Small Business Blog

1. Open your home page. How does your site tell your visitors that they can find the information/service/product they need?

a. An immediately visible, powerful but short statement in big, bold text
b. An image of your logo
c. A picture of your product
d. A paragraph describing your business
e. A link to an “About Us” page

2. How many courses of action can your user take to engage with your site?

a. Unlimited, e.g., she can search, research, buy, leave her email, live chat, meet up with friends, leave a comment, check her pulse, do her laundry (wouldn’t that be nice?)b. Two or three, e.g., she can buy, subscribe or leave her email

3. How does your site lead your users to the desired action?

a. Compelling offer or short call to action
b. Paragraph explaining the supreme quality of your products/services
c. Main navigational bar giving the user quick access to all the options
d. Fancy flash intro that your user must watch or “skip”
e. Contact us button in the footer

4. What color are the links on your page?

a. Black
b. Yellow
c. Red
d. Old-fashioned royal blue

5. How long does your site take to load?

a. I don’t know, seems pretty fast
b. I don’t know, kinda slow
c. I don’t know, does it matter?

Answer Key

Before we get to the specific questions, I have a short disclaimer. The “ideals” for any Web site are dependent on the purpose of the site. This quiz is slanted towards sites that sell product. Although these concepts can be used to improve the user experience on any site, some may be hard to implement on a brochure-type site or a content site.

Question 1: Why am I here?

The best answer is a. A visitor lands on your site because she needs something. If she doesn’t immediately feel she’ll find that special something, she’s gone.

When you open up your home page (or any page on your site), your eyes should be immediately drawn to a quick and bold statement that clearly explains what you have to offer. Well-established businesses (we’re talking Nike and Coca-cola here) can use their logo to achieve this impact, but that doesn’t work for the little guys. Logos only come to mean something after years and years of mass media advertising. You put your logo on your Web page and other marketing materials because you’re working towards achieving the swoosh effect, not because you already have. That’s why your logo shouldn’t dominate your home page; it just doesn’t mean anything to most of your visitors.

A picture of your product might be effective, but only if it’s a unique and readily recognizable product. An example would be an image of a themed cell phone case that only you produce. Just make sure you use a short statement with that picture, so your users know they can’t get that uber-cool case anywhere else.

Question 2 and 3: Which way do I go?

The best answer is b. for Questions 2 and a. for Question 3. You want to define a finite set of options for your visitors. Successful direct sales sites have one option: buy. That means no navigational bar, no outgoing links. The user is funneled through the sales presentation and is only given a second option after he declines the purchase. That second option might be to leave an email or it might be a less expensive product.

This strategy is a little extreme, particularly when you have a whole catalogue of products or services to sell. The concept, however, holds value. Too many options leave your visitors feeling confused. Once confusion sets in, you’ve lost them. Here’s where Question 3 comes into play. Try decluttering your site so that the most desired course of action is most prominent. You might do this by placing a large icon on the home page that tells visitors about a compelling special offer, for example.

Also, you want to eliminate all distractions that could prevent your user from navigating into your product catalog. Get rid of news feeds and third-party ads.

Question 4: Stop or go?

The best answer is d, royal blue. Don’t let design get the best of you. Red is a nice color for lipstick and stop signs–not for links. Keep things simple and comfortable for your users. In the early days of the Internet, it seems that all unvisited links were blue. Go with this heritage. Hopefully you’ll be tapping into that early Internet promise of information on the other side of the click. If so, your users will click without thinking.

I once tested the performance of Adsense on a content site by changing the color of the links. The blue links clearly outperformed red links.

Question 5: Does this site work?

A faster site delivers your message more quickly. Don’t ask your users to wait for your images and widgets to load, no matter how cool those images and widgets may be. If you are having problems with site speed, start with your images. Host images on your own server, use PNG files instead of JPEGs, and define your image sizes. Then get rid of widgets, even the sharing widgets. You can write those links manually. There are other, more technical solutions to this problem, so you might need the help of a trusted Web developer.