they’re encouraged to do what you want them to.

Speak to your web developers about what it is you need and let them find the right solution for you.

What is WordPress anyway?

WordPress isn’t a coding language – it’s a Content Management System (CMS). It was created back in 2003 as a simple way to allow people to create content really easily and post it online as a website blog.

It’s come a long way since then, but its foundations have remained the same. It isn’t a way to code. It’s a framework that allows users to edit and store data so it can be displayed on a website. There are lots of ways you can do that displaying bit – but most people make use of WordPress’ ability to use one of thousands of commercially available ‘themes’ to present the data online in a visually appealing way as a website.

Since its launch it’s grown and grown and is now used for 63% of Content Management websites:

Market Share of Content Management Systems

One of WordPress’ other strengths is that, if you want your website to carry out a specific function, you can bolt on a whole host of ‘plugins’ to the core platform that will allow you to extend the website to carry out a huge array of tasks. Want an online shop? No problem. Event Management? Again, there are a loads of options to choose from.

Pretty much anything you want to do with a website – from a tool hire service to online course delivery is possible, just by installing the appropriate plugin – saving days of time (and thousands of pounds) on coding the functionality from scratch.

The huge marketplaces of different themes & plugins that you can simply download and install is one of the key reasons WordPress so popular. Whilst there’s a bit of a learning curve to work out how the platform works, you often don’t need to have any software development skills to be able to put a website together.

Under the hood, things are a little different. WordPress is built on a software language called PHP, and this along with HTML, JavaScript, CSS are what are working in perfect harmony to actually generate the websites it’s used to create. And that’s where it gets interesting for us.

Open Source Heaven

Fundamentally WordPress is Open Source software: the developers that built it make the code available so that other developers can review it, suggest changes, and add to it. Each of the plugins and themes available for it are created as a result of this approach, and are themselves also licensed on an Open Source basis. That means that we can use, edit and develop the code to make it do exactly what we want.

We’ve taken the base version of WordPress, which by default comes with a lot of features designed to make it easier to use for the average user, and stripped it right back: creating a version of the software that’s quicker and more efficient than standard WordPress.

Then, when we create a new WordPress website, we create a unique theme for that customer, that only includes what they want – so each of our clients gets a fast, bespoke website that precisely meets their needs.

Let’s dive into why this approach works so well for us and our clients…

Seven reasons we love WordPress

1. Freedom

When you create a website from a template, they all end up looking a little bit ‘samey’.

Sometimes that’s for good reason – users get used to seeing things a certain way, and when you’re designing functions on a website you want to leverage that and have things where users intuitively expect. That’s great for deciding where you put your ‘Buy’ button, but most of our clients want a website that stands out from the masses and truly reflects their company.

Spot a relationship? These two sites are clearly based on the same theme

Creating a bespoke theme for each of our customers means we’re completely free to create any visual design that we choose, rather than be constrained by the rules that might exist within an ‘off the shelf’ theme. We start each project with a blank sheet of paper and are free to create any layouts, animation or content we choose.

A bespoke theme also means that, should our customers want to change their website in the future, we don’t have to rebuild things from the ground up. As we’ve created the rules that decide how it looks, it’s simple for us to change them.

2. Flexibility

One of the best things about WordPress is its flexibility. You can use it to create any type of website, from simple blogs to complex e-commerce sites. With our custom version, we take this flexibility to the next level. We can tailor the platform to meet the specific needs of each project, ensuring that our clients get exactly what they want, and only that – without any unnecessary ‘bloat’ that will slow the website down.

Need some functionality that isn’t available from WordPress’ plugins libraries? We can create it.

Despite some pretty complicated requests over the years, the platform’s flexibility means we’re always able to deliver what our clients are looking for – no matter how challenging the requirement.

3. Easy to Use

With around 43% of websites on the Internet being built on WordPress (that’s over 80 million websites!), and it being around over for over 20 years, WordPress is pretty familiar to many people.

Though our front ends (the screens that users see) are bespoke, the admin area is immediately recognisable to someone that’s used WordPress before – making it far less scary to use. WordPress’ user-friendly interface makes it easy for our clients to manage their websites and ou custom version retains this simplicity while adding powerful features tailored to each client’s needs. Even if you’re not tech-savvy, we’ve create a platform where you can still update your content, add new pages, and manage your site with ease.

If you’re a complete technophobe and really don’t want to get your hands dirty? No problem. We’ve a range of care plans that means, once it’s live, we’ll be on hand to keep your site updated and relevant.

4. Search-Engine Friendly

WordPress is known for being SEO-friendly – helping your website rank higher in search engine results. Our custom version includes additional SEO features, to help give our clients an edge over their competition. And that lack of ‘bloat’ I mentioned earlier? Well, that means the site naturally loads more quickly – a big tick for search engines.

Fast load times mean a great Google Core Web Vitals score.

It gives our customers more bang for their buck: improving their online visibility; outperforming their competition; and helping deliver free traffic to their websites.

5. Security

Security is a top priority for us. Whilst we’re not going to share all the details here (they’re far too hush hush!), our custom version of WordPress includes enhanced security measures to protect our clients’ websites from potential threats. We have industry leading monitoring to check our sites for vulnerabilities, and regularly update our platform – ensuring that our clients’ data is always safe.

6. Community

WordPress has a massive and incredibly active community, which means there’s a wealth of resources available. There’s a huge array of help, support, guides and extensions available. If you’re stuck and don’t want to get us involved, there are tonnes of forums. blogs and videos offering all the help in the suit o guide you. More importantly, our team is available to provide dedicated support to ensure our clients always have the help they need, when they need it.

7. Scalability

As your business grows, your website needs to grow with it. WordPress is highly scalable, allowing you to add new features and expand your site without starting from scratch. Our custom version is designed to accommodate this growth, making it easy to evolve and scale up as needed. We truly believe that you should never need to build a new website again.

Is WordPress Right for you?

As I explained at the start, there are lots of different view as to the best platform to use for a website – and we’re certainly not going to claim that WordPress is the best fit for everyone.

There is though at 80:20 rule at play here, with most clients that come to us want a site that’s cost-effective, easily updatable, flexible and fast – and WordPress is a very good fit for them.

That said, with each client that gets in touch, we start off the project by taking time to understand their needs and finding a solution that’s right for them. If we think that’s Shopify, or Headless, then you can be sure we’ll recommend.

Want to speak to us about whether WordPress is the right platform for you? Get in touch.

Error Encountered!

Posted on by Simon

My long-suffering partner finally gave up on her old mobile phone last week (or rather the screen gave up on her, after a couple of years of fairly heavy abuse) and she got a shiny new iPhone.  

Since then, she’s spent several days berating the mobile banking app she was trying to set back up, as it resolutely refused to accept her passcode.

Over four days she has at least 20 attempts at putting the right passcode into the app, only to be told each time that the code “needed to be between 5 & 8 characters and a mixture of letters and numbers”.

This infuriated her.

She knows what her passcode is – it’s a 6 digit number, and yet, despite this seeming to fit the error description, it wasn’t being accepted. 

She tried old passcodes, other banking PINs and passwords, all to no avail: the app wouldn’t let her proceed. 

Last night, we were sitting in front of the telly (for the first time in about two weeks I might add) and, after another rant about how poor her bank is and several interesting suggestions about where they might put their app, I suggested she give setting it up another crack.

She put in all sorts of PINs and passwords and personal information as prompted and then got to a screen where she had to enter her debit card details and the dreaded passcode. 

Again, the same error message appeared. At this point I, as a (slightly smug) independent observer, was able to quietly point out that the app was actually asking for her POSTcode. 

The point of this post isn’t to make fun of my better half, to make her sound dumb (she’s far from it!), or even to demonstrate my problem solving skills, but to show that people aren’t very good at paying attention. 

Despite knowing there was a problem, reading the error message several times, and desperately trying to work out what was wrong, my partner decided that it must be the app that was at fault, blamed the company and abandoned the process. 

Look at your analytics and see how many users drop off at key steps and do the maths on that lost value.

What else could you do in the next day that would earn you as much money as spending some time making your process steps easier to follow and your error messages clearer?

What colour should my buttons be?

Posted on by Simon
I’ve made passing reference in a couple of previous blog posts about the colour of call to action buttons on pages.

These buttons are a topic that many in the world of websites seem to obsess over. What size should they be, what shape should they be and, most importantly, what colour should they be?

The best colour for a call to action button is a topic has been obsessed over by conversion optimisation specialists across the world in what probably amount to thousands of blog posts.

Red is a bold colour, it stands out on the page and is associated with value (think of all those “Sale” signs in shop windows). Green on the other hand is calmer, less scary and encourages us to “go” (think traffic lights). Unbounce (undoubtedly a company with some expertise in conversion rates) came out and declared the future was a Big Orange Button (BOB).

As you might expect, there’s been a whole host of user testing experiments carried out and published as case studies to support a particular view point. For example, CareLogger tested green vs red buttons on their site:

The result? 34% more people clicked on the red button than when it was green. A clear winner, right?

Well, maybe not. The trouble is that (like anything) it isn’t all that simple…Buttons on a website don’t exist in isolation, they are part of the wider page and need to therefore be sensitive to their context.

Sure red is a strong standout colour but, if the predominant colour scheme of the site is red, then it doesn’t stand out at all.

What’s more important is visual hierarchy: what elements stands out the most on the page?

If your button blends in with the rest of the site, then (whatever colour it is) it isn’t going to perform as well as a button that is more impactful.

Just to revisit that case study from earlier, take a look at the CareLogger page where those buttons were placed: The predominant colour scheme is green. In that instance, of course a red button performed more strongly – it differentiated the call to action from the rest of the page. It could be argued that another colour (perhaps orange, but even purple!) could perform even stronger.

So how to make sure your buttons perform best?

An effective button needs to be bold, stand out, catch your eye and encourage you to click. To that end you should:

  1. Make sure your buttons contrast with the rest of the page
  2. Use text that encourages users to click: communicate the value of what will happen. Not ‘Click Here’ but ‘Get your free report now’
  3. Ignore what works for other people: test the impact of different colours and text and see what works for you

Have you tested different button colours? Let us know what you found below.

Why you need to test your website

Posted on by Simon

Sometimes the websites we create don’t work in the way we hoped.

Sure they might look great, but that’s only one job of a website. The other is to perform – to drive the people that visit your site to find out more about your company and buy from you.

And if they don’t do that, we’ve all got a problem: You’ve invested money in a website and want to see a return on your investment – and equally we want you, as our customer, to be happy.

That’s why we believe that testing your website is so important.

Humans aren’t good at spotting problems

Ever written a document or letter, proof-read it carefully and then sent it, only for someone to immediately point out a spelling mistake?

We’re not all that great at critically evaluating our results – and we often interpret feedback we get to reinforce our perspectives. Our Cognitive Bias leads us to think we know how user feels and acts, and what they want to see – which can hide big problems with the way a website actually performs.

Parts of your website that you see as obvious and straightforward, might actually stump a ‘real’ user.

We try really hard to get it right

When we create website for we use lots of techniques to maximise their chances of working effectively:

  • Design Patterns – This is the technical term for ‘the established way of doing a specific thing’. A great example is the three lines on a mobile website that signify where the main menu can be found.
  • Best Practice – This doesn’t necessarily mean what everyone else is doing, but rather what’s been demonstrated to work effectively at engaging visitors and driving them to action.
  • Experience – The team have been working in the Internet industry for close to 20 years. In that time, we’ve built LOTS of websites and seen how visitors use them. That helps us make better decisions
  • Data – We’re massive fans of data and use it wherever possible to understand how customers are currently using a website, and where there might be problems.

Despite all of this though, we know websites we produce won’t be perfect.

We’re not clairvoyant. We can’t predict exactly how users will use a website – the only real way of telling is to wait and see.

And that’s why, when your website goes Iive, you need to test.

It’s all about the conversion

Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that go on to complete your website’s intended objective – whether that’s sign up for a newsletter, buy a t-shirt, or fill in a contact form.

If your website’s not converting then, despite anything else, it’s not working.

Measuring your conversion rate – and improving it – is key to increasing your profitability – in particular as small changes in your conversion rate can have a massive effect on your profits.

But improving your conversion rate is often quite simple – you just need time and to follow a clear process.

What you need

Data, data, data

Most important is to understand what’s going on with your website – and why.

The first step toward this is to install Google Analytics. We’re big fans of GA (though there are plenty of other capable analytics packages out there you can use if you’d rather), mainly because it’s very capable, integrates with a whole range of other software and, most importantly, is free!

Once installed, make sure it’s configured correctly to accurately measure visitors and set up goals to measure the rate at which they covert to conversions.

The downside of analytics though is that it only tells you how many users do what you want them to do – and you need to find out why.

We suggest using click tracking and user tracking tools to show you how users are actually using your site and give you some clues as to why. Hotjar, Crazy Egg and Mouseflow all work well.

You can then supplement these with user surveys and one-on-one testing to find out what’s causing your customers to do what they do.

A flexible website

If you’re going to be able to make your website work, you need to be able to change it.

You could just change the website code to make the site look the way you want but, unless you’re a developer, this can be expensive. The best solution is a content management system that allows you to quickly make changes without needing any coding skills.

We’re big fans of WordPress because it allows you to easily make changes and is massively flexible, but there are plenty of other content management systems out there you can use.

There are also a whole range of website builders out there, like Shopify, Wix or Squarespace, that allow you to create and change a website without having to know code* .

Whatever you choose, make sure your website theme is flexible. Many ‘off the shelf’ themes have a really tight structure that constrain the layouts and styles you can use.

Even better, use a theme that’s custom built for you and has the future flexibility you need built in.

Just enough traffic

The only way that you can truly test a website’s performance is by seeing how people use it, and for that you need visitors.

Not loads, but enough. Reliable patterns of behaviour can only be seen once sufficient numbers of visitors have used the site – until then, the one or two user who behave abnormally can effect the results. There’s a measure called statistical significance that tells you that your results are reliable. The exact number of visitors you need for statistical significance to be achieved depends on the circumstances, but it typically requires you need several hundred users before a clear pattern emerges.

It normally takes a bit of time before search engines properly spider your site and start sending traffic, but you can easily use social media or even paid advertising to send small amounts of traffic that mean you can start to spot problems

How to fix it.

1. Watch where users struggle

Use analytics to see where people drop out of your website – in particular look out for key points where you want them to act, like checkouts and contact forms.

2. Ask them why

Use click tracking and survey tools to engage with users and see what’s making them leave. Are they encountering system problems? Do they need more information? Perhaps they just can’t see what to do next.

3. Make changes

Use the insights from customers to adjust the site to fix whatever the problems are.

4. Rinse and repeat

Keep watching your analytics, and see if your changes have made a (hopefully positive) difference. Most importantly, keep experimenting!

Crank up the volume

Once you know your website’s really working, then you can put all your efforts into pushing traffic toward it, confident that for every visitor you get, you’ll know how many customers you’ll get out of the other end!

*That said, the learning curve can be pretty steep for some of the website builders and is likely to take a few days of time working out how to make it do exactly what you need it to.

Google confirms site quality matters

Posted on by Simon

So on a Google Webmaster hangout that took place yesterday, John Mueller (a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google) talked about site quality and architecture, specifically whether the Panda algorithm took these into account when evaluating pages.

When asked if Google takes site architecture into account and if improving the site categories would make a difference to search engine performance, John said:

“We see (Panda) as something that is more like a general quality evaluation of the website that takes into account everything around the site…That is something where, if we find issues across the site where we think this essentially affects the quality of the web site overall, then that is something that might be taken into account there”

You can watch the hangout here:

Whilst, as far as statements go, this is a little woolly, it does go some way to confirming that Google’s looking at a far broader set of factors than most companies typically focus on – and that investing time getting your site architecture and categorisation right upfront will pay dividends in the long term.