Blog training starts from the moment that you sit down at that first meeting with your site designer. That is when you are going to find out that some of the flashy bells and whistles that you envisioned for your site will go out the door. While content is king, as you consider your website’s aesthetics, you will want first and foremost to create clear navigation that will direct your visitor to the king.

Time consuming or confusing navigation will send your visitor to that ‘x’ on the right hand corner of your page. Do you really want a flash intro page? Think about it.
What retail outlet has performers at their entrance? Or a singer crooning mood music? Why put such frivolity at the front door to your online store? It would be interesting to compare website conversion rates of sites with flash intros compared to those with straight forward, easily understood navigation.

“Users have gradually become accustomed to particular layouts and phrases on the Internet, for example:

· Organisation logo is in the top-left corner and links back to the homepage
· The term ‘About us’ is used for organisation information
· Navigation is in the same place on each page and adjacent to the content
· Anything flashing or placed above the top logo is often an advertisement
· The term ‘Shopping cart’ is used for items you might wish to purchase

There are numerous other conventions like these that enhance your website’s usability.Don’t underestimate the importance of these conventions – as the Internet matures we’re getting more and more used to things being a certain way. Break these conventions and you may be left with nothing but a website with poor usability and a handful of dissatisfied site visitors.”
(Source)

Blog marketing is highly effective in bringing buyers to your website, as is podcasting and videos. But none of those tools are of value if basic site usability prevents your readers from being converted into buyers.

Tags: blog, blog-training.blog-marketing, confusing_navigation, conversion_rates, flash_intros, information_navigation, poor_usability, site_designer, website_conversion

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 10:01 am and is filed under Content Promotion Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.