Was it good for you too?

Over the years we’ve worked with many design and development companies whilst performing various online marketing campaigns for clients. As part of our SEM campaigns we often need to boost the website with usability or SEM related (technical) tweaks, which result in adjusting the design and or technical foundation of the website.

With some projects we are fortunate to be involved as part of a new website being built from scratch and can weave our magic from the beginning, and with others (existing websites) it is part of a change process.

Usability (user experience) and conversion psychology are key factors in design and development, and they are both a huge personal passion of mine as well. For that reason all the campaigns we work on receive this feedback as part of the process.

Only a handful of designers and developers that we’ve worked with over the years implement our recommendations without hesitation.They understand that if the website performs exceedingly well everyone benefits.

Usually once a website is live the client holds liable the SEM for the ROI and not the designer or the developer, but the functionality of the website plays a huge role in this success.

From our side, we analyse websites not only from a design, usability, technical or SEM point of view, but also use conversion psychology. Traffic to a website is not the be all and end all. The proof lies in what the user does on your website. How easy they can find, or understand what they need to do and of course, if the psychology is added correctly how quickly they convert into a lead or a sale for you. This is where we focus our efforts – traffic and exposure yes, but conversion is the end goal.

The correct process is so important:

Grey screen functionality first, and then design the skin. Wave the usability and SEO wand over the design and ONLY then should you start with developing the website. QA testing once you have a click-through version available is crucial before go-live as this is where you physically test the functionality, usability and ensure that the content, design and technical structure of the site is sound. Then only go-live! And of course test again…

If designers and developers keep an open mind to the usability, conversion and SEO recommendations and implement those recommendations – they will win too. More SEM companies would recommend them and the client would recommend them too naturally. (Most of the praise for a well performing website will usually go back to the designer or developer.)

I’d be keen to hear back from designers and developers as to your thoughts and experience on the above. (Please not personal promotion, opinions please; any OTT personal promotion will be removed )

The good, the bad and the ugly – are you open to working with and implementing SEM and Usability recommendations, and if not – why not?