Hello all! I’m very pleased to announce Mindspring Design’s first live, free webinar. Here are the details:
9 Steps to Building a Successful Small Business Website
November 25, 2009 @ 2:00 PM EST Enter Webinar Room Here | Sign Up Below
Dial In (International): 702-473-3463
Atendee Passcode: 646377
On the agenda….
The webinar is scheduled to last 30-40 minutes.
We will cover what small business owners need to consider before they even consult with a web designer.
We will discuss the main steps small-business owners often overlook.
We will talk about what we can learn from a few case studies.
And you will leave with an actionable plan to get your business website started or even updated.
You can sign up below. After the webinar, I will post a recording of the webinar. And I will also be doing a review of the free, online webinar software called Dimdim that I will be using. It is supposed to be a free alternative to WebEx, so we’ll see how that goes!
First of all, why is this so important? What’s so wrong with click here and see more?
Effective website links draw the eye and spark interest. They encourage clicking because people want more. Click here is an oft overused link term which is nondescript and uninteresting. No one will click anywhere without a good reason. Get a $10 discount for commenting on this blog would entice more clicking ; ) If you want a “sticky” website that offers findable information, you need to write effective links.
Jakob Nielsen recently conducted a study (First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye) based on their findings that web users typically scan a web page in an F-pattern. They tested 80 users understandings of the first 11 characters of 20 different website links. The most effective links followed these guidelines (excerpt):
(Read the study summary here. You can also learn more by signing up for their Writing for the Web course at the Web Usability Conference. If you do any writing for the web for your small business, this is a must-do.)
Notice the F-pattern? People generally read the first few lines in a list and read less as they go down.
I did a quick little test on my own website. Here’s a truncated list of a few of my links:
Not too bad. Areas to work on: (1) Learn More and See Example are too generic. (2) And the two links starting with Web Design are two different links, but you can’t tell because they’re truncated. Other than that most links use plain language, are specific, or use action words at the beginning. So I’ll go back a tweak a few of my links.
HOMEWORK: Scan your website’s links (especially ones that are in list format). Without reading the context, can you predict where they’ll take you? Let me know how you make out!
