Understanding Your User
By: John Vinson
“Walk a mile in a man’s shoes” should be the saying that should be continually running in your head. When you’re making a site; if you’re making it for money is never about you. Because you like the design, doesn’t mean that others will and they’re what your website should be all about. Trying to understand the everyday internet browser is a daunting task that even the most respected experts still struggle with.
Here are a couple of tips to help you keep the user in mind when creating your website:
- Have distinct, large if possible visual cues on your site. When people first load up your site, you want to make sure they know what it is within the first three seconds. So be sure and have a nice header image, with the title of your site. Be sure there is a distinct site description, and the benefits of your site.
- Use people you know to test your site. Friends, family, should all be used as test subjects when creating a site. You can also use complete strangers if you’re out going enough. But anyway you do it, testing a site’s functionality is very important.
- Keep your site as small as possible, while still providing plenty of useful information for the internet user. Balance is the key.
- Use some of these visual cues for your site navigation:
meta description, meta keywords
advanced site search engine
Site map
Alphabetized Index
So, keep these tips in your head when creating your website. Hopefully if you follow them you’ll see some increased page views.
