With the rate at which information travels in our digital age and with mobile data consumption on the rise, people are less patient than ever before when it comes to website load times — and mobile users demand speed.

We are obsessed with speed.

If browsers aren’t loading quickly enough, those of us who are mobile users waste no time looking for sites that will get us the information we want. Now.

Despite mobile browsing just now really gaining traction, it is pretty much universally expected that sites will load quickly for mobile users — which can be the difference between a sale–or a new customer–for you and your business.

Mobile Users Don’t Wait

Think I’m kidding? Mobile users will abandon a site after 3 seconds of wait time – which is consistent with the habits of desktop browsers.  According to the folks at Strangeloop, 74% of mobile users surveyed in 2011 will bounce after waiting 5 seconds for a mobile site to load, compared to 20% in 2009.
 

Time Is, Most Definitely, Money

Website load time can hugely impact the number of site visits you see and, if you’re selling goods online, it can absolutely have a negative impact on your revenue. A 1 second delay in load time can lead to 11% fewer page views and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

Here are some stats from Strangeloop (one of our new favorite resources) that are pretty convincing:

• Faster is better just about everywhere, not just in the tech domain.
• People have to concentrate 50% harder when using badly performing websites.
• The average person perceives website load time as being about 15% slower than what it is in reality (and we all know that perception is reality, right?).
• A 1 second load time gives the illusion of instantaneous load, while a 10 second load is so long that our attention can drift away – maybe forever.

What Does Website UX Mean To You?

So what does this mean to you? Pardon me while I get my soapbox…but optimizing your site is essential. Yes, we regularly harp about making sure your visitors have a great user experience but, seriously, it’s really important.

You can have a beautifully-designed site that’s visually appealing, has a great site structure and compelling content that draws in visitors. You can also spend boatloads of money on PPC campaigns designed to drive traffic to your site. But all of that doesn’t matter if your site is laden with design elements that kill your site load time.

Visitors won’t hang around to see your beautiful site and your killer content because they’re too annoyed by how long your website takes to load. Oh, and as an aside, if you have music or video that automagically plays the minute a user lands on your site (mobile or otherwise), know that most times users instantly want to hire an assassin and kill you. I know I do. It is so not cool.

As site owner, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t review the usability, analytics and load time of your site – and your site on a mobile device – on a regular basis. Go do a pulse check on Google’s Page Speed tool and see what the feedback you receive. Go do it. Right now!

If some red flags come up here, it might be time to consider what the main goals for your site are and what updates are needed to help you focus on reaching those goals. Never forget – websites are for leads and sales. And if your site isn’t designed to maximize a user experience and create leads that you can convert to sales well, your site’s not doing what it needs to be doing.

And by the way, if you need help, building great websites – websites that work – is what we do. All day, every day. And we’re happy to help.

P.S. For those of you who are visual peeps, sometimes an infographic helps digest the enormity of stats like this. For just that reason, this infographic produced by Strangeloop is so stellar it’s included here. I’m also tossing it in just to torment my friend, Jon Aston, who loathes infographics. I do so love tormenting.

Mobile Users Demand Speed in Website Load Times is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

User experience is really quite simple: it’s defined as how a person feels when interfacing with a system. That could be many things, including face-to-face interaction, an instruction manual, a website, or a product – like software. And people who focus on UX, think about making the process of user interaction easy, effective and valuable.

When it comes to your website, user experience design is comprised of many components, and one of the most fundamental is: What do you want to people to do once they get to your website?

We believe that time is of the essence. And are fond of saying, pretty much ad nauseum, that you have about 97 seconds to capture someone’s attention once they make it to your website. Ergo, it goes without saying that if you don’t communicate what you need to “sell” them – and/or serve up what they’re looking for in that time frame, well, you might just be out of luck.

It’s not unusual for people’s eyes glaze over when the conversation turns to user experience, because it seems kind of techie and boring. Not so, proclaim the nerds in us!! Your business website should be the hub of all your business operations, and once a prospect reaches your website, for best results, all your attention should be on either attracting leads or on the process of converting leads to sales. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?

Sometimes it’s easier to think about real life examples of user experience gone awry, which then makes the leap to thinking about website design UX all that much easier. Here’s a great example from something that was in the news recently that might help.

Up The Glass Staircase – In a Skirt? Oopsie!

In Ohio, a classic example of design gone awry is playing itself out in the media. The $105 million Franklin County Courthouse opened a few weeks ago, and the new building is not getting the kind of attention they might’ve planned.

A staircase with glass risers provides a view of ladies in skirts and dresses that is, well, undesirable at best. It’s such a problem that the courthouse has posted security guards at the stairwell, warning women in dresses and skirts about the dangers of using the stairs before they start the climb.

Mistakes happen. How many times have you done something or experienced something and, perplexed, said aloud, “What in the world were they thinking?” Well, that’s what you want to make sure doesn’t happen with your website.

Want to create a good user experience on your corporate website? Here are just a few tips to get you started:

Don’t Design for Design’s Sake.

Sounds ridiculously simple, but one of the most common website design mistakes is designing something that looks “cool” but that is amazingly frustrating for the user. If done correctly, your website can be cool – and serve up a great user experience.

Focus on the Font.

Make the font big enough. This is one of our most common observations – and you need to consider your audience when designing your site. If the font is so small that a user has to manually bump it up, it’s annoying. And easy to avoid.

Ditch the Autoplay.

Do not, under any circumstances, blast your visitors with video that begins playing the minute they arrive at your site. It is, universally annoying. If it doesn’t annoy you, you’re the exception, and not the rule.

Nix the Tuneage.

See above rule – the same thing applies to music. Music used to be cool when it came to web design. That was in 2001. It is no longer cool for someone to arrive at your site and be bombarded with music that they can’t turn off.

What’s In It For Me?

Tell your brand story in a way that your target audience understands. And that means immediately answering that question: “What’s in it for ME?” You need to tell them why you’re the solution to whatever it is that ails them, just the thing they’ve been looking for and/or the discovery that they can’t wait to tell all their friends about. If you’re not sure what kind of job your website copy does for you, have your mom read the copy on your site. If she doesn’t understand it, there’s a good chance you need to revisit the content. Web copy written by engineers or by developers or by people too close to what you’re doing to be objective – well, it usually stinks.

There’s more. Of course there’s more! But you’ll have to wait for another post for that. What are your most common pet peeves about website design and user experience mistakes? We’d love to know.

Image credit: Jezebel.com

Website Design: Ignore User Experience At Your Own Risk is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

But while I was waking up with a cup of coffee and thinking about how much my back hurt from shoveling the mountain of snow that fell yesterday, I discovered the website of Lateral, a pan-European software development company with offices in London and Romania.

Lateral’s About Us page is so captivating it makes me go back again and again, just because I think it’s so cool. Oh, and of course it makes me want to hire them – which is the whole point of an About Us page, no?

There’s a screen capture here (using Awesome Screenshot, my newest favorite tool) but, to see what I’m talking about, you’ve got to go to their home page. Move your cursor around and you’ll see what happens.

And don’t forget to click the keyboard keys – you’ll not be disappointed.

What’s your favorite About Us page? This week, anyway?

Best Website About Us Page Ever is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

Mike Volpe

HubSpot’s Mike Volpe has a great presentation about online marketing and website design.

Mike Volpe delivers a pithy presentation on the business of online marketing and website design.  Volpe compares content generation for to buying a lottery ticket.

Search engines are like the lottery and writing more content is like buying a lottery ticket. You can’t win if you don’t play—and the more tickets you buy, the more likely it is that you’ll win the lottery.  The more content you write, the better chance you have of attracting a potential customer to your business.

It’s a GREAT presentation and it’s free. Go and watch the HubSpot Webinar on Website Redesign.

Creating Online Content is Like Buying a Lottery Ticket is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

Squish 'em like a bug, baby

Dear Competitor,

I couldn’t sleep last night and found myself thinking of you. I love competition, both for myself and for my clients. It keeps me thinking (which I enjoy), on my toes (good, because I’m short) and adaptable (which I find, perversely, fun). And while I was thinking of you, I felt compelled to write, just to make sure we’re on the same page on a few things.

And, of course, because I’m nice. And I worry about your business and how it’s going to measure up against me and my clients’ businesses. And just because I’m so doggone considerate, here are my suggestions for your success in 2010 and beyond.

Your Website
Please don’t change it. Not now, and not any time soon. Especially if it was built more than two or three years ago. I’m sure it’s totally up-to-date, optimized for search, well-researched and written with regard to your target audience and just out there working its little tail off for you on a daily basis. Give yourself bonus points if it’s built in Flash or has cool things like music that blares as soon as someone opens the site and or video that starts playing instantly. Those are both such attractive things and users really, really love them. Nevermind effective out the wazoo.

Google Alerts
No matter what anyone says, it really doesn’t matter what people are saying about you or your brand, so cluttering up your email box with pesky alerts from Google is just a waste of time. Plus, you know who you are and what you do, and if anyone has any questions, they can ask you, right? But listening to the social media space and all those Internet crazies, nah. Don’t do it!!

Search Smirch
All these people going on and on and on about “search” and how important it is to show up in search – which means that Google thing, I guess. Lord, but I get sick of hearing about that, too. Well, ignore ‘em. Seriously. When I want to search something, I do it the old-fashioned way, I dig out the Yellow Pages. I see you nodding your head. You do it, too, dontcha? Well, there’s no reason to expect your customers or prospective customers to do it any differently, right? After all, if people weren’t using those doggone Yellow Pages books, they wouldn’t still be delivering them to your front door, now would they? So ignore all that blather about search – people will find you the way they always have. You can count on it.

Social Media
Listen to the people! All the people who say that social media is just a big, fat, time suck are right! Nobody in his right mind cares what people are Tweetering about what they had for breakfast, what someone else is “fanning” on Facebook, or where they are checking in on a daily basis through that FourCircle thing – or whatever the heck it’s called. And for sure, that geolocation stuff blows and is so not worth a second thought. Who needs to know where anyone else is throughout the course of a day? What possible good could come from that, anyway? Never mind that Blippy thing, where people tell other people all what they’re buying and where they’re buying it, for Pete’s sake. How lame is that? Where’s the ROI in all that nonsense, anyway? Time suck. Money suck. No way, Jose. Not for me.

Mobile Marketing – What?
Sure, I use my cell phone and text my husband now and again, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. Heck, I can just call him. And when he doesn’t answer, I leave him a voicemail. And of course he listens to it (it’d be rude otherwise). It’s just what you do. Call people, they answer, you talk. All these crazy people talking about mobile marketing and using text messages as part of a marketing strategy don’t know a hill of beans about good marketing tactics – no one will stand for that garbage. Plus, who needs a coupon on the cell phone – I get mine in my daily newspaper, dude. Never mind how nutty it is to read all that shiggedy about people actually designing stuff – like websites – to be viewed on the dang cellphone. How crazy is that? Nobody does that stuff. Heck, I wait until I’m home and in front of my desktop before getting on the Internet – and everyone else who has a lick of sense does too, don’t you know it?

So, there you have it. I’ve saved you a bunch of time, expense and headaches by doing all the homework for you and sharing my findings. Just keep on keeping on, doing business the way you always have, and things will be just fine. After all, no one likes change and it’s a pain in the neck to learn new things and do things differently. It’s kind of like watering grass in the desert. Just doesn’t make sense.

Now does it?

Dear Competitor, is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

Don’t you remember your mother’s admonition about not wearing ratty underwear in case of an accident?  Well, I’m pretty sure that we ALL have some of those kinds of underwear stashed in our drawers.  And as we all know, accidents do happen.  What she really meant by that adage was that you always want to put your best foot forward – even down to the nitty gritty of your choice of underwear, because you never know who’s going to be looking at them.

I’m not sure why we insist on keeping things that are beyond their prime.  For some, it might be out of a sense of frugality, but for many, it’s truly because change is hard.  And that, my friends, is the key.  Change. Is. Hard.

For me, websites are a bit like tattered underwear.  I encounter terrific people on a daily basis who have websites that are sadly outdated and doing absolutely nothing for them in terms of search, brand image, awareness, etc.  And anyone who thinks they are not being judged based on the look and feel, content and effectiveness of their website is simply fooling themselves.

We have a client who owns a local small business.  When we started working with her, she had a website that was about 10 years old and was more horrible than words can describe.  In short, it was so poorly constructed that she had never, ever been picked up by a search engine.  It was head-shakingly horrid. And she’d just been holding onto it because she didn’t know any better.  And she thought that to replace it would cost infinitely more than she could afford.  But, ultimately, she made the decision to trust us, find the money in an already tight budget, and redo her website.   And she was thrilled when we brought the project in $200 under budget.  We also started her blogging, integrated a contest into her marketing strategies and did a few other things designed to drive traffic, search and awareness.

We are big believers in using ethical search engine marketing tactics and go to great lengths to ensure that our clients understand that great search results take a little time.  We got amazingly lucky with regard to this particular client and she started showing up in search within a very short time of the website launch.  And the coolest thing about all of this is just being able to sit back and watch our client reap the benefits of her leap of faith into the world of actually marketing her business in a strategic manner.  She’s busier than she’s ever been.  Her phone rings on a daily basis, she gets email inquiries from all over the world. Her biggest problem these days is having enough staff to handle the influx of business.  And it’s all because people are searching for what it is that she does – and finding her.  She is loving life and her business is thriving, in spite of the down economy, and it’s all because she decided to take a chance. She decided to toss out the old, worn out, ineffective stuff and replace it with new.

The lesson here is that change is good. And necessary.  Even if you are attached to your tattered undies, you have to occasionally toss them out and buy new ones. They look better, they fit better, they feel better.  They do a better job at what it was they were designed to do.  The same is true of your website or other collateral marketing materials and tools that you have. Just because you designed them once, doesn’t mean that they are still effective.  Smart business people regularly evaluate those tools and their effectiveness. And, if you’re not doing that, you’re doing your brand and your business an injustice.

Time to Toss the Tatters is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency