Changing my web design
-
When you redo your website, I assume that sometimes it might turn out worse. For example, users might just like your prior design better and thus your prior design might actually have better stats.
My blog doesn't receive a lot of hits. I have about 1500 hits per months. I don't think that i have enough traffic for A/B testing. Is there a work around to see if my new blog design does better or worse?
-
Hi James,
As a usability expert and both a web designer & internet marketer, the topic of usability and the effectiveness of your website engaging and creating a memorable web experience with your audience is one that is always discussed. Whether or not your website is effectively communicating your vision, goals, ideas with your audience is the key to a successful website. To understand this, we must look at the underlying core of the website itself.
Not all websites that feature a sophisticated and classy or well designed User Interface bodes well with either SEO or Usability. In fact many websites may feature a spiffy design but just don't attract the users in a clearly defined manner.
When it comes to A/B testing, as Simon mentioned you can conduct tests at that level but as mentioned it will take much longer. As he mentioned Google's Website Optimizer is a great tool.
Another way you can easily identify weak areas of your website is through Google's Analytics. Now this can be trickier, but you can create various goals and or funnels to identify how users are progressing through your website. With this information we want to look at key areas, bounce rate, exit, time on page, time on site, etc to understand how our users are interacting and engaging.
Let's take this for example, let's say we create a landing page within our website to sell a book. We create the content, banners, images, etc. Now we can set up goals and funnels to see how or even if our users get to this area. Are we directing them clearly? If we are getting a high bounce rate or users are not even getting to this area, then something is seriously wrong with our website. So we look at usability, engagement, and interaction.
This is a basic outline of utilizing Analytics to achieve and idea of what may not be working properly for your website.
Now on to other areas of usability testing. Here are a bunch of different links / resources as well as services that can help in testing your website:
- http://www.testingscrum.com/
- http://www.totalfeedback.net/
- www.usefulusability.com/24-usability-testing-tools/
- http://mashable.com/2011/09/30/website-usability-tools/
One last thing, if utilizing social networks, you could ask for feedback. For instance on Facebook, ask fans to provide feedback of your website. Another option would be adding a feedback section on your website and get users to submit what they think. This is different than A/B testing but can be very useful in understanding how your website is perceived. This also creates a high level of user interaction and ensures your users that you are a real business - so Brand Development / Awareness is a supplemental achievement!
-
Hi James
A good question. 1,500 visits per month is enough for A/B testing, just means that it takes longer to get any useful or conclusive results than say if you had 1,500 visits per day or week.
Check out 'Google Website Optimizer' if you haven't already, is really useful for such testing.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What website changes (technical) SEOs can ignore confidently? Google's perspective!
Hi community members, I am looking after SEO at our company and there are lots of changes happening about our website; especially technical changes. It's hard for me to look after every deployment of the website like change of server location, etc. We generally agree that every change related to website must be notified by SEO to understand the ranking fluctuation and how search engines welcome them. I just wonder what technical deployments of a website I could confidently ignore to save time and give a go ahead to technical team without interrupting or waiting for my approval. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz1 -
Https pages indexed but all web pages are http - please can you offer some help?
Dear Moz Community, Please could you see what you think and offer some definite steps or advice.. I contacted the host provider and his initial thought was that WordPress was causing the https problem ?: eg when an https version of a page is called, things like videos and media don't always show up. A SSL certificate that is attached to a website, can allow pages to load over https. The host said that there is no active configured SSL it's just waiting as part of the hosting package just in case, but I found that the SSL certificate is still showing up during a crawl.It's important to eliminate the https problem before external backlinks link to any of the unwanted https pages that are currently indexed. Luckily I haven't started any intense backlinking work yet, and any links I have posted in search land have all been http version.I checked a few more url's to see if it’s necessary to create a permanent redirect from https to http. For example, I tried requesting domain.co.uk using the https:// and the https:// page loaded instead of redirecting automatically to http prefix version. I know that if I am automatically redirected to the http:// version of the page, then that is the way it should be. Search engines and visitors will stay on the http version of the site and not get lost anywhere in https. This also helps to eliminate duplicate content and to preserve link juice. What are your thoughts regarding that?As I understand it, most server configurations should redirect by default when https isn’t configured, and from my experience I’ve seen cases where pages requested via https return the default server page, a 404 error, or duplicate content. So I'm confused as to where to take this.One suggestion would be to disable all https since there is no need to have any traces to SSL when the site is even crawled ?. I don't want to enable https in the htaccess only to then create a https to http rewrite rule; https shouldn't even be a crawlable function of the site at all.RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offor to disable the SSL completely for now until it becomes a necessity for the website.I would really welcome your thoughts as I'm really stuck as to what to do for the best, short term and long term.Kind Regards
Web Design | | SEOguy10 -
Good web design layouts
Hello, Where do you guys go to get inspiring new ideas for web design layouts. I'm making a portfolio and need one more design. I'm thinking 4 is enough sample sites. So far I have 3. Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW1 -
"Design by" footerlinks of webdevelopment firms
Hi Guys, Since our company does a lot of web development jobs next to our SEO work, we came across the topic of the “Design by” or “Webdesign by” links that our competitors are placing in the footer of clients websites. When I did some backlink analysis of our competitors these links make up the biggest part of their backlink profile. That way, I think they are important for the promotion and SEO of web development companies. I would love to have your opinion about how to use these links for SEO 1. Side wide vs homepage I think there are two ways here, going for a link at the bottom of every page or just one link at the bottom of the homepage. When you look at exposure the most ideal situation would be a side wide link (more eyeballs). From a SEO standpoint this might cause trouble. 2. Follow vs nofollow I think this is a very interesting one since there seems to be a lot of different opinions about if this is advertisement or not. A normal banner in a sidebar would get the nofollow tag to match Google’s guidelines but what about this “designed by” link? I know few designers and “putting a stamp” on their work is pretty common and more likely viewed as something that they deserve then an act of commerce. Besides this discussion adding the nofollow tag could prevent any issues with side wide links but reduces any SEO benefits to zero. Another option is adding the nofollow tag to all the links expect the one on the homepage. 3. Anchor text and descriptive text Since anchor texts play a big role in SEO (and in detecting spam) I’m interested in your opinion about the use of anchor texts with such links. Just the company name or the web address sounds like a safe choice (especially with side wide links) but it’s pretty attempting to link words like “Webdesign” instead of the company name. Do you think it’s safe to use this, or any other keywords in 0,5,10,15,20,25% of the times? And do you think the descriptive text “Webdesign and SEO by” got any value (or causes potential risks) when added before the link? 4. Alternatives or extra link opportunities Here are some other options I found and thought about considering getting links from client websites. Asking, or earning a link in their first blogpost. Yjpiieee our website is online, thanks guys of company X. Links in the disclaimer or legal parts of the website. Link in the main content of the about us. Most likely in the bottom a little section about the credits of the design etc. Links on partner / friend / links pages of the website. I saw all of these links in the backlink profiles of our competitors. Last but not least, my current standpoint: At this moment we ask our clients if we may place a small text and link in the footer of their website next to the copyright claim. We use texts like “Webdesign and SEO by Web Whales”. With only our brand name as anchor text (to avoid penalties). It’s a side wide follow link. Side wide because we want the exposure and follow because we want the SEO benefit. We considered just making the homepage link follow, but this kind of feels like manipulation so we just went for all follow since this is pretty normal on the web. Beside that we celebrate new websites with our clients to increase the change getting mentioned on the first blog or partner page. Occasionally we ask them for links on these pages. What’s your opinion about this topic?
Web Design | | Bob_van_Biezen0 -
Site Change / CMS Change
Hi Guys I have a very good client with whom we have been working with for over 2 years. When we 1st arrived, their website was built in Wordpress. During our SEO, the dleted the site and changed it to Drupal over night. Youc an imagin i went balistic and its been a horrid year in getting all the rrors down and redirects etc. Finally done I have just been informed that they will be deleting the website from Drupal to Joomla again! This is crazy as we have finally fix all the rrors and are driving quality traffic to the site. Now its back to square one... What do i do? ps the change from Drupal to Joomla is due to MYSQL issues
Web Design | | stefanok0 -
Wordpress SEO Change of Structure
Hi, I have a Wordpress SEO Question. I ran the SEOMOZ checker on my website and it discovered roughly 70 of my 250 blogs had a URL length problem. I have removed the year and month from the WP structure as I read elsewhere that it is not important. The blogs displayed as follows: domain.com/blog/2011/02/contents-of-the-blog and the new structure is: domain.com/blog/contents-of-the-blog I have resubmitted the new structure to Google Webmaster Tools XML and updating the on-page sitemap on my main site. My blog was cached on 25<sup>th</sup> October and seems to be caching every 7 days, my website cached on the 24th and I wonder if I should do any follow up work to ensure the content gets crawled properly. a) Individually 301 redirect the old URLs to the new. b) Individual Canonical links for each. c) Adding the old pages to the robots file and disallowing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | tdsnet0 -
Changing the domain - To do or not to do - that is the question
Hello, I am in the process of updating my website (hopefully to improve SEO). It is a major update as we are going from 20,000 product line to 200,000 product lines and hiring two marketing people to work on more content. Unfortunately, I think my domain isn't the best i.e. www.direct-tractorparts.com Some of the parts have long part numbers and I am worried that my URLs will be too long i.e. I will lose link juice from the search engines. typical url www.direct-tractorparts.com/6XY41210TTTAZCAz2 I am thinking of launching the new site with a shorter domain name rather than updating the old site. My site doesn't have that many backlinks but generates a decent level of business for my company. Not sure if it would be worth setting up another brand or not Anyone got any advice?
Web Design | | DavidLenehan0 -
HTML5, semantic web & SEO
HTML5 is supposed to revolutionize the way browsers, web clients and services are supposed to "understand" information on the web. I have been planning on converting my site to HTML5 ever since it went into a working draft last spring, however I wanted to know if upgrading to HTML5 would offer any SEO benefits or if it would actually have a negative effect on how my site is perceived on the web. I guess my real question here is "Do search engines recognize HTML5 sectioning?" Is content found in semantic sections like <header>, <footer>, <nav>, <aside>, treated any different than content inside generic HTML4 containers like, or ? </aside> </nav> </footer> </header>
Web Design | | TahoeMountain400