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It's How You Say It

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  • It's How You Say It

    It's Not What You Say, but How You Say It
    By Matt Bailey

    One of the easiest ways to lose a customer is in the navigation. Visitors
    to your site are looking for answers to a specific question. Many times
    parts of the visitors' questions are uncovered through the analytics, as you
    can get a sense of what was in their minds.

    The mind of the website visitor is a complex thing, as the closest you may
    come to understanding their thinking is in a testing lab, which requires a
    lot of time and money, but it is well worth the investment. Until then, you
    have to rely on practical analytics and usability in order to determine what
    people are looking for and the best way to help them find their answers.

    Because people are coming to your site looking for answers, you need to know
    the types of questions they are asking. This is the first step to building
    a usable navigation scheme. In evaluating the terms that they use and
    building on some "anchor" terms, as I like to call them, you can begin to
    build taxonomy (a classification of things, or the principles underlying the
    classification) in your navigation structure.

    The main problem that navigation presents is just that -- it does not
    anticipate the main problems. People are searching for an answer, which
    inherently means that they have questions. Questions are derived from
    trying to solve problems, such as buying a new chainsaw, curing poison ivy,
    stopping blood from a chainsaw injury, finding local hospital locations,
    repairing roofs, etc.

    Visitors are welcomed by your navigation as the primary means of traveling
    your website. Your navigation can be friendly and lead them to the answers
    they seek, or it can be confusing and not provide any indication of where to
    go. Most confusing are the terms "Products" and "Services" in the main
    navigation. Considering that keywords are an anchor to your business and
    search engine ranking, I can't understand why someone would dedicate prime
    navigation space to two words that do not mean anything. Investigate your
    keywords and how you can better classify your site's information, products,
    and content.

    Start by asking yourself the following questions:

    Can I be more descriptive in explaining what makes my site different or
    unique?
    What questions do my site visitors have?
    Does my navigation answer their problems?
    Do my conversion pages answer problems and provide specific direction?

    By using your analytics, you can narrowly define a group of visitors coming
    to your site, ideally by keyword group. From this, you can determine a
    conversion rate for that specific group of visitors -- are they finding what
    they are looking for? Using this information, you can begin to determine
    the problems on your site at a granular level, which will work together to
    improve the site as a whole.

    Matt Bailey
    Site Logic Marketing
    http://www.SiteLogicMarketing.com/
    Beth
    A Child's Palace - Pinata Palace - Moxie Enterprises

    SEO and Marketing Tools
    SEO - The Basics
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