Usability versus online marketing Options

[charliew]

I wonder what you guys do when you meet opposing views.

For example, we want a clean clear design on the Home page with minimum text, but the marketing dept want lots of text for the Search Engines.

What's the solution - compromise?

[cre8pc]

Welcome to the forums!

If you can convey your message to your target market/audience with little to no content, then there is no reason not to. The marketing department will have to rely on PPC/PPI, rather than organic solutions.

But, I can think of no target audience/market that will get the site message and be persuaded to remain on the site without content. If the target market includes special needs users who use screen readers to see and/or hear a site, than the design will not work for them. That discounts a huge number of Internet users. If the target market/audience needs reading glasses, suffers from ADHD or ADD, are color blind or have images and JavaScript turned off by default, there goes another potential customer/visitor/user segment.

Content need not be dominant. Content can be in the form of text links, an introductiory paragraph that explains the what/where/why/how and how of the site, and a tagline near the logo, in text. Headings and subheadings, in text, are content. All of those text elements can be used for organic SEO, without destroying creative visuals.

Perhaps minimal content, used in logical places where your visitors/customers most need them, is your compromise

Another option is to find creative ways to sell/impress/convince authenticy and credibilty and describe a site's purpose in visuals, but smartly take your visitor inside the site via text links (must be well labeled. Think "Scent of information".) You want them to understand the message, and be persuaded to learn more or want more, in a few seconds upon arriving.

The inside pages, which contain more content, are therefore built up as landing pages for search engines and will your work horses for you. They add value to a PPC/PPI campaign. Structure them with conversions in mind, with well placed call to action links.

I hope this is helpful

[cline]

One person's "clean clear design" is another person's obtuse, confusing, uninformative design.

[Adrian]

we want a clean clear design on the Home page with minimum text, but the marketing dept want lots of text for the Search Engines

There should be more food for the search engines than the home page. That should not be the only page people find when they search. You want the internal pages to rank well for the things they discuss, so you don't need to load the home page with over the top search engine food. Ensure the site can be crawled properly, and optimise different pages for different things, depending on the aim of the page.

We get a lot of distance from people hitting indivual product pages that we couldn't possibly cover on the homepage.

[Respree]

Of course, each opposing view is going to be biased toward their own particular goals and objectives, in your particular case, design versus marketing.

To me, the logical thing to do would be to have each 'side' take out a piece of paper. Draw a line down the center. List all the "Pros" on the left side and "Cons" on the right side to both your view (argument) and the opposing sides view. Have the opposing side do the same.

Now combine the two lists into one.

Now give the list to the person with 'overall' responsibilities for the site, most likely the owner.

Have this person make the final decision.

[adriang]

What does the user want?

[busybeingborn]

lots of text on the homepage? is this links?

the object of the homepage should be to get people off of it and into the site as quickly as possible. lots of text on a homepage is a recipe for hitting the back button.

BBB

[cline]

The object of a homepage is to engate the user and entice them to get deeper into the site. The speed at which that is done is not an issue. For many sites lots of text on the homepage is a recipe for engaging users.

[TheManBehindTheCurtain]

Hi CharlieW. Welcome to the forums!

I don't know enough about your company or your team to say conclusively what the problem is. So for the sake of discussion let's pretend that I'm not addressing this to you personally, but am just saying how I would respond to a colleague whose business I knew a little better. It sounds a bit harsh, but I'm talking not about individuals (like you) but general titles. So, the mild rant would go something like this:

a clean clear design on the Home page with minimum text, but the marketing dept want lots of text for the Search Engines

There's a fundamental fallacy in what you say: The two are not mutually exclusive.

Here's another superficial fallacy: a "clear clean design" does not automatically make a web site usable, though it can be one of many important factors contributing to usability. But some very ugly sites can be usable. And very cleanly design sites can be unusable.

Point being: It's just not that easy. It's not nearly that easy.

And when you hear team members talking in such unproductive generalities, it's a sign of a much deeper problem than, say, the design of the home page. It goes deeper than any preconceived notions: notions that designers have about what makes good design and notions that marketers have about how you place well in search engines.

You see these discussions most frequently in companies where everyone has their own "department" and the concept of "team" means only this: one or two people from each department, representing their own viewpoints.

In a true team, everyone is responsible for the quality of the end product. Designers may bring particular visual design or information architecture or usability skills to the table. But they are still responsible for understanding the overall business goals of the site, and crafting a design to fit. Marketers may bring a deep knowledge of customer needs, the information the customers want, and the ways in which to create visibility for the site in order to attract the right visitors. But they are also responsible for understanding design goals and crafting marketing programs that reflect them.

Now, one thing to clearly understand: this is not the fault of the individual team members. You get "a bunch of individuals working on something" as opposed to a "team" when you lack a strong project manager. An experienced project manager -- a real team leader -- will front-load the project for success by bringing the team members together early on to establish business goals. Not design goals, not content goals, not usability goals, not marketing goals, but the bottom-line business goals -- how you're going to make money on this enterprise (or at least cover expenses if you're a non-profit). What product you are offering, who is likely to want it, how you have to present it to make it compelling, how to reach your market, etc.

Everyone on the team has to understand these goals, and everyone has to understand the big picture enough to see how their piece contributes to success. No one gets a free ride. No one comes in just to "design" or to "market." They have to work together from the start toward an agreed upon goal. Without the initial consensus on goals, each team member only looks at his or her individual contribution in isolation, and these type of arguments -- "lots of text" versus "clear clean design" crop up. These types of arguments reduce complex issues to superficial, unsolvable generalities, and the discussion becomes circular and counterproductive, sometimes to the extent that team members become alienated.

These types of discussions frequently happen when you lack strong management, and that same lack of management then leads to compromises that neither side finds satisfactory. Decisions are made to accommodate the person who is yelling the loudest.

So, to tie up the rant and shift to something positive: In my experience you can't get deep into a project, hit a rift so fundamental as this, and hope to call a meeting that resolves it. Some enterprising individual needs to go have a heart-to-heart conversation with the project manager, and suggest that it's time to have a couple of meetings to re-invigorate the team's understanding of business goals. And the project manager has to be present (and by this I don't mean sitting in, but an active and firm and personable presence) in future meetings to moderate and guide the designers and marketers toward the common goals, and help them work as a team rather than individual contributors. When everyone understands the goal and starts thinking of the goal as more important than their individual contributions, decisions fall into place naturally.

Of course, those of us who have spent some time consulting (my consulting days are over for a while, so I'm not fishing for business!) actually have something to gain by the fact that this is an all-too-common a scenario. I can't tell you the number of times I've been asked to "fix" something, only to find that the individual contributors are all extremely talented and the company has a lot going for it. The problem was largely one of a lack of management.

OK, like I said, I have no idea if this fits your personal situation and I certainly didn't mean it in a personal way. Just sharing past (and very common) experience. If I'm off base entirely, many apologies. If I'm a little right, I hope it helps.

In any event, good luck! And please let us know how it turns out.

[busybeingborn]

The speed at which that is done is not an issue.  For many sites lots of text on the  homepage is a recipe for engaging users

Most users don't read online. They scan. Unless your text is easily scannable i.e. bullets, subheadings, etc. the majority of users of will not spend the time reading it. descriptive paragraphs of text are scanned over while users look for links and other actionable links or fields to get them closer to their goal.

The speed at which this is done is an issue. The longer you keep someone on your page trying to find something actionable, the increase in the chance that they will go back to whatever link they found to get to you and look for someone else.

I find that time and again people think that users just plopped into their site from outer space with no concept or idea of what website they just landed at. This is a major flaw in usability.

Fact is most users are probably coming from a SE or an affiliate and have a pretty good idea of what your site is and offers before they get there. Most important, they know what they want from your site once they get there. If you don't have it or you don't make finding it clear and easy they're gone. Asking them to read lots of text on a homepage is not engaging. It's a roadblock.

BBB

[fisicx]

This it the key:

Most users don't read online. They scan.

You can have lots of content without cluttering up the design. Just don't don't put great chunks of text on the home page. If you want the search engines to find the site then as Adrian said, let the search engines search deeper in the site - most serps do not return the homepage in any case.

Good post Frank - must have taken ages to type!

[TheManBehindTheCurtain]

Thanks fisicx!

.... must have taken ages to type!

Yes, about 15 years. That was about 14 years, 364 days, 23-1/2 hours spent working on many different projects with various degrees of success. And about a half hour typing it up.

(And that's 15 years in web/online development. I won't begin to tell you how many years of publishing experience preceded that!)

[cline]

Yes, that was awesome post from Frank.

The longer you keep someone on your page trying to find something actionable, the increase in the chance that they will go back to whatever link they found to get to you and look for someone else.

What does this have to do with having lots of copy on the homepage? The exact same thing can be said about "clean" low-copy designs. Assuming that you're not *frustrating* users, more time spent on site postively correlates with almost anything you want the site to achieve. For many sites, having lots of copy on the homepage helps people find something actionable.

[fisicx]

...having lots of copy on the homepage helps people find something actionable.

How many people will visit your homepage? The use of search engines means they are more likely to end up somewhere inside the site. They my click on the HOME link but more likely the will use the navigation to dig deeper if they find something interesting.

As to having lots of copy on the homepage, it would be far better to have targeted links. Once I have read the blurb that tells me what you can do for me, the home page is reduced to a portal to the rest of the site. If you put lots of words in the way then I am not going to be able to get to the rest of the site.

The homepage should hit you between the eyes, be obvious what you are offering and provide clear links to get to your products. If you can do that then what do you need lots copy for.

Remember, if I search for 'plastic widgets' then I want to go to the plastic widget page not the widget.com homepage. If I visit again then I will probably spent a few nanoseconds on the homepage before clicking on a navigation link. That is how people use websites and because if that makes your carefully crafted copy superfluous. If you want the copy on the site then build an about us page and let google index that.

[cre8pc]

I came across this article. It may offer some insight for those interested in learning more about homepage design with end users in mind...

Is Your Homepage Doing What It Should?

The homepage is the most important page on a web site, yet it's content is often neglected or even worse, non-existent.

[TheManBehindTheCurtain]

I think this discussion is beginning to illustrate another issue we've recently discussed: heuristics. At the risk of sounding like a broken record ... I respect all of the opinions about what a home page "should" be ... but I have to submit that it's just not that simple.

Every one of these statements could be absolutely spot-on (is that the right Britishism?) for some sites and woefully inadequate for others. Two of the most successful and profitable sites on the web: Google and Amazon. What heuristic or principle covers them both? None, except: design for the business goal, the product, and the audience.

Personally, I think it would be very difficult to have a profitable discussion about universal attributes of a home page. But there are certainly attributes of home pages for shopping sites, news sites, support forums, search engines, consumer portals, etc. If CharlieW returns and tells us more about what his company is trying to accomplish, I'm sure we could give him better advice!

[bwelford]

One book I've had recommended to me is The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience, by Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, and Jason I. Hong. I believe they suggest that certain patterns become the standards for certain types of websites. You can find more at http://www.designofsites.com/

Here is how they describe one pattern in their book:

Pattern Group C - Creating a Powerful Homepage
    The homepage is the most visited page on any Web site, and its design deserves special attention so that it can accommodate the rich diversity of customers and their needs. This pattern group describes how to design a powerful homepage to fit the needs of your customers.

I haven't yet had chance to read it, so can offer no more than the reference at this time.

[cline]

How many people will visit your homepage? The use of search engines means they are more likely to end up somewhere inside the site.

On almost every site I've ever analyzed the homepage gets more entry traffic than any other page. Because of the way search engines rank sites the homepage is more likely to be presented in search results than deep pages are.

They my click on the HOME link but more likely the will use the navigation to dig deeper if they find something interesting.

And lots of people read the content of the homepage to help them find what's interesting to them. Having lots of copy on the homepage does not prevent people from using the navigation.

As to having lots of copy on the homepage, it would be far better to have targeted links.

Who said anything about lots of copy on the homepage being opposite having targeted links. The copy should be full of links.

If you put lots of words in the way then I am not going to be able to get to the rest of the site.

Why do you assume that words get in the way? Words direct users to the rest of the site.

The homepage should hit you between the eyes, be obvious what you are offering and provide clear links to get to your products. If you can do that then what do you need lots copy for.

To hit the user between the eyes, to be obvious what you are offering, and to provide clear links.

Remember, if I search for 'plastic widgets' then I want to go to the plastic widget page not the widget.com homepage.

That's an issue about seo, not about the amount of copy on the homepage.

If I visit again then I will probably spent a few nanoseconds on the homepage before clicking on a navigation link. That is how people use websites and because if that makes your carefully crafted copy superfluous.

Nope, it means that the copy did its job. You liked the site so much you came back. No one is expecting you to read the same copy again.

If you want the copy on the site then build an about us page and let google index that.

Who said anything about the copy being about-us type copy?

[busybeingborn]

Two of the most successful and profitable sites on the web: Google and Amazon. What heuristic or principle covers them both? None, except: design for the business goal, the product, and the audience.

Both homepages are just links, buttons and a box for search. There is no marketing copy or long descriptive paragraphs of text.

I think it would be very difficult to have a profitable discussion about universal attributes of a home page. But there are certainly attributes of home pages for shopping sites, news sites, support forums, search engines, consumer portals, etc.

Agreed. However I can't think of one type of site where a positive attribute of the homepage would be lots of marketing copy and paragraphs of text. Can anyone?

BBB

[cline]

Amazon.com has gobs and gobs of marketing copy!