Web Usability Research: Redesign Or No Redesign?
Feb 16th, 2010 by admin
In eight out of ten cases every Internet marketing company that provides SEO services hears the same nagging question posed by a client: “Do I need to redesign my website?”. In fact, customers like to ask this or similar questions when they ask a web analyst or or a web analytics specialist provides them with an appropriate SEO quote.
Yes or No replies won’t work here. Subject aside, Web is full of ugly and utterly despicable “commerical” websites that serve no purpose and will never have any decent SEO results no matter what master optimization expert works on them. Some sites just need to be erased and created from scratch. However, this is not an answer that clients wants to hear. It would be fair to analyze and pinpoint some factors on and about his website.
Web Usability Test - 10 Minutes
Instead of complicating things any further, web analysts should conduct a simple website usability test. A web analyst should check first the load times of a customer’s website. Multiple researches show that longer load times may lead to a huge decrease in sales and less visitors whose attention span does not go over 11 seconds.
Another basic “pro” web redesign factor occurs often when a website has been created by the amateur web designer or the owner himself. All kinds of legibility issues, mismatching fonts, wild unwelcome colors, empty spaceholders for images vouch for redesign. And, naturally, the most important of all the problems are faulty navigation and broken links.
An experienced web analyst should also watch for “apples” vs “oranges” factor. It occurs when images don’t support the textual content. Or when each page is so eclectic that a visitor gets lost and confused due to information overload.
At all times browser compatibility check should be conducted. Not that Internet Explorer is not the only name in the game anymore, it makes sense to check all webpages in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. It would not hurt to add to this list Safari and the look and feel of the website on smartphones.
The last factor any SEO contractor should check is whether the whole website has a professional and modern look and feel. Many web hosting services offer a free website creation tools that mildly putting are not up to the task. Utilizing them often makes an SEO-unfriendly website, especially when a client chooses worst templates out of the list. One page Flash websites and sites with default splash page are a big no-no too.
After your complete your webiste analysis and web usability tests and don’t forget to attach a supplemental web analytics report that supports the indispensible emergency of a website redesign. Hopefully, these steps will persuade the customer to take necessary steps. But this is another story…

