Chromand - Desiging, Developing, and Marketing for the Interwebs

A.K.A. 5 things I wish I knew when I started AthensBarHopper.com

When designing or developing a web site, it is easy to get distracted by designing with search engines in mind, or perhaps how it works in the code, and doing what is more efficient for you instead of the user. Or perhaps when designing the layout, your looking at the Google Heat Map trying to increase your CTR % instead of increasing the satisfaction of the user.  You can’t forget that the most integral part of your web site is the people that use it.  Here are 5 tips for increasing customer satisfaction, which is key in increasing your CTR and conversions.

TIP #1: Know what your users want, and feature it prominetly

• When I first made Athens Bar Hopper (read: didn’t know what I was doing) I knew I wanted it to be a listing of all of the drink specials, concerts, and other goings on  in downtown Athens, GA. and it did do this. but the front page was a blog-style news feed, where I would occasionally write articles, have news, have featured listings, etc. Looking at my Analytics account, I realized that most people would jump from the front page directly to the directory pages. I was making my user jump through unnessecary hoops to get what they wanted. This make my bounce rate skyrocket, and probably has hurt traffic in the long run.

TIP #2: Think about a variety of users, and remember the old saying:

• “You can please some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please everybody all the time”.  Think about all the different kinds of users your site could have, and do your best to accommodate the varying interests and habits of your users. If there is a feature you think will be useful to everyone, feature it more prominently.   If it something this is liked by some and disliked by others, you may want to have it available, but not as prominetly featured. Look at Digg for an example. The main page is set to show the top voted in all categories if you are not logged in, or a custom feed if you are.  Not as strongly featured, but still availible for niche users, are tabs to see specific categories, and the upcoming sections.

TIP #3: Get beta testers.

• As much as you’d like, there will be things people will find in your site design that you will never see.  The best way to see how users will react is to get friends and family to try out our site, and get their honest reactions. They may point out a flaw you didn’t see, or have an idea on how to improve something that you didn’t think of. You can never have to much input or feedback on your site.

TIP #4: Keep it Simple Stupid

• Look at how many people have flocking to the uber-clean looking Twitter as of late, and how many people hated many of the add-ons to Facebook.   People like a clean, simple, easy-to-use interface. Your website shouldn’t need an instruction manual. AthensBarHopper  had a forum, a wiki, a google maps application,a lot of user created content features, and I was thinking about adding social networking at one point. So much of this deviated from what people wanted in the first place, and went widely unused.

TIP #5: Reward users for active participation

• This is something else I think was the main sticking point with ABH. Users could write in the wiki, review bars, have their articles published on the front page, and help keep the database up to date, but no one ever really used these features. Why would they? It came across as if I was trying to get people to work for me for free.  People are more than willing to add to the content of a website, if there is a reward for doing so. People wouldn’t Digg stuff if they couldn’t use it as bookmarks for their own reference, and people wouldn’t care about making the front page if their wasn’t a benefit to that. Besides all the traffic and plubicity that the front page of Digg brings, their algorithm is writted so that people who have been active and made the front page before can do it again.  Make it a competition. Offer prizes. Just do something to motivate your user base.

If you liked this post, feel free to digg, stumble, reddit, twitter, sphinn, etc.