Kim Krause Berg is the SEO/Usability Consultant for Cre8pc. Her work combines website and software application usability testing with a working knowledge of search engine optimization.
For one day during the holiday shopping period in December, customers could not use a well-known retail giant’s website. Heads rolled. Jobs were on the line. Searchers were puzzled. How is it possible, you may wonder, that a website representing a popular brand could experience a day of lost sales during the busiest shopping time […]
We’ve just experienced another season of roundups in the sports, music and movie industries and throughout it all, I noted interesting things about marketing and human behavior. Super Bowl It began with the TV commercials during the Super Bowl. Usually my favorite part of this final game of champions is watching the new commercials that […]
The opinions on what makes a form or Web application user friendly may vary but most everyone dislikes Captcha fields. Some Captcha’s are so difficult to decipher they actually increase form and page abandonment. Along with the freedom the Internet provides humans, it is unfortunately humans who also created barriers to our free flow of […]
No matter where in the world you live, it’s likely you have rituals that you participate in at various times of the year. Website owners have a New Year ritual too. The first item we need to address is updating the copyright year in the footer of our website. Not only does this show that […]
Most articles in this column focus on the how’s and why’s of usability, persuasive design and search engine marketing. We sound like a broken record. SEO needs UX. What about the other way around? There’s just as many misconceptions in the usability and user experience design industry towards search marketing and organic SEO. One of […]
Whenever the phrase, “usability and SEO”, enter a conversation, there’s a very good chance it goes in one ear and out the other. Corporate management interprets it as “We need more money”, and middle management fixes their poker face until they’re free to run to Google to look up the term. Though there is improvement, […]
Search engine marketers spend a large portion of their marketing strategies on keyword research. One method is to seek words and phrases that are most likely to be used by searchers to find a particular website. What may be ignored or overlooked is understanding the user intent behind these searches. It’s one effort to provide […]
Whenever I’m asked what usability is, I get tongue tied. “It’s about humans and computers,” I may say, but they’ll picture robots and talking cars. “I help make web sites that work,” is closer, but vague because technically, if it’s on the Internet, it’s working. Then I’ll hear myself try to make it clearer by […]
The leading cause for website or software application failure is not having a requirements document prepared and shared with everyone attached to the project. Typically, business and functional specifications, along with possible web design guidelines are gathered. What do most requirements documents miss? The purpose of a formal requirements document is to be sure that […]
If you ever need a topic to discuss at a social gathering, just ask everyone, “What do you find the most frustrating about using websites?” There are so many common complaints and issues raised by everyday Internet users and yet so many websites are still driving us crazy. Websites contain oversights. It happens to even […]
It wasn’t long ago that knowledge about our world came from newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and of course, person to person gossip, storytelling and family gatherings. The Internet changed all that. Today, a person wanting to know the latest buzz studies social awareness streams (SAS). In the Just Behave column, we’ve discussed information architecture as […]
For years there were two camps – website usability and search engine optimization. Rarely did they acknowledge each other, let alone work as a team. Each side argued they knew best how to make web pages findable in search engines. They’re both right. The website usability house is focused on human behavior. They follow along […]
Over the last 10 days, the world of Internet search has swarmed around any source for news on Google’s “Farmer” algorithm change that affected nearly 12% of USA search results. Any company generating its revenue by producing low quality content rushed to wrestle up new rank and ad revenue data and discuss the damage. As […]
The most difficult group entity we design for, engage with and market to is commonly referred to as “users”. Some of you know members of this group as people. A few use the term without thinking it through. The term “users” has an official formal name in some industries, which to be honest, only serves […]
If you were to ask a search engine marketer what their main goal is for their type of work, they may tell you, “We want our clients’ web site to come up first in search results.” To make their days more challenging, they may monitor popular keywords, create landing pages which are tightly focused on […]
There has been a dramatic increase this year in exploring the close relationship between website usability, web page search engine optimization and internet marketing. While some of you still meet resistance from site owners, far more of you report that clients now insist on a site designed for the best user experience that should also […]
You’ve heard it said a hundred times. Search engine marketing leads to a dead end if the web site isn’t designed to deliver what it promises. Many an anchor text, meta description and advertisement text have sent users into a house of horror because the landing page is a complete disconnect from what was marketed. […]
A new tactic to get web site traffic I’ve seen lately is to make a drastic change that will create a buzz. Whether a web site undergoes a complete redesign or removes a previous function, we know that no matter what the change is, some people are going to hate it. Several of them will […]
Twice this year I got the call too late. Two online businesses were in their final death throes. Their owners begged me for emergency help with sinking conversion rates. Both believed that I could find what was “broken,” repair it with some magic usability tape, traffic would flow again and sales would return. Though I […]
One of the most confusing skills to teach someone who practices organic search engine optimization is called “information architecture” (aka “IA”). I’ve given several talks on the topic in an effort to chip away at some popular misconceptions. Each time the audience has people who refer to themselves as an SEO, IA or usability professional. […]