5 Things I learnt this week

• The top 4 things we buy online are
  1) Entertainment
  2) Home-ware
  3) Clothes
  4) Travel
• The average conversion rate is 2.3%
• There are good free eCommerce CMSs in particular Magento Community Edition
• Key ways to improve conversion rates are:
  • Targeted marketing
  • Gain a social media following
  • Usability – make sure the search function works
  • Include clear images from lots of angles or videos where appropriate
  • Offers/ promotions
  • Clear, easy returns policy
• Key ways to decrease cart abandonment:
  • Progress indicator bar
  • Remove distractions, now is probably not the time to advertise other products
  • Easy to edit cart
  • Post code address finder
  • Optional registration
  • Include thumbnail of what is being purchased

The web is a different media to print. Explain the considerations when writing for a web audience. How can you capture the audience’s attention and make them more likely to read on/stay on the site? (Find some examples of good web writing, bad web writing and some unusual styles.)
Content is king, apparently. Yet when it comes to website creation, it sometimes feels like more of an afterthought. Just a load of old lorem ipsum. Which is a serious mistake.

According to Brad Shorr, writer on Smashing Magazine: “No matter how brilliant a website’s design, no matter how elegant its navigation, sooner or later visitors will decide whether to take action because of something they read. In the end, the effectiveness with which a website converts visitors hinges on words.” (June 2011)

Good writing is what those top-ranking Google pages have in common and it’s what users want. Words can make or break your website.
How users read web pages:
That said, we do know that people rarely read web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. When researching how people read online, US web usability guru Jakob Nielsen found that 79 per cent of test users always scanned any new page they came across. Only 16 per cent read word-by-word (1997).
His later research with Loranager (2006) showed people spent an average of 27 seconds on each web page. As Nielson explained: “It’s not reading, rather ‘the ruthless pursuit of actionable content’.”
It is not a stationary activity either. Users roam from page to page, collecting salient bits of information from a variety of sources. No wonder – reading from screens is a tiring business and about 25% slower than reading a printed page.
We also know from Nielsen’s research that users scan in an F-shape. He conducted an eye tracking study (2006) with 232 users and thousands of web pages and found behaviour consistent across many different sites and tasks. Eyes are always particularly focused down the left hand side of pages, picking out the salient stuff.
Users do this because they are information foraging, picking up the scent of prey (the desired information) so they can track it down. (How we have evolved!) This theory, using the analogy of animals hunting for food, is the work of Pirrolli, Card and their colleagues at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), who focus on understanding web surfers’ basic instincts so searching becomes more intuitive.
Both pieces of research tell us to think scannable text when writing. Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning in their F-shape.
Your first ten words are more important than the next ten thousand:
Given what we know about the fleeting attention of users, it is essential to seize them with the few seconds you have. Elmer Wheeler, America’s celebrated salesman of the 1940s, had some super sales tips that are still relevant for today’s web world.

“You have only ten short seconds to capture the fleeting attention of the other person and if, in those tens short seconds you don’t say something mighty important, he will leave you — either physically or mentally.”

Too true. Headlines are a good way of saying something important. There are proven formulas in existence which psychologically target people’s curiosity, laziness or desire to avoid pain. For instance:
Formula 1: Get (desired result) in (desirable time period)
Eg. Get the beach body you’ve always wanted – lose 2 stone in 3 weeks!
Eg. Get an MA in web design with just 2 hrs study a week!
Formula 2: Avoid (common problem) with (my solution)
Eg. Cut your tax bill in half by using these sneaky loopholes
Eg. Turn your little monsters into angels with these proven parenting tips
Formula 3: are you (provocative question)?
Eg. Are you stuck in a dead end job?
Eg. Can you work full-time and study for an MA?

An example of the formula headline approach

There are many more examples but bear in mind that, whilst the formulaic headline approach may be appropriate for keep-fit sites, parenting or finance, it may not be fitting your particular online presence.
Top-loading your content is another excellent way of attracting users and permits efficient scanning. Make your point immediately like a newspaper or broadcast journalist would and use the inverted pyramid style of writing (example) the most important information comes in the first sentence, supporting information in the second and so on – so it is seen and remembered.
Get the ‘who, what, where, when, why’ in straight away. It means visitors can instantly gain an understanding of what the page is about. The structure also places facts and keywords at the head of the page, where they carry more weight in search engine analysis. To help, ask yourself what is the key thing you want your visitor to take away with them when they leave your website – and that’s your lead.
In busy home pages, it’s often good practice to provide only the lead and perhaps a ‘teaser’ sentence, with the rest of the article available through a ‘learn more’ link.
Don’t go into essay or novel mode. As Brad Shorr blogged:

“Online marketers like to sneer at newspapers, but we can learn a lot from print journalists. For instance, they don’t bury the lead.”

Another useful journalistic tool is the hook. Hang content on topical, timely events to keep your content fresh; such as the season, an anniversary of some kind, or current event. Search engines appreciate new angles and so do humans. Use an editorial calendar to remind yourself of relevant dates.
Content has to be quality – well-researched, unique if possible, aimed at your target audience and delivering what you promise – or they will bounce away. Get experts in the chosen field to write for you. It means people will trust your site, it is a great endorsement and enhances credibility.
The most successful web writing is tailored to the target audience:
Ginny Redish, in her book Letting Go Of The Words, says:

“Writing successful web content starts with finding out about your audience and their needs. Who will come to your content and why?”

She suggests getting to know users by:
• Listing your major audiences
• Gathering information about them, by talking to web users, reading the emails they send, talking to the marketing department, interviewing people
• Listing their major characteristics eg. their experience, their emotions when visiting your site , their values, demographics (age, ability) social and cultural environments and their technology
• Gathering their questions, tasks, stories and goals, then using this information to create personas and potential scenarios for your site which will give you an invaluable insight into how it works for others

Ginny says good web writing is like having a conversation – not a rambling dialogue but a focused conversation started by a busy person. However, when having that conversation, remember Nielsen’s advice about how selfish users are.

“They arrive at a website with a goal in mind, and they are ruthless in pursuing their own interest and in rejecting whatever the site is trying to push. Particularly on eCommerce sites. They cherry pick what they need – write accordingly: make your content actionable and focused on user needs.”

Now you know who your audience is, give them what they want:
What they want is concise writing and George Orwell has some top tips:

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Nielsen measured the effect of improving web writing and the results speak for themselves. He developed five different versions of the same site – with the same basic information but different wording – then watched users perform tasks. He found that for the concisely written version – measured usability was markedly improved – up by 58%. Not far behind was the scannable version, with 47% better usability. The one with objective language rather than promotional guff was still good – up 27%. But the most dramatic improved was gained when all three improved writing styles were employed, resulting in 124% better usability.
What users do not like is ‘marketese’ or promotional language. Nielsen says it imposes a cognitive burden and valuable resources are spent filtering out the hyperbole to get to the facts.
So how do you avoid this marketese while still convincing readers your site is the one for them? Veteran web writer Larry Asher says:

“Look for the emotional lever. People don’t buy beer, elect candidates or order stock photos for rational reasons. Figure out what emotional fuse your product lights and talk about that.”

While you are at it, introduce just one idea per paragraph as users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words.
How the writing looks:
The look of text online affects how readers relate to it. The contrast produced by headlines, subheads, lists, and illustrations will provide landmarks to direct the reader through your content. The structure of heading and list mark-up also helps search engine optimization and online content searches, because of the semantic emphasis and the relationship between words.
Use an appropriate font such as Verdana or Georgia, designed specifically for legibility on the computer screen. Make sure it’s easy to read, unlike this example, with no large, boring blocks of text. Create narrow columns so users don’t have to travel right across the screen and be generous with leading. Also avoid capital letters as they are difficult to scan.

Example of text that runs the width of the web page

Links:
Don’t be afraid to use links within your own site. They cannot sustain an argument or deliver facts as efficiently as conventional writing, but they give welcome relief to blocks of text and can help you get rid of the more tedious stuff, such as product information or the background to an issue. No need to summarise as you would have to in print. Also links are good for SEO. Nielsen’s advice on links (2009) is:
• Use plain language
• Use specific terminology
• Follow conventions for naming common features
• Use front-load user- and action-oriented terms
• Make sure your pages share the same graphic design, navigational controls, and overall content theme, so users don’t feel lost
Remember, if you must send your reader away via a hypertext link, make sure the material around the link makes it clear the user will be leaving your site and entering another. Also, provide a description of the linked site, so users understand the relevance.
Put only the most salient links within the body of your text and put the rest at the bottom where they are available but not distracting. Links that appear within body text should be underlined to set them off from the surrounding words. Underlining is a carryover from the days of handwriting and the typewriter, but still works well for accessibility.
Prune aggressively:

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

(William Strunk, Jr. and E B. White, The elements of Style, Allyn and Bacon, 1979)
Beatrix Potter says it even more succinctly. “The shorter and the plainer the better.”
(Don’t Make Me Think!) Steve Krug’s third Law of Usability is: “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.”
It sounds ruthless but the benefits are:
1. It reduces noise level
2. Make useful content more prominent
3. Makes pages shorter, so users see more of each page
Don’t be afraid to use fragments – they allow you to pull information-carrying words to the front so the user can find a simple path to whatever it is they are looking for. You won’t win prizes for sentence construction but web readers only read 18% of verbiage (Nielsen).
However, don’t dumb down what you have to say either. Make printing easy for those who prefer to read offline, and you can deliver content without cutting the heart out of your copy.

Unforgiveable. Failure to proof read is so unprofessional.

The practical stuff:
1. Keep paragraphs and sentences short.
2. Concentrate on spelling, punctuation and grammar. Mistakes will make your site look unprofessional, irritate readers and send them elsewhere.
3. Proof-read – or get someone else to!
4. Use plain language. It also works best for search engine visibility, providing a literal match between the words in the user’s mind and the words on your site.
5. Keep your most important points above the fold, if possible.
6. Be consistent. Navigation, terminology, tone, and style should be identical throughout the site. Inconsistency tends to confuse and annoy readers. A good tip is to use a style guide, such as The Guardian’s and stick with it. Or write your own.
7. Clarity: make sure everything is straightforward and clear (this is where testing comes in).
8. Don’t use made-up words or your own slogans as navigation options. They may be funny or inventive but they won’t have the scent of the sought-after item.
9. Clear and compelling Calls To Action.
10. Organise your content – break it down into chunks that can be easily accessed. That way, users won’t have to wade through irrelevant material.
11. Tone of voice: Think about the style you will employ. Sassy, satirical or analytical? Humour helps users to identify with you. Use active verbs and first-person language. A unique voice may distinguish your pages, but beware of going too far – there is a fine line between engaging and annoying.
12. Think globally. You are designing documents for the World Wide Web so a percentage of your audience may not understand local conventions or language. Use the international date formula (14 March 2009) and consider metaphors, puns, and popular culture references.

This all applies to every page – not just the Homepage – as users may be landing from a search.

Unusual, but excellent content from JK Rowling's site

All important page titles:
Web page titles are found in the html document head section with the <title> tag. They are enormously important because they are the first thing users see and the first thing users of screen readers hear. It also becomes the text for any bookmarks the reader makes to your pages. In addition, most search engines regard the page title as the primary descriptor of its content, so an informative title increases the chance of your page appearing in a related search. And a great page title can result in someone clicking on your listing in third place, rather than on a poorly described listing at the top.
Use carefully chosen keywords and themes for the page, form a concise, plainly worded, useful description of the contents and be as unique possible. Some organisations incorporate their name into the initial part of the title. This can be useful but consider how some web browsers truncate long page titles (more than 65 characters, including spaces) so they are less legible.
Take care not to defame anyone:
Think carefully before writing anything that would damage someone’s reputation. You can libel someone by writing about them on a personal blog, providing at least one other person accesses the defamatory material.
Examples of the formulations used to define a “defamatory imputation” include words that:

• are likely to lower a person in the estimation of right-thinking people;
• injure a person’s reputation by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule;
• tend to make a person be shunned or avoided.

Libels on high-traffic sites are more likely to be discovered but potential claimants may let a libel pass if it hasn’t been widely seen, as a court case would ensure a much wider audience for the slur. However, it is preferable not to risk defamation in the first place!

5 Things I learnt in week 1

• There are three main open source Content Management Systems Drupal, Joomla, WordPress all with strengths and weaknesses. There are also hundreds of others many with specific criteria e.g e-commerce or image galleries. Therefore initially a lot of research needs to be done to work out which system is right for a particular project (at least until we are more familiar with them)
• Historically Drupal has been seen as the choice for developers – more flexible with the code but less user friendly however this is changing with Drupal 7.
  Joomla is a popular choice for designers as it’s easy to use and customise.
  Wordpress is largely used for blogs but can be useful for any site that has very frequently updated content particularly is you want people to be able to comment on it.
• Lots of CMSs can be used straight out of the box or they can be adapted with the hundreds of plug ins that have been designed for many of them. This makes them incredibly flexible and relatively quick to build.
• It’s important to define your content strategy before selecting a CMS.
• Generally the purpose of a CMS is that it can be edited and updated easily by a novice to the web.

Things I’m struggling with/ need to look into further

• How to install a CMS – servers, databases? I wish I was more familiar with IT!
• Install the framework locally so that you can build it without the internet? – A concept that goes completely over my head at the moment, one step at a time I suppose.

This week in Content Management I learned all about marketing. I did a presentation on keyword research which I will do an extended blog about soon.

John gave a presentation on on-site SEO and gave good tips about where to place your keywords on your website.

Esam spoke about Google Adwords search engine advertising and how it works. He told us about the benefits of targeted advertising and how a better ROI (return on investment) is achieved. Adwords PPC (pay per click) advertising has a lot of benefits, because it gives a lot of control to the client, who can choose who they want to target and have a lot of control over how much they want to spend.

Other things I learned about were:

Off-site SEO – this refers to inbound links to your website and how they influence search engines. Links to your site from authoritative websites in a related industry are like a thumbs up to the search engine that your site is good. The most valuable types of links are one-way, unprompted, unpaid-for links. Quality over quantity.

Google Places – this is another free way to market your business and one that should be utilised.

Article marketing/Guest blogging – this is a way of getting a link back to your website,by writing an article or guest blogging for another website.

Web Technology

Websites are stored in a Server. These are provided by Hosting Companies such as Echo Web Hosting.

Web Server Hardware = Computer  (Dell, HP)

A server could hold up to 1000 websites. This is called Share Server

Large Website needs their own server. This is called Dedicated Server

Web Server Operating System: Linux (most popular) or Windows based

Web Server Software (Apache, IIS): serves requested pages by the pablic

Web Server Scripting Language (PHP, ASP): computer language. PHP is free. ASP is similar to PHP but you pay for support.

Database: where the content is stored. PHP asks for content from the database and send it to the person requiring it.

Disk Space: Available storage space for a website

Bandwidth: Amout of data that could be transfered from the web server to the user. It is usually measured over a period of a month.

Cloud: it’s like an external harddrive for a server, used to store websites with a huge amount of videos, music, galleries. it is not necessarily located in the same place as the server. Types of websites that use it are youtube, vimeo, etc.

Client Side Language: HTML, CSS, Javascript (processed on the computer requesting the website.

Ajax: is a technique of querying a database without having to press submit.

Back up: Back ups should be taken regularly when using CMS since most of the work you do is in the database on the server. Downloading the website plus database to your computer prevents issueses if something goes wrong with the server. Hosting companies take back ups regularly though.

Content Management System

A CMS is a web based software that allows people with no technical knowledge to manage the content of their sites by providing user friendly interfaces. Also, it makes development of the site faster.

A CMS is built using a scripting language such as PHP and the content is stored in a database such as MySQL. The content can be updated from whichever computer if the CMS is on the Web.

Personal Templates can be uploaded.

Open Sorce:  Free of charge plus codes are not encripted so codes can be edited

Each CMS as its own plug-ins to extend functionalities

Blogging platforms are ideal for websites which are very user based (wordpress)

Image Gallery CMS are ideal for uploading images, create galleries, etc. Eg. Pixel Post

eCommerce CMSs are dadicated for for selling things online. These handle payment gatways, taxs, postage

Specialist CMS (moodle, wikimedia)

Disadvantage on using general CMS is that the only support you get is through the forum whereas with paid CMS you get personal support if something goes wrong.

Enterprice level CMS: big companies custom make their own CMSs

Standardly CMS allows you to design your own templates and upload them so that you use your own themes.

plug-ins may be already built by the support company or you can build or get someone to build your own.

Perch and WordPress have an “undo” facility, so that old versions of pages can be restored.

use a CMS that is easy for a client to use

Hybrid CMS: two CMS may combine if one doesn’t offer some of the functionalities needed.

Most CMSs create Search engine friendly URLs through the apache web server.

When installing a CMS The web host has to support the CMS used since these have their own requirements.