Search Engines
Traffic on your site is one of the most important things to making your site successful. Whether you have a sales site, a personal site, or an informative site it is important to have viewers visit below are several ways to increase and generate traffic.- Set your target search engines -- There are three large search engines that are commonly used. The largest is Google (they have between 55% -65% of the overall market), the second 2 (Yahoo and Bing) are about equal holding approximately (15% - 20% of the overall market). It is important that you start by submitting your site to these engines, since almost the entire viewer population use these to search.
- Understand how search engines find your information -- There are 2 ways that search engines search your site. The first is to have real people evaluate your site and then categorize your site into the correct place. Due to the complexities and the overall size of the internet Human Directories like these are beginning to disappear and are being replaced with our next option. Search engines will also use automated spiders. These spiders go through each link on your site and search for keywords in meta tags.
- Search Engine Rankings -- After search engine categorize your site they rank it based on their findings. The number of times a keyword is used often helps spiders determine the overall purpose of you site and then rank it. However, you can't overload your site with a keyword, because the automated spiders are quite smarter than that and will notice the pattern.
- Finally, once you have prepped your site for the search engine you can submit your site to the big searchers. If you throughly prepared your site you can expect to be rewarded by traffic and benefits of search engines
To submit to Yahoo. --> Yahoo Engine Submit
To submit to Bing --> Bing Engine Submit
Search Engine article
Information Architecture: Deliverables
When dealing with large web sites there are many people involved like programmers, site styles, and information architects. As a result of so many different people working together there are deliverables that help communicate how the site will work with information and data and how it will reach the users.Types of deliverables that will help develop an information architecture for your site:
- Content Inventory: This is a overall look at all of the information that is currently or information that is not part of the site yet. This includes a detailed overview of each page the information of that page and any multimedia or pictures that is involved with that page. This helps everyone understand the purpose of the page. There are several ways to achieve the content inventory.
- User Profiles: By creating realistic examples of users the designers, programmers, and architects can better understand how to develop the site. It is crucial to focus on the user's needs and how the site will meet those needs. Remember the site is not for the designers to use but for users to visit and gather the information that is important to them.
- Use Cases: These are narratives that walk the developers through scenarios that are likely to happen. By going through these bugs can be fixed and the overall experience can be streamlined in order to reach information easily and quickly. When making layout changes or information architecture changes it helps to ask how users will be affected by this, will they have problems or complications or will this make the experience easier.
- Sitemaps : Maps are similar to the models that were discussed in an earlier post. They show the overall layout of information of the web site. This helps to develop navigation and the overall layout of the site.
- Paper Prototypes: These are commonly given to executives and overlookers of the overall Web Site to view what the pages will look like. Prototypes can be quickly developed and changed. This visual deliverable helps show progress and new elements to end users to help better develop upcoming features.
- Style Guides: These are commonly used to outline the overall style of the site. Consistency is important throughout the entire site to make a finished and professional overall feel to the site. If the site it incomplete or has design errors the users will more likely to dislike the site or not continue to visit the site.
Information Architecture: Models
There are several models that can guide designers in organizing information on the web page. Below are a few conventional models that are commonly used.Types of Models:
- All-in-one: This is the simplest model for a web site. All of the information is displayed on the home page. As a result of the simplistic form maintenance is reduced and the overall designer experience is easy. However, this model is not suited for a web site with a lot of information. With having a large amount of data a site can become overwhelming and not user friendly.
- Flat: Also referred to as a 'monocline grouping' this is another simple form with multiple pages. A flat model is considered a step up from the all-in-one page. There are a common set of pages that are all considered to have the same priority or peers to one another. Access to each page is available through all other pages. A common set of pages for this model are Home, About Us, Contact Us, and Products.
- Index: This is similar to the flat model with the difference of having one central page called the index. Indexes are commonly used with medium amounts of data and help organize data in a way that makes it easier for users to find the information they are looking for. Examples of indexes are phone books or dictionaries.
- Hub-and-spoke (Daisy) : This model is helpful fr information that has distinct linear flows. In situations that you are frequently returned to the common page is an example of this model (i.g. email -- reply's and forwards are all kept within one email on Google Mail). Transactions will commonly share a common beginning and end point creating a loop.
- Strict hierarchy: This is a model that organizes data into parent and children like relationships. Users can only access children sites by going through the parent site. Examples of this type of organization are sites that have multiple offices in multiple countries, therefore each office can only be associated with one country. These relationships exist in life, however before deciding on this model make sure that it is the best way to display it online.
- Multi-dimensional hierarchy(cross-reference): This allows users to view information in many different ways. By slicing data users can get the information they are really looking for. An example of this hierarchy is a book site (such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders). Users can search for books by title, search features, categories, or keywords.
- Search: A search feature on a site is commonly used to direct users to the information they want more quickly. This allows users to skip the architecture and hierarchies by simply finding the information they want. This will increase usability and the amount of times a user will return to the site.
Information Architecture
What selection method is used when organizing information? --- It is important to evaulate all of the content you want to put on a web page. When organizing the information in a way that will make sense to users think of the different factors such as what the user wants to get from the site, environment restrictions (such as browsers, speed, bandwidth, screen resolution, operating systems), how users will search for this information (through search engines or other sites), how much time and effort put into the design and organization, and most importantly use common sense. In the end as a designer we are also users so think about how we access sites, what our likes and dislikes are, and what sites we continually use.Listed below are elements of small web sites that are useful for small companies/businesses or even personal sites. When creating these sites it is important to think about:
- Brochure-ware site: These are sites that can commonly be found. Most of the time information is static and not overwhelming in content. Navigation bars can be kept simple to include the home page, about us, services, and a contact page. This type of site usually classify as a flat site and is easy to organize and maintain. However, for larger amounts of information this organization scheme will become cluttered and unorganized for users.
- News Items: When posting news about the organization or oneself it is important that you are considerate of what news you post. Think first of the site's goals - is it important for everyone to see this new information. What about the user? -- Do they care to see this new information, is it important to them? How frequently will there be news? -- If you frequently update this page it may be better to create a separate news page.
When trying to organize larger volumes of information consider the methods below:
Architecture based on real systems: Arrange information based on regions (geographically -- countries --> states/regions --> further specific areas). Divide information based on the sectors within the business (i.g. Chemical Manufacturing Company would divide their products into categories -- Restroom Cleaner, Floor Care, Hand, Soaps, Aerosols, Insecticides)
Architecture bases on users' standards: When users visit your site they are there for a specific purpose. Functionality of the site is crucial for the user. Find out what users want out of your site. This design may not be the same as the organization's business structure, however the site is based around the users that will commonly visit the site. This can increase the amount of time they spend on your site and if they will return.
Multi-dimensional Architecture: For large volumes of information offer many different views of data. This will allow users to understand data and have a greater flexibility with your site. (i.g. Amazon offers users to find books through categories, searches, or direct links. Books are in many different categories so this gives the user the opportunity to find exactly what they are looking for).
