Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Parsing the opportunity in site redesign
It's site redesign time for several of my content clients, and a great time to place our bets as to where to put test site improvements and program improvements.
When we redesign, we are not merely trying to make our pages prettier, we are testing to find what can be made more productive by changes to program, format, or focus.
Now's the time -- use the spring months, when usage patterns for most content sites are fairly regular, to push out some tests. How much content can your readers handle in heavy-interest time periods, like the run-up to or follow-up from a convention or conference? Can you better ride the wave of of product or service introductions? Or are there stories that spring from industry personalities or product/campaign mis-steps as people position themselves and their new products.
Elements to test: Program, Format, Focus
By program I mean the contact schedule, from broadcast to user-specific communications by way of RSS and e-mail. Chances are there are additional e-mail programs that will find a loyal readership. Our client Advertising Age has just inaugurated a new newsletter to support the strong content in their CMO Strategy section.Focus is subject line and headline work. What is the best language to sell the story to your Internet-based audience? What do you want to be on the Google, Yahoo or MS news feed from your story? Which approaches get more blogger and social network juice?
Format is how everything else is laid out for the visitor in emails and landing pages, resulting on more time-on-page, more additional page views, and more refer-a-friend clicks. As usability guru Jakob Nielsen reiterated in January, usability redesigns are still averaging an 83% improvement in key volume indicators. The low-hanging fruit may be gone, but there is still much fruit to be gathered. We recommend setting aside 10% of your re-design budget for analysis to target redesign to the highest ROI site elements.
What are you planning on changing this spring? How are you planning on measuring the results of those changes?
Labels: content, metrics, publishing, web analytics
