Seeker-Centric Design Process
Web Usability and the Seeker-Centric Design Process
The user experience is about making your website in such a way that your site users can find what they're looking for quickly and efficiently. A usable website can reap huge benefits on to your website and your business.
At Vivid Lime, we understand that this process of user engagement begins even before the user arrives at your website.
Uniquely, we use SEO strategy to inform our design process. A website marketing platform is not developed until this strategy is composed.
SEO Strategy & User-Centric Design = Seeker-Centric Design ProcessTM
Search Engine Optimisation Strategy
The keyword here is visibility. Putting the pun aside, if your customers and prospects can’t find your site, then all the hard work you put in to create a user-centric website will be for nothing.
The fundamental issues that any good SEO Strategy should address are:
1) Sell it in a sentence
The answer to this will inform and drive nearly all of the issues you will face in developing a successful SEO strategy.
2) Keyword Strategy
This should be implemented across the site and individually for each page. Use your products and services, together with current trends and data analysis to determine the phrases that will drive the most traffic to your site.
3) Site Architecture and Navigation
Ensure that any navigation used can be fully crawled by search engines and that the structure of the site and each page is also optimised for the search bots by correctly applying meta data, tags and a solid url structure.
4) Content Management Strategy
Content Management systems are not all the same. Choose the one which best fits the type of content you have on the site.
5) Link Building Strategy
Social networks, online PR and partnerships with relevant websites will all help to boost the quantity and quality of your organic links. A crucial factor in how search engines determine your website’s ranking.
6) Advanced SEO
This includes strategies that improve results across local, video and image search.
User-Centric Design
1) Does the website answer the questions that your user/customer might have?
Users visit a site because they want answers. Their questions range from the broad; “Am I in the right place?” to the very specific; “Why should I trust you”.
It’s important that your site gives them what they are looking for quickly and simply.
2) Is the navigation clear and simple?
The navigation lets the user know where they have been and where they can go. It should be presented in a clear, consistent manner.
3) Does the site’s design guide the eye?
The website reflects the brand experience. A poorly designed website will lead to a poor user experience and reflect negatively on the brand. The design of the website; the choice of colours, layout, position of elements, size and more needs to be carefully thought through to create a specific flow for your site.
4) Is the writing optimised for the online space?
Just as a script written for TV will be different to the copy on a poster, online copy needs to be written for the medium and the user.
The text should be short, scannable and to the point. Offering answers and using simple, straightforward language.
5) Is the site organised with a consistent design and structure?
Good information architecture ensures that the right person finds the right information at the right time. The use of consistent colours and typefaces prevents users guessing whether they’ve stumbled upon a different site.
And a unifying structure throughout the site reduces the chances of your potential customer getting lost or confused.
6) Is the site accessible for users with disabilities?
Section III of the Disability and Discrimination Act, makes it unlawful for service providers to treat disabled people less favourably for a reason related to their disability.
Inaccessible websites aren’t just against the law; they make no sense in ignoring potential extra business from the disabled community.
7) Does the site render correctly in different browsers and screen resolutions?
Your current and potential customers will be viewing the site in different ways. From using different internet browsers, to different sizes of monitors, right to through different devices like laptops and mobile phones.
8) Does the site cater for users lacking the latest technology?
Not everyone will have the latest plug-in installed or even turned on. If these potential customers can’t see the content on the site then they will go elsewhere to find what they’re looking for.
9) Does the content load quickly?
Users are notoriously impatient. It’s easier to click away from a site then to wait for it to load. The build of the site should be optimised for quick loading times of between 2 -10 seconds to ensure that the user does not have time to consider navigating away.
10) Does the site improve over time?
A good website will always be seeking to improve on the user experience. A advanced performance management solution will be used to monitor the volume and behaviour of traffic through the site. The site will be adjusted accordingly to optimise performance.
