FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions

How do Your PROSPECTS Find You?

What are the PRIME Search Engines (SEs)?

What is an SE ORGANIC Position?

What is SPONSORED Positioning?

What is Pay-per-Click or PPC?

What is the DIFFERENCE Between Sponsored and Organic Positioning?

What is USABILITY?

What is the IMPORTANCE of Usability?

What are the TYPICAL ISSUES in Usability?

How is Usability MEASURED?

Why Are Websites FRUSTRATING?

How Can You IMPROVE Your Site?

How Can WE HELP?

Frequently Asked Questions are designed to help us communicate better with our clients. We believe a knowledgeable client is our best client. We have no secrets, only expertise gained from years of experience and a keen desire to help improve your website and its business results from the Internet.

Information about SEO and Usability issues, ways to improve results from the Internet, our experiences with prior website projects, relevant articles on these topics and anything else that's relevant is fully available to our prospects and clients.

Robert frequently lectures at seminars, teaches E-Commerce at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and the Cape Cod Community College and other venues, to show business owners the potential of the Internet available to their businesses with only a minimal investment.

Can we help improve the SEO and Usability of your website?
If so, please see our offering under SERVICES.

How PROSPECTS Find You

The large majority of prospects find websites by using Search Engines. A small minority of visitors will come to a website by either a direct link, having remembered and typed in a Domain Name or being referred by a link provided by a friend or relative. So Search Engine positioning is a major determinant if your site will be found and visited by prospects frequently or not.

PRIME Search Engines (SEs)

During the first half of 2009 visitor statistics indicate that over 65% of all searches were done on Google, about 15% on Yahoo and about 10% on MSN, with the remaining 10% on all other Search Engines COMBINED. Therefore it appears that optimizing rankings in the same order of priority as the ratio of searches done on the Search Engines is not only relevant, but crucial. For certain specialized market segments, those search statistics and ratios may differ, but these ratios remain true for most markets.

SE ORGANIC Position

Search Engines generally show 2 columns of results. The Left Column typically is about 80% of the page width and has a relatively long description of the website (2-3 lines) and there are usually 10 entries per page. This section is the so called "Organic" or "Natural" Search Engine list. These terms simply mean that the sequence of the list (the Ranking) is determined by the Search Engine's ranking formula and is not effected by payment for the positioning. The Search Engine's so-called "spider" "crawls" websites on a regular basis (daily, weekly or on some other schedule) to read the pages of websites, determine their content and index them appropriately (creating the Rankings).

SPONSORED Positioning

Sponsored positioning are the listings that appear sometimes at the very top of the Left-Column (usually highlighted and marked as: "Sponsored Links", and always on the Right-Hand Column, again labeled "Sponsored Links".

Pay-per-Click or PPC

Pay-per-Click refers to the method of pricing and paying for most Sponsored Search results. The Sponsored Links appear on the Search Engine results page based on a competitive bidding by the buyers. Each buyer places a bid price for specific search phrases on the Search Engines ad listing page. Once a visitor clicks on a Sponsored Link, the visitor is "taken" to the website and the Search Engine bills the business the amount offered by the bidder for the particular place in the Sponsored list. The actual precise pricing is a bit more complicated, but it always is a higher amount for a higher list position. Since the billing happens once a visitor "Clicks" on a listing, hence the term "Pay-per-Click".

DIFFERENCE Between Sponsored and Organic Positioning

The difference between an Organic (or Natural) listing position is simply that both the listing business as well as the visitor knows that the Organic results are determined by the Search Engine's ranking formula without any payment by the business, while the Sponsored Links are simply a ranking as to how much more the business was willing to pay to rank higher than the other competitor for the same search phrases. As the old marketing expression goes for the difference between Public Relations and Advertising "PR is what you pray for, while Advertising is what you pay for". Therefore Organic listing is what you "pray" for and Sponsored Search is what you pay for. Search Engine Optimization minimizes the costs of the "paying" factor and provides high Organic rankings.

Usability

Usability is the measure of how easy a device (or a website) is to use for a particular purpose. Ease-of-use is defined as the user's ability to perform the desired task, without having to read any special instructions or be trained by an instructor on the device's operations. In case of a website user training is an impossibility and a usable website has to respond to commonly accepted commands of website operations, with features and functions conforming to standard Internet practices.

Importance of Usability

Usability is the key to success on the Internet and E-Commerce. If a site is not usable, regardless of how attractive its design may be, or how many of the most advanced features and functions it uses, it will likely be abandoned by most visitors. Visitors unable to perform their desired tasks on a website, will abandon it and are unlikely to ever return again. Visitors remember a usable site and frequent it, sites that frustrate them are also remembered, but never again visited. Caveat business owner, usability is the only common factor among successful websites; design elegance, Flash, sound, video, pop-ups, fancy graphics are not.

Typical Issues of Usability

Community oriented websites (i.e. portals, peer-to-peer sites, chat room sites, special interest sites, etc.) are oriented towards visitors who wish to browse, spend time and share information. These sites have an entirely different goal and offering for their visitors.

• E-Commerce oriented websites are designed to enable the visitor to obtain specific information for a specific interest, take action (order products, receive specific information, etc.). These are the sites that will suffer from the following types of usability issues:
  * Confusing navigation
  * Meaningless icons & graphics
  * "Next-Step" action items invisible on the page
  * Confusing wording
  * Getting "lost" on site - not knowing where one is currently
  * Inability to readily get back to prior page
  * Slow loading pages
  * Irrelevant sound, video, Flash or other multimedia features
  * Hard to read fonts, long "happy-talk" kind of content

Visitors on a website either want to do business easily, quickly and reliably OR they wish to get information that is precise, to-the-topic, relevant and reliable. Consider your own experiences on the Net, as you search for, specific information or products. The websites you place in your "Favorites" list, recommend to your friends are the highly usable sites. The "frustrating" sites never make it to your "Favorites" and are seldom revisited again. Which category do you want your site to be in?

Improving Usability

There are several ways to improve a sites' usability:
1. Usability Review
2. Usability Improvement
3. Notice the abandoned shopping carts, aborted user visits and lack of E-Commerce result
The first 2 methods are described in details in our SERVICES. The last one is the "Do-It-Yourself" method.
We guarantee that if you have us to do the first 2,
dramatic changes will be evident in Number 3,
if you do a before-and-after review of your site.

Frustrating Websites

Many websites are frustrating since they make the visitor:
* Wonder where they are on the site
* Can't figure out how to get back to a prior page
* Are confused about what the "Next" step is
* Can't repeat a previous set of steps
* Have to wait far too long for a page to load
* Have confusing wording or terminology
* Require reading long paragraphs, instead of brief statements
* Can't find the specific information they are looking for.

Improve the Usability of Your Site

It's relatively simple to improve the usability of any site keeping in mind the following 3 requirements:
1. Be totally objective (completely ignore the fact that the site may have been designed by your nephew) and disregard the opinions of the family, relatives and employees
2. Have clear-cut goals defined by the owner for the Internet presence for the business
3. Have experience in human factors, software interface design and the principles of E-Commerce and Internet methods.
After that its easy and straightforward, that's why we can do it inexpensively, quickly and with guaranteed results.

We Can Help

Objectivity - we listen carefully to your business goals and plans for your Internet presence. Expertise - we have the experience in human factors and user interface designs. Are objective and meticulous in analyzing your site and totally frank in the results of our evaluations. Low cost - we carry a low overhead, are quick and responsive to your needs. PLUS we guarantee our results -
if we don't document clear-cut improvements - you don't pay.

How can we help improve your website???

Top of Page

|  Home  |  Services  |  FAQs  |  Affiliations  |  Usability Articles  |  How We Can Help  |  Privacy Policies  |  Sitemap  |

Questions & Comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2001-2010 DotComERGO