NZ Website Design Audit Rescue - by Altered Ego Design
Case Study - Peru Treks
This website was created in 2004 and was performing well initially. However, as Google changed the ranking rules, it had slipped away and needed attention. After we worked our magic, these were the tangible results from the website planning and reinvestment.
23 November 2006
I've seen it LIVE and it's fantastic! Thank you sooooo much. Once again, you've captured exactly what I was thinking. Now, let's just hope we get some more business. - Take care, Anne
29 November 2006
Two new enquiries from our website on my web last night !! That is great - let's hope it continues. - Anne
10 December 2006
You'll be excited to know that we had 3 new inquiries on our web in 2 days, one is from a group from the UK RAF air force - 12 clients !!! - See you, Anne.
12 December 2007
Just wanted to let you know that the changes you made to the web seem to be having some effect and people are obviously interested.
Am receiving about 5 new inquiries a week at the moment, which is pretty good, since there are literally hundreds of agencies in either Peru or overseas offering treks to Huaraz.
So thanks for your continued enthusiasm and ideas!! - Anne
30 May 2008
Yes please do that upgrade for us, it is going nuts. We can't keep up with all the work!!
- Anne
Anne Thompson - Peru Treks Peruvian Andes Adventures Ltd.
Many people purchase a website without any real understanding on what sort of return to expect for your website investment spend.
The consequences of getting this wrong can be disastrous and end up costing you twice as much for a website that should be created right the first time!
How can I tell if my website is not right? Well you'll probably know intuitively and also you won't be getting the results you thought you would get from it.
This happens too often, as this industry is so unregulated that any unqualified person can come along and pretend to be a website designers. People just don't know the questions to ask and what the answers should be. By the time people ask for our help, it is often too complex, too time consuming or too late to fix things.
To help you avoid the traps, we have put together a series of educational guides to ensure that your website is created the right way, first time, helping you avoid common mistakes, expensive rebuilds, loss of income and damage to your precious reputation.
If you've already had something created, and you're not sure or are really unhappy with it, then we advise you to act promptly as we may still be able to help you before it's too late. Please contact us to discuss your individual situation.
OK that's great but what will you do to help me?
The first step we will suggest is to undertake an audit of your site. You'll receive a 4 page report on your site benchmarked to the 8 criteria for search engine and website success. This will give you the right information to make a decision and move forward in the way you choose.
As with all business you do with us, be assured all discussions are held in the strictest of confidence. Contact us today to discuss your individual situation.
There are 3 Golden Rules to creating a great website.
- Rule #1. Make it visible so customers can find you (ie Ranked on Page One in search engines - including Google)
- Rule #2. Make it easy to find their information (easy to navigate)
- Rule #3. Engage the customer using the full visual and emotional experience so they enquire
NB It's easy to create a bad looking website that is ranked #1 in Google, but when people click onto it, they are not engaged and you lose the sale. We prefer to create a great website that engages customers and still ranks well in Google giving you an even greater return for your investment.
Remember the web is a great leveler of companies so if you are a large company, you can be beaten by a smaller company on the web if your website is not up to scratch.
Vice-versa, if you are a small company, you can portray a very professional image online and beat the big guns just by doing the right things right!
So where do we start? Well that’s simple, get the basics right first and then you can build on that foundation.
What do you look for when you have that horrible gut feeling that your website has gone wrong?
Designing for the Web is a very different disclipline to designing for other media. Here are some things to look for on getting the basics of your website right.
1. Appropriate Design - Designed for the internet
Design is subjective so these helpful tips are to do with the principles of good website design.
Design conveys messages regarding what your company is all about. Good design quickly conveys subtle messages over language barriers including who you are, your values, your ethics and how professional you are.
Customers judge you from your website before they've even come into contact with you. It conveys emotional messages to them and if the message is not giving the right emotional engagement then you will lose trust and lose business online.
For example:
If your website is difficult to navigate, the customer automatically thinks you’re difficult to do business with. If your website is full of spelling mistakes, then you’ll look like someone who doesn't care about your work so you destroy trust.
Remember, the web is very competitive with competitors being just one click away!
Your website is not for you, but your customers, so ensure the design is appropriate for your target market.
For example, if your target market is for the baby boomers these customers have not grown up with computers so make it really easy to navigation and find their information. Also ensure the typeface used is easily readable. If they have to squint or find their glasses to read what you are saying on your site, fix it – right now!
Once you have these people as customers, they tend to be more loyal and are great repeat business. Don’t go changing things on them all the time, keep to the same easy process or they will find someone else who does – just one click away.
2. Great Design makes the most of the "Page Real Estate"
Ensure you make the most of the page real estate (ie the most visible parts of the site which is above the fold/scroll down line).
This is precious space! We need to use all the available space to engage our viewers so they scroll down to learn more.
3. Optimum Useability
How many clicks does it take the customer to get to the vital information on your website?
Our proven experience in the specialist field of web site design means we understand how client's interact and connect and what they expect when they visit your website.
We are members of the Wellington (NZ) Useability Steering Group and we specialise in websites that are have high usability from your customers viewpoint helping them to get the information they need to make that purchasing decision and then onto the next task of their day.
Makes sense doesn't it. If you don't get good service in a non-virtual world, you'll go somewhere else. If you don't get a good experience online, or cannot find the information you need on one website, then you'll click off and visit somewhere else. How many times have you done that? It was a lot easier than leaving a real store wasn't it!
Now think about that from a visitors point of view to your website. Does your website cut the mustard or do you think it needs improving? Remember, YOUR website is for YOUR customers - isn't it?
If you think your website could be improved, please contact us to discuss your individual situation.
4. Make it easy for your visitors to navigate and find what they came for on your website.
If you help them transition through pages by providing them with the next step/next click you'll make it so much easier for them to find their information and they'll trust you enough to bookmark you, return to you or recommend you.
For example, on an accommodation website, you can say “Click here to take a tour of your rooms” or “Click here to secure your reservation”. These steps from page to page will always guide them to an enquiry/booking/end result.
However, before any of this can take place, you need a website that your customers can find! We specialise in search engines and getting you on Page 1 of Google, increasing your sales enquiries and giving you a real return for your website investment. Contact us to discuss your individual situation.
5. Search Engines and Providing them with the Right Information
Ever wonder how search engines get the information they do about you? Your website designer controls this by ensuring the correct “meta-information” is in place.
In the source code (which is the HTML code or whatever your website is written in), you should have a Page Title, Meta Keywords and Meta Description. Check this for yourself by clicking on your website browser and going View >> Source (in Internet Explorer) or View >> Page Source for other browsers. It will be in the top of the page code, if it's there at all!
Google and other search engines enter your site through any page, so every page should talk about a specific subject. Every page should also have relevant and different meta-information. To explain this will take more time than we have for now.
We are the search engine optimisation and marketing experts and we have published out a booklet "The 12 Secrets to Search Engine Success". If you'd like to know more information, please contact us and we'll post you one out.
6. Page Structure and Clean Coding: Give Google a “Quickeeze”
Ensure the coding is clean and bloat free.
Google is the smartest search engine and it reads the information you write on your website. Within the first 20 lines of code, (including header information), the actual website text should be visible to Google. If you bloat the code by adding lines of JavaScript in the code, search engines find it hard to digest it and will rank easier to read sites higher.
Again, check this for yourself by clicking on your website browser and going View >> Source (in Internet Explorer) or View >> Page Source for other browsers. Count the lines of code until you get to some text that is visible on your actual web page.
As we craft web sites from the ground up, the code is very clean, making it easy for the search engines to "get to the good stuff". By making Google’s job easier, your website will be more popular.
7. Language Type: XHTML Vs HTML
All websites should comply with the World Wide Web Standards. Go to W3C.org for more information for here there is just time to touch on the language types.
HTML is the old language originally used to create websites way back in the very beginnings. Designers used this code to make sites look nice but things have evolved since the early 90’s and now XHTML is the language to use. It separates out the code from the design elements. It is great for enabling site wide changes in a more cost effective way, is readable with a few tweaks for WAP and other mobile devices, but the main benefit is that it gives you cleaner code, easier to read by search engines giving you a higher rank over your competitors.
8. Google Page Rank
Page rank is Google's measure of importance of the site. As one of Google’s latest ranking rules is to rank site on the age of their site, one of the best ways to check this is to see if there’s a Page Rank. If your site doesn't’t have a one that is extremely disturbing as if Google doesn't see it as important, then it's practically invisible on search engines - see above on Rule #1 - make it visible so people can find you!
9. Invisible Pages - The Ultimate Deadly Sin.
A rant about Frames and Dynamically produced pages and Flash Animation!
Frames are pretty old school but you’ll be surprised to see how many website are still in frames. Frames may not look different to the viewer but they are not supported by all browsers, take longer to load and are not search engine friendly. Search engines find it hard to get the information off the page – see below for the page and then see the next image for the lack of information for search engines. As you can see, the two boxes crossed out in red are not visible for search engines so the information you've got in there is not picked up.
Dynamic Pages
Just a quick definition here so you know what we're talking about. Dynamic pages are often produced in a database and are those that have a question mark with numbers and or letters (eg: ?xxxxj134uxzy) after the page names instead of having just .html or .php.
Search engines are working on trying to read dynamic pages but technology is being created so fast that some search engines have trouble trying to keep up making it hard for some search engines to rank them. Search engines enter through and rank every page, giving you more opportunities to put your goods and services in front of the customer.
Don't get us wrong here, we're not anti dynamic content such as Ajax. It's just that things have their place and websites, like any other advertising need to pay for themselves.
By the same token, most of our websites produced out of a database are created as static pages. It's a matter of thinking properly to ensure the execution is the best for the search engines and the end customer.
Flash Animation
Flash animation is not all bad so I bet you're wondering why we mention it here since we have created websites with flash animation in them. Well it's the same invisibility with Google unless the page is created right. Flash does not generate sufficient search engine friendly code and a whole website in flash is not at all search engine worthy. What's more is it's not very accessible either so in general people with visual impairment or physical disabilities cannot use your site.
Flash is bad news unless used by a search engine expert who knows how to make it generate the necessary code to fulfil the requirements of a good search engine ranking.
Why would you not want to take advantage of at least 3 times more enquiries from your website by changing one thing?
We are the search engine optimisation and marketing experts and we have published out a booklet "The 12 Secrets to Search Engine Success". If you'd like to know more information, please contact us and we'll post you one out.
Or to enquire about our website audit, contact us direct.
If you have an e-commerce website, before you get started (we hope you read this before you get started) we've put together some more great information about e-commerce website design tips here.
