Terrifyingly, many were looking for the very solution that you provide. Yet they didn’t stay on your website long enough to realise it.

On Wednesday August 11th, I’ll be holding a 30 minute free webinar on practical steps that you can take to retain more visitors and convert them to customers. Subjects will include 17 different ways to optimize your website for conversions, and 10 of the most common optimization mistakes to avoid.

Join me if you can on Wednesday August 11th at 5:00 PM (BST), 9:00 AM (PDT), 11.00 AM (CDT).

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Register for the free webinar today.

The preview certainly sounded good:

• a fresh, updated design, with more space for the main stories of the day
• better use of video and images
• clearer and more prominent labelling and signposting of key stories, whether you are on the front page or a story page
• a better indication of which are the most recent headlines
• easier ways to share stories with others, for those who wish to, on social media networks

The reality, however, is a major disappointment.

Take a look at how the top navigation appears in Chrome – note that the size has not been reduced; it really is that unclear:

Then there’s the bewildering mix of fonts, sizes and styles:

I understand that when a regularly used website is updated, users tend to initially dislike the redesign. But this is a major hop, skip and a jump backwards.

The old design allowed me to see all the major stories of the day; barely having to move my mouse.

The new design forces me to click the sidebar four times to get to the bottom of the page – and that’s at my resolution of 1680 x 1050.

The old design had a clear separation of actual news and items of interest.

The new design shows me main news stories, also in the news, sport, uk/world news, more from BBC news, democracy live, BBC world service, multimedia content, features and analysis, most popular, market data, programs and more.

Far, far too much in too little space.

Bad design. Bad usability. Bad.

So I went to Microsoft for the answer:

“What Is SharePoint?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.”

I could be looking for the precise solution offered by SharePoint and I wouldn’t even know it.

Those who like to argue could say that Microsoft can get away with it. That anyone looking for SharePoint already knows what it is.

But there are definitely people out there who are looking for this type of solution who don’t know what SharePoint is. And Microsoft’s website certainly won’t help them.

Most visitors to your website will find their way there through a search engine. If your main page doesn’t instantly communicate what you sell and why they should buy it, they’ll be gone faster than you can say floccinaucinihilipilification.

I do. In fact I used to sell advertising on some of our websites using the format, as did most websites at that time.

Then we hit ICO - Inevitable Cycle of Overuse.

Stage 1 – the format takes off; now “everybody” is using it.

Stage 2 – we see so many banners that our brains start to automatically filter them out and ignore them.

Stage 3 – the “clever” people realise they need to make their banners stand out. They start using bright, garish colours to irritate your senses.

Stage 4 - the “clever” people realise they need to make their banners stand out from the other bright, garish banners. They start using irritating animations that distract you from what you’re doing.

Stage 5 – the “clever” people realise they need to make their banners really stand out from the other bright garish animated banners. They start using horrible sounds that hurt your head.

Stage 6 – our brains have to work too hard to filter out and ignore the audio-visual debris that bombards them. The “fed up” people buy software that blocks banners.

Stage 7 – free add-ons for web browsers that stop the ads working.

Incredibly, the 468 x 80 banner is still in use. To me this is like using waterboarding for brainstorming. But thanks to phenomenal over-use of the 468 x 80 format, it’s nowhere near as effective (or expensive) as it used to be.

Today I see a new breed of 468 x 80: the slider ads, such as AnythingSlider.

These are just as annoying a format as 468 x 80 ever was. Yet this format has a twist. People are using it as a substitute for poor web design.

Instead of using a well-designed navigation structure, some web designers have decided that it’s more effective to throw their products and services at visitors (at speed) the moment they arrive.

We’re approaching Stage 2 of the ICO syndrome, but it won’t be long before we start ignoring them, and you know what happens next.

Advertising in 2010 shouldn’t be about interrupting, annoying or distracting your potential customers. And if your irritating ads take up large amounts of your web pages, what do you think the initial impression of your website will be?

Break the cycle. Inform your visitors; don’t interrupt, bombard or torture them.

The writer explains that this is in the interests of “protecting use data privacy“.

Sorry?

This has the potential to cripple the accuracy of Google Analytics data, and will effectively be a major step backwards. Companies will once again be forced to choose between highly inaccurate Analytics data (where inaccurate may be synonymous with useless) and other analytics solutions.

The problem for many will be finding other solutions. Finding a server analytics package you can work with and trust is far from simple.

Our company eventually settled with Urchin, but we had to tweak and adjust the settings to get anywhere near accurate – see Urchin Madness? Over-reporting is the norm.

For now, the cynic may be forgiven for thinking that this pushes users of the ‘free’ Google Analytics platform to commercial options, such as Urchin.

The more astute cynic may wonder why Google are prepared to protect a user’s privacy from website owners, but not from themselves. I can’t see Google developing a plug-in to opt out from Google tracking their search history.

Don’t confuse ‘Don’t be evil’ with ‘Don’t be hypocritical’.

More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

Answer: Probably a lot less than you realise.

The graphic below shows a typical trend for a product-based website, where the majority of the visitors leave within 10 seconds.

Even accounting for some random and off-target traffic, that should leave you less than happy.

In fact the graph clearly demonstrates what marketing people have been preaching for years. You have very little time to grab the attention of your website visitors.

Take a quick look at the following website home pages.

The key point is that a quick look is all that is required to instantly know what’s on offer.

mediaflex media solutions:

Clearleft:

SoftwarePromotions:

I know. It’s not to easy to communicate what you do in 3-4 seconds.

Those example sites are just lucky.

How does your website match up?

As our company has been using ClickTracks since 2003, making the move from the familiar to the unknown has been understandably painful but necessary.

However in our initial tests, we were surprised to see Urchin significantly over-reporting the figures in their reports.

After some digging, we found the reason why. By default, Urchin reports visitors and bots together.

In other words if the home page of your website was visited by 1000 human visitors and 500 different bots on a given day, Urchin would report this as 1,500 hits to the page.

Bear in mind that some bots might hit pages on your website regularly throughout the day. We’ve seen data sets where there are more bot hits than visitors.

As a user of Urchin, why on earth would you want to merge these two data groups together?

I can see this being useful when considering server load, but for regular reporting, I can’t see any valid reason for this.

Excluding the bots is fairly straightforward, but if you’re using the default settings, you should make sure you’re sitting down when you first view your ‘real’ data.

You’re going to discover that you’re not getting anywhere near as many visitors as you thought.

The question is why would Urchin choose to set this up by default? Why distort the data?

1. “Welcome to our web site. We are a company who pride ourselves on our meticulous attention to detail, hard work ethic, and speedy response times.“

Yes. Great. But what can you do for me? What do you sell? How can your product solve my problems or improve my life?

Think about the last time you walked into a supermarket, or any other shop. Were you met at the door by a group of suited people who wanted to talk to you about their company ethos? Or were you perhaps instead greeted by colourful displays of tempting items, special offers, and seasonal goods? I’m betting it was the latter. Your website is a shop, too – if you want to sell your product, you’d do well to treat it like one.

2. “NEWS!  Our software is now Windows 2000 compatible!“

Okay, maybe that is a slightly extreme example. Seriously, though, how often do you visit a website, discover it’s not been updated in a year or two, and leave? It’s a scenario that’s all too common.  Maybe you have been working hard on your software and neglecting your website. Perhaps there have even been a couple of new releases, which a site visitor might discover if they venture deeper into the site. But if your index page has a cheerful little “New for 2008!” graphic and your latest blog post was in March last year, it does not look good.

3. “Contact us at sneakynsuspicious@hotmail.com or PO BOX 123 12.“

You expect people to hand over their money without knowing who you are, and without any real means of contacting you? Honestly?

Online shopping might well be deemed mainstream and safe these days, but that doesn’t mean that your visitors have turned stupid. Far from it – they’re probably savvier than ever.  If they discover that you’re unwilling to provide them with a phone number or a real address, they’re likely to be just as unwilling to provide you with their credit card details.

4. “Yes, I will tell you how much this product costs if you are willing to click your way to the seventh level of hell my website.“

Why are so many people scared of making their product price easy to find? Do they believe that by forcing their visitors to read umpteen pages of empty buzz words, they will then be too exhausted to realize that the $99 you’re asking is actually quite a bad deal?

If it was up to me, the starting price would always be prominently displayed on the index page. Chances are that your visitors are working within a budget, and don’t want to waste their time looking at a $5000 application when they can’t afford to spend more than $50. If pricing is complicated and depends on a variety of factors, fine – but please make sure your pricing structure is clearly displayed and no more than a click away from any given page.

5. “The graphics? Oh yes, I had a lot of help from my cousin, my neighbour’s wife and my pet hamster, but most of them I did myself.”

Of all the places to save money, I am constantly amazed by how many people choose their website graphics. If you use your site to keep a log of petrol costs for your radio-controlled boat, or to share the latest rail-related news with other trainspotting enthusiasts, fine.  Use any old jpegs you find lying around. If, however, you’re hoping to make a serious impression and make some money from your software: use a graphic designer. Today.

Which one are you more likely to choose?

The second example state that “potential customers decide within the first 30 seconds whether or not to leave a website“.

30 seconds?

Wishful thinking is no competition for instant clarity.

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

Our own company sells services to help (mainly) software developers increase their sales.

Read the above sentence again, and see if that would make a good headline.

Of course it doesn’t which is why our front page uses two brief sentences:

“You write the software.
We help you grow.”

We recently ran some usability tests on our website, and used people with no connection to our company or industry. One of the questions they were asked while browsing the website was “What do we do, and who are we targeting”.

Each and every tester was able to correctly answer that question within literally seconds of arriving at the website.

When I arrive at your website, do I instantly know what you sell and why I need it?

What’s your headline?

Jakob Nielsen has been described as the guru, king and world’s leading expert on website usability, and even the stoic Financial Times describe him as “perhaps the best-known design and usability guru on the Internet“. Perhaps.

So it is with some trepidation that I have to state that the web has outgrown Jakob Nielsen, and although interesting in principle, his views are outdated to the point of redundancy.

Allow me to explain.

Let’s assume you’ve either never heard of Jakob, or don’t know very much about him.

You go to your search engine of choice, and search for his name. At the time of writing this, the first two results from Google point to his www.useit.com website. You click on the link to his homepage, and are confronted by a page with 712 words, 109 links, two 30 pixel images and one button.

Without going into detail about his beliefs, he is primarily concerned with the awful mess that has become the web, and the general lack of usability.

In principle I agree, and I’ve been writing and speaking of the need to balance between form and function for longer than I care to remember. But a balance is required. And as his own website demonstrates, too much emphasis on theoretical usability leads to something that is next to impossible to use in real life.

Try it yourself. Go to www.useit.com and find out (1) what he believes and (2) what he proposes to do about it. For the purpose of writing this posting I went to research him, and found third-party interviews and explanations to be far more useful.

The www.useit.com website has become a classic example of how even a sound principle can be stretched enough to distort it into something fundamentally flawed and unusable. Jakob Nielsen’s ideas haven’t adapted with time and have unfortunately been rendered quite redundant.

Websites like MJT Net have eight elements in their main top nav, with more than 30 more in drop-down menus.

Amazon switched from their top nav to the most confusing dynamic nav that I have ever seen. But it appears to work.

And the BBC news website has 30 main links on the left hand side alone.

So how many is too many?

I’ve met people who think that five, six or seven are the magic numbers. They believe that any more than that will overwhelm the website visitors, and leave them unable to find what they are looking for.

Yet websites such as Amazon, CNN, the BBC and hundreds of thousands of other believe otherwise.

The magic number is clearly the minimum that you need in order to serve your customers correctly.