You can spend a bundle on website design, work until all
hours getting the content together and hire the best programmers the world
has to offer, but if users can't find what they are looking for when they visit your site, you've just
wasted a ton of time and money.
For the most part, the old mantra that "content is king" is
a good one, but it's not the only one. Here's another:
"Make great content easy to find."
I was on the website of a national television network recently and I could not find the telephone number I needed. Unless the network is
run by Luddites, I'm sure they have one--I just couldn't find it.
Making a website user-friendly is about more than just logic
and intuitiveness. It's also about knowing users' habits.
For example, did you know that users spend an average of about
70 percent of their time on the left side of the page and just 30 percent on the
right side? That makes a pretty strong case for putting links down the
left-hand side! (Regular readers of this newsletter will remember
an article last May that discussed how our
eyes tend to browse websites in an F-shaped manner.)
Did you know people are now more likely than ever to read
"below the fold"? While 80 percent of their time is spent on the
screen that is presented, they will scroll down and spend about 20 percent of
the time looking at below-the-fold information.
Imagine if you owned a restaurant and,
instead of handing each of your customers a menu when they entered, you told
them they had to use their detective skills to find them somewhere in the
restaurant. Inviting them to your website and hiding the information is the
same thing.
Content may well be king--but only if you can
find it.