Quality of Introduction Message

Feb 122009
 

Time for part 3 of 35 covering my usability and design analysis, Quality of Introduction Message.

Imagine a website with a logo that has a smiling face, and underneath it is says “I Can Do It!”. Do you now know what the site is about?  A returning or regular will most likely say yes, but what about a new visitor though? The answer is NO, they do not know what the site is about based on the logo and tag line. T-10 seconds till visitor blast off. You better deliver your message quick, and you better do it well or they are gone.

A high quality introduction message should be:

  • Highly visible on the page or home page of site
  • Brief
  • Easy to read as if it were to be  skimmed
  • Have emphasis
  • Keyword rich
  • Concise, and without unimportant words, like Welcome or Thank You for visiting…

It’s Vital to New Visitors

A clear easy to find introduction message is vital for new visitors to a website. It is the virtual opening hand leading a visitor into the right direction. If you go to the home page of this site for example, you will see that I have created an introduction box. It quickly tells new visitors what this site is about, and what they can do. I don’t waste space with words like welcome, or thank you, or how do you do. I know that I only have a few seconds to tell them what my site is about, I give them a couple of options to my primary desired visitor actions,  and then simply hope they are my target audience. There is not much else you can do without blasting them with a popup or something.

The Analytics

If you are running Google Analytics there is a great little test you can do to see how new visitors respond to your site. Under the Content section, select your common entry page or home page to bring up its statistics, and see what it’s bounce rate is. If you use their Advanced Segments, found in top right by the date range, you can select visitor by type. So from there you can compare returning vs. new visitors. An easy guess is that your returning visitors have a much lower bounce rate. What’s your goal for you new visitors? Hopefully the same numbers as your returning visitors. That’s easier said than done though.

visitortype

Screenshot of Google Analytic Tool

Comparing New and Returning

Comparing several of my own sites I have results varying in all sorts of ways. I have some that are doing nearly just as well, with just a 5% margin in difference, and some that are varying as much as 40%.  This can happen for a number of reasons, but the source of the new visitors is the primary influence. An example would be traffic coming from StumbleUpon will have a much higher bounce than a pay per click campaign. To dig into that, you can simply use the drop down menu where it says analyze. It’s located underneath the graph. Select Entrance Sources, and then you can see what is really happening. When you have that information you can see not only how well your introduction message is working, but how well your marketing is working at each source.

Now you know what your benchmark is, try beating it!

Designing For Your Audience

May 272008
 

I did a usability analysis on a site called Affordable Health Insurance today, and they agreed that it was alright for me to write about it here. I don’t plan on doing to much bashing, it was actually a very well done site.

healthinsurance1 300x176

Looking at the home page you can immediately see what the purpose of the site is through its introduction message, and its form. My first impression, excellent. Throughout the site you will find each page is easy to read, well defined by headers, and has a clear purpose. I can only imagine, that with a little bit of marketing they will get a great deal of visitors completing the site owners desired goal. Could they do better though? I believe yes, and I believe substantially.

They reason I say yes, and substantially, is because I don’t believe the site was designed for it’s target audience. I may be completely wrong on this, but I would think that most people searching for health insurance are those over the age of forty. There could be a few falling below this age bracket, but still, I think those under the age of thirty hardly even think about health insurance. So lets assume a high quality visitor for this site is forty and over. Even on the home page the main form asks if you are over sixty-five.

So What is Wrong With Being 40 an Older?

Hopefully nothing, I am forty. Statistically though, many of us begin needing glasses to read though. This can easily be avoided though by the handy little function that both Internet Explorer, and what Firefox has. You can simply adjust your font size to be bigger, and then you don’t need to put on your glasses. Here lies the first problem with this site. They have assigned the font size to a static size by means of pt or pixels, and using Internet Explorer, as many forty and older viewers do, the font size is not adjustable. So now the target audience is those over forty, and only those that can read the font size they have picked. Hopefully this isn’t too large of a percentage. If the webmaster had set the font size to EM the site would still appear the same at first, but the target audience will still be the entire forty over group because they would be able to adjust it.

I’m Old, Stop Making Me Work

Now let’s assume our visitor is a little older. Say they are sixty-five or older. Looking at the screen shot I took above, that is pretty much what I saw in my viewer without having to scroll. Well guess what, there was almost an entire page below that in content. Here is what was below:

healthinsurance2 300x231

It may seem a little silly in thinking that I am too old to scroll down to the bottom half of the page to see the entire home page, but it wouldn’t if you have extreme arthritis, which many people do, especially those over the age of sixty-five. The way I see this home page for the sixty-five and older group is basically, bottom half content, does not exist. How do you fix? Increase the sites width. Right now the site is designed for a 800 pixel monitor. Less than 10% of the global audience uses a monitor so archaic. By making the site wider, you make use of the screen, not the scroll bar. It is much easier and faster to read, then to use buttons.

If you look at their more extensive form to get more health insurance, you will find it is a complete nightmare for those with arthritis. To fill it out, the visitor must switch from mouse, to keyboard, and back, with almost every field. This is bad style, even for those who are young. It’s time consuming to switch back and forth. It’s also a good way to keep a form from getting filled out. Group like field types if you can. To clarify what I mean on this, group your input fields by text, drop down, check boxes, and so on. This will allow the visitor to accomplish more with less physical action.

Over all there were only a few additional items I would change on this site, but by spending the time to understand your audience a little more could make a huge difference in site performance. Right now Affordable Health Insurance is missing out on those who need glasses, and those whom might have arthritis. This is a pretty large group if you consider their target audience.

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