Some sketchy notes I took on the Website conversions session given by Ross Johnson
1. Website goals – most sell something
- Anytime you’re creating a website you’re creating a domain name
- Your website’s calling card
- Should be able to remember it after saying it 2 to 3 times
- Simple, unique, easy to remember
- Dot com is preferred if possible
- Your site goal should include something unique
- Print advertising – use unique url
- Facebook has a way to see tell you how many people go to your site
- Direct traffic is a good way to see if your domain name is good or not
- PPC – Google adwords to drive traffic
- Creating something unique, funny that will cause the viral spread of your website and get traffic to your site
- Offline promotions –
- Public relations – Press Releases. Even locally is good for this
- Radio
- Direct mailing – do some sort of tracking to see if is working
2. Design
- Everyone has different tastes. If targeting sites for specific demographic pick a look that works for them. Pictures of people in that age/demographic group
- Test your website – Flash testing – 2-3 seconds flashed on screen, ask people what they remembered from site
- Copy – content on site (see talk from Ross earlier)
- Headline that sums up entire page
- Supportive copy
- Bullets are better!
- Language semantics – target market concerns for the terms/words you use
- Call to Action – tell your users exactly what you want them to do!
- Don’t use tables for full usability – screen readers don’t work with tables
- Images or flash content should have alternate text
- Download LYNX browser – this is a text only browser so you can see how your site renders
- Firefox plug-in- Fangs(spelling?) – to have it render your site as a screen reader would see it.
- Each page should have main goal – and an actionable outcome that is obvious. Narrow user decision down to Yes or No –
- Design for the top 300 pixels – above the fold
- Don’t code to the larger screens out there – most people have multiple screens open at one time anyway and won’t see your content
3. Usability testing of your site
- Simple, watch them as they work
4. Fills customer’s need
- Price mentioned on site allows to pre-qualify customers on the cost
5. Track your site
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- Google.com/analytics – free service for your site
Where people are coming from, what pages they go to, what page they come in and what page they leave
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- Tells you where your traffic is
- Feedburner – for Blogs – how many people are subscribed to your RSS feed
- Google.com/analytics – free service for your site
6. Linking to other sites
- Open in separate window or new tab
- Lose people when does not open in new window