Creating Effective Websites Part 3: Visibility and Accessibility
Start talking about website visibility and accessibility and most people will glaze over. It's just not something most business owners, or even website administrators, care about. And that is why it is such a problem area for most sites. But fixing these mistakes, or better yet, not making them in the first place, can really set you apart from the competition.
Why is it such a big deal? Well if your site isn't visible, how will your target market find it? If the site isn't accessible, how will people be able to use it and understand the content on it?
In short, visibility and accessibility are two of the most important factors in building a successful website.
Visibility
Search engine optimization is a great place to start when it comes to visibility. Many people begin the majority of their Internet sessions with a search of some description, so obviously you want to ensure that your site can be found using them.
A simple test, which you have probably done yourself at least a couple of times, is to go to a few of your favorite search engines, enter the terms with which you're hoping your site can be found, clicking the search button, and scrolling through the results to see how you fair.
Ideally you will be able to find your site ranked highly for a variety of keywords that are related to your business. Sadly, this is becoming very difficult due to the increasing competition on the web. At the very least, you should be able to find your site ranked highly when you search for your business' name.
Finding your site using other, more general keywords might not be as big an issue as you think. You need to ask yourself if your potential customers really start looking for a vendor for your product or service by searching the web. If they don't, then there's no point in worrying about search engine rankings or spending a fortune on optimization. And even if they do, you can go a long way with a high rank for a search on your business name providing you are working on other areas of visibility too.
Search Engine Optimization
If you want to improve your ranking there are several things you can do. Firstly, you should gain at least a basic understanding of how search engines work and how they rank pages. This is a pretty complicated topic and well beyond the scope of this article, but here's a very basic overview.
Search engines use simple programs called robots to index pages. The robot visits the page and reads the content that appears on it and then stores that information in the search engine's index. There are two important factors that will determine how your page ranks for specific search terms. The first is the content that appears on the page. The second is the search engine's opinion of that page's importance.
For example, if you have a webpage that contains terms like garden, gardening, gardener, flowers, and plants, the search engine will index the page under those terms. Your page might then appear in the results returned for searches on those terms. What will determine whether or not the page is returned and how highly it is ranked is the search engine's perception of the page's importance.
The way search engine's determine a page's importance is a complex process and a closely guarded secret. It is, however, possible to make some general observations about how pages get ranked.
The size of the website seems to be a factor with many search engines. If all else is equal, a 500 page website will be seen as more important than a 5 page website.
The number of inbound links is also a factor. Search engines treat a link to a page as an endorsement of it. If you have links to your page from 10 other websites, your page will be considered more important than if it had no incoming links.
Finally, the text that makes up the link is very important. If your page is linked to with terms like "click here", "more information", or other meaningless terms then those links will be of limited value. If, on the other hand, your page is linked to with keyword rich phrases such as "gardening advice" or "flower garden" then you will strengthen the association between those terms and your page.
There are, of course, lots of other factors in improving your site's search engine ranking. If you taken care of the above, then you should check that your website uses valid, lightweight markup. If the markup (or source code) that makes up a page is invalid, the search engines will have a harder time correctly interpreting the page. They might still be able to do it, but it makes no sense to make life hard for the robots when any developer worth her salt can correct the errors in the HTML that makes up a page.
The markup should also be lightweight. By this, we are referring to modern markup techniques that separate presentation from content. Old-fashioned markup has all the "presentational" information (such as table widths, fonts, text sizes, background colors, and so on) embedded in the markup along with the actual content. This forces search engines to sift through a lot more clutter before they get to the actual content. Again, they can do it, but why make it harder for the robots to index your site? You might have to look a little harder for a developer that can help you fix an old-fashioned site, but the search will be worth it.
Pay Per Click Advertising
Search engine optimization can take time. Even with a well-built site with keyword-rich content and loads of inbound links, it might take a couple of months for your site to start appearing prominently in the search engines. Fortunately, you can still get your site listed if you're willing to throw some money at the problem.
Although with most search engines there is simply no way whatsoever to buy yourself a high ranking, you can buy space in the "sponsored listings". Essentially, you create an advert (usually consisting of a headline and a couple of lines of text), specify which keywords you want to trigger the advert's display, and specify how much you are willing to pay per click. You then get billed when someone clicks on the advert.
With a little work (and possibly a little technical assistance from your developer) you should be able to achieve a decent search engine rank and an effective Pay Per Click program, but search engines should not be the sole tactic in your visibility strategy.
Beyond Search Engines
Having a high search engine rank is great, but if you're relying on that alone to generate traffic for your site then you're taking a far too passive and far too haphazard approach to website visibility.
The trouble with search engine traffic is that it is often very "unqualified". In other words, the people who find your site on a search engine may not really be looking for anything your site offers. One of the easiest ways to drive qualified traffic to your site is by promoting it to your target market.
Promotion
At a minimum you should be promoting the site by having the address on your business cards, stationary, all your advertising and marketing materials, and in your email signature (i.e. the text that can be added to the bottom of every email you send). You should also be promoting it when you go to networking events and when you meet with clients and prospects.
Giving people a reason to visit the site, such as the promise of valuable and relevant content, will greatly increase your chances of driving traffic to your site. Instead of simply suggesting people visit your site, you can suggest that they read a specific article that you've written that addresses a problem they're having. This promotion technique can be used elsewhere too. For example, your email signature, in addition to mentioning the website address, could also promote the article that you've written.
Accessibility
Once you improved the visibility of your site, you need to ensure that it is as widely accessible as possible. In website terms, accessibility relates to how easily your site can be accessed and used by Internet users. Obviously if your visitors have difficulty navigating your site, or if they use browsing software that is incompatible with your site, it's going to be really difficult getting them to respond the way you want them to. Clearly then, you have to make your site as intuitive and as widely accessible as possible.
You can test your website's usability by asking people what they think of the site and how easy they find it to use. Ask clients and prospects if they have any difficulty finding the information they need. If they do, then take note of the problems that they're having and fix them as soon as possible.
If your website enables users to perform certain tasks, such as making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter, then try to find a test audience who can attempt to perform these tasks. You can enlist the help of clients, friends, and family if you need to. The important thing is that the test group provides you with honest and objective feedback.
Simple user testing like this can help uncover many of the accessibility and usability problems that you're likely to face. But there is one other factor that needs to be addressed: how accessible is your site when certain design elements, such as images or Flash movies, are ignored?
Not everyone has Macromedia Flash Player installed on their computer. Other users may have images "turned off" in their browser or they may be using a text only browser such as Lynx. The user may even be entirely blind and reliant on "screen reader" software. How will your website appear to these users?
These questions are often dismissed by business owners. "Everyone I sell to uses up-to-date software" or "None of my customers are blind" are common rebuttals to the argument in favor of making a website accessible. And if you're thinking the same thing, I have news for you. Your most important website users are completely blind!
Search engine robots (software programs that visit websites and index the contents for the search engines) are, in effect, totally blind as they are unable to "read" images or Flash. If your website relies heavily on either, then the robots may be reading your site as blank page after blank page.
To find out if your site has any accessibility issues, you can take advantage of a free tool called WebXACT, which was created by a company called Watchfire. WebXACT will check the site for compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The tool is available on the WebXACT website.
Overall
With just a little bit of extra work you can ensure that your site has a high level of visibility and usability. Some of this extra work may seem a little technical but it is well worth doing. A highly visible, accessible, and usable website will strengthen your online presence and will reduce the barriers between you and your clients.
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