Improved Website Usability – Iceberg Effect

There are some simple things you can do to improve the performance of your website and ultimately your business. Today I’m going to talk about the Iceberg Effect and how to improve the usability of your website.

I’m sure you know what an iceberg is and the damage it can cause (did you see Titanic?) not only to a large vessel, but likewise to your website. Visually you only see the tip of the iceberg, but the bulk of the ice is below water, or in the case of your website, below the page fold.

The mistake I want you to avoid is having your most valuable content below the fold - this is a huge problem.  In some cases the items below the fold represents 90% of the content. Why is this a problem? If a web user performs a search and lands on your page (which is what you want) and the content they are looking for is buried way down the page below the fold, they are likely to hit the backspace button and abandon the page, resulting in a bounce.

We all work hard to get people to visit our website, so let’s try to eliminate the simple mistakes that cause them to leave before the get a chance to learn about you or your company.

Stay iceberg free people and you will see improved time on site and a much lower bounce rate. 

The Value of Your Online Identity

I’m just shocked at the amount of businesses I’m exposed to through work and life that don’t value online communications. I cannot explain the sheer frustration I’ve felt since I moved back to Michigan and cannot locate businesses online.  I wanted to make a carry out order of sushi a few weeks ago, but the restaurant didn’t have a website.  I literally had to drive there, look at a menu, place my order and wait 25 minutes for my food.  When I asked why they didn’t have a website, they said “We’re on Yelp?”.  Wow.  Amazing.

So you have a brick-and-mortar store, restaurant or other business, but haven’t yet figured out that your online identity is just as important as the sign hanging outside your door?  The mentality seriously shocks me.

PC magazine reported last year that 58 percent of people do online research before purchasing a particular product.  I think most people (I’m assuming the percentage of women who do this is even higher) do online research before they make any type of decisions, including –

• - what new restaurant to try
• - whether their favorite store carries a specific product
• - to look up business hours
• - to check out an employee’s or owner’s profile
• - to see if they can find out more about something their considering hiring, firing, dating or buying from

If people can’t find you, get the wrong impression of you (because your website was built in 1995) or cannot navigate your site properly, you have essentially lost that opportunity for a customer or relationship. I can guarantee that customer will certainly find a competitor of yours who has a website complete with reviews, menus, products and any other information necessary to help aide in their decision making.

Take the time, spend the money, see the value and monitor the user data. I promise you’ll have a gold mine of information to use for future connections and business growth.  And, once that site is completed, we can move on to social networking!  

Maybe then I’ll get more takeout from you. :)