Using some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques without proper consideration of a positive user experience is the fast way to kill usability.
I’ve noted this as have others, including Google’s Chief of News, Josh Cohen, who was quoted in a Poynter. org article about SEO and user experience as saying:
“Focus on creating a more engaging experience for the users so that they spend a longer period of time per visit. Make sure the user experience comes first, not the search engine visibility.”
Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager, Google News
The issue is one of quality, or lack thereof. SEO can be used for good purposes, by making it easier for search engines (and thus people) to find the high-quality content they seek. SEO can unfortunately also be used for bad purposes, to manipulate the search engines to find and artificially rank sites that actually have low-quality, or worse, no content. When SEO is applied in this dubious manner, to trick search engines, it is often accomplished by using techniques that create bad usability.
Here is the formula I like to use to define the results for usage of SEO and usability:
SEO + Bad Usability = short visits = Bad ROI
SEO + Good Usability = long visits = Good ROI
Ultimately, if your site is anything other than a massive advertising link farm, the positive SEO and usability your website content provides defines the number and quality of the visits, and thus the amount of revenue gained, not how many visits you can have.
This reminds me of a Tweet Nick Finck posted…
SEO Practices that Kill Usability
There are many ways certain SEO practices can kill usability, but the three most common ways I’ve seen include:
Creating pages with minimal amounts of meaningless keyword-stuffed content
Creating pages with massive amounts of keyword-stuffed content
Creating pages with zero amounts of content
All of these can kill usability, because the techniques used to influence SEO create a quality of the experience that is so lacking. This causes website visitors to want to run, not walk away, from the site.
Example 1 – Creating pages with minimal amounts of keyword-stuffed content
Let’s say you’re interested in buying a new printer, you’ve not bought one in a while, so you’d like to know the latest information about how to buy a printer. You’d probably expect to learn about how to find the latest models, how to evaluate features, and how to compare pricing.
Starting on Bing, you might type in the search term:
On Bing’s resulting search listings you’ll find many potentially promising sites. Having high expectations for finding good quality information you might click on some of the links in the search results, including the link for eHow.com.
Bing - How to buy a printer results
You are then taken to the eHow.com page for how to buy a printer which promises to inform you about choosing the machine that’s right for you.
However, what you actually receive in the way of your hoped-for rich high-quality content and good usability on the eHow.com page may not meet your expectations. Right in the middle of a massive scrolling page of ads are 6 steps for finding a printer. There are a total of 231 words of helpful advice about how to buy a printer in the body copy.
If we visually highlight the actual page content to separate it from the ads we are left with a minimal amount of content that provides a poor user experience and from a task standpoint does not achieve good usability. There is little to no useful content, and thus the user experience and poor usability do not come close to matching expectations.
Included in the advice in the steps are such meaty content as:
“Step 2 – Decide between ink-jet and laser printers. How you’ll use the printer will guide your decision.”
eHow How to buy a printer
This example clearly demonstrates that the SEO practice of providing just enough keyword rich content (16 uses of the word ‘printer’ and variations in the body copy alone) with no regard to the quality of the content leads to bad usability, and a page filled with hundreds of ads.
SEO and Usability Rule #1 – Don’t skimp on the content!
Achieve good SEO and usability by providing your users with high-quality, useful and usable content
Example 2 – Creating pages with massive amounts of keyword-stuffed content
The opposite of minimal content is maximum keyword-stuffed content, which is an example of using SEO to stuff so many keywords into the content that the page ranks higher in search results, at the expense of usability.
For this example, let’s assume you are interested in buying a used car, and want to research more information on how to do it. In this case you might type in:
In Bing’s listings of results are sites including the top one, carbuyingtips.com.
Bing - How to buy a used car
Clicking on carbuyingtips.com takes you to a page filled with huge amounts of content, presented in a massive scrolling page of car buying content, displayed in varying types of visual styles that lack usable organization. Go ahead and start scrolling down the screenshot, I’ll be down below there waiting for you…
From an SEO standpoint this is the equivalent of throwing everything in, AND the kitchen sink! The usability of this page suffers from massive amounts of semi-organized content designed perhaps to overwhelm search engines, and any humans that are brave enough to try to read and digest the information.
It’s not a surprise that this page comes up in top position for the results, just based on the sheer weight of the content all by itself. The problem however is it’s a rather unpleasant task to try to read, assimilate and comprehend all the content, leading to poor usability and a disappointing user experience.
SEO and Usability Rule #2 – Don’t stuff the content!
Create positive SEO and usability by providing your users with visually organized, easy to read, easy to comprehend, and thus easy to use content.
Example 3 – Creating pages with zero amount content
Using the same search results for “how to buy a used car,” another site shows the third bad SEO example of providing zero keywords in the content of the page when the website visitor clicks through to it.
As is demonstrated below, clicking on the “Howtobuyanything.com” link takes the visitor to a page that has absolutely no content on that page about the specific searched-for topic. This leads to bad usability due to the frustration of not finding the content that was promised.
How to buy anything
From an SEO standpoint this is using a keyword shell-game to achieve results in the rankings, but in the meantime providing the website visitor with absolutely none of the searched-for keywords and content.
Duping unsuspecting website visitors by using SEO to promise a page with content, but then not delivering said content on the page leads to bad usability and a negative user experience.
In the above example the website would have been much better suited to provide content about the used car buying guide. This would more closely align with the user’s expectations and thus provide better usability, through a more positive user experience.
SEO and Usability Rule #3 – Don’t make false promises!
Achieve good SEO and usability by providing your users with the content you promised them.
Conclusion: When SEO Kills Usability
Unsuspecting website owners may not realize the significance of the way bad SEO practices can kill usability, but kill it, it does. The reality is the owners of these and other such websites would be much better served by improving their usability and user experience, which would lead to better SEO.
This strategy of providing quality content and good usability will over time provide a greater benefit than resorting to bad SEO tactics to temporarily attract visitors. That’s because the vast majority of visitors who are duped to come to these bad sites, finding terrible usability and poor content will immediately leave anyway. So the question is, why would anyone spend money on bad SEO techniques that kill usability, only to receive a 1 or 2 second visit and bad ROI? Was it really worth the expense? I doubt it.
Instead of SEO killing usability, work on quality content, a good user experience and helpful SEO tactics. This will in the long run help your website take care of itself in the search rankings. That way, your website wins, your visitors win, and you win with increased ROI.
Although usability practitioners love to show examples of big usability issues with websites and applications, the vast majority of usability issues are typically in the details. By forcing your application users or website visitors to be constantly bothered with more detailed usability issues, you eventually wear down their patience and force them to decide whether to continue being annoyed, or to try a different application or website.
So, you may be asking, “what’s a big usability issue versus a minor or more detailed usability issue?”
Here’s my definition of a minor usability issue:
Craig says:
“A minor usability issue is an issue that is small enough to not cause task failure by itself, but is significant enough to cause additional cognitive load, errors, or an increase in time-on-task.”
Examples of usability issues in the details
As a demonstration of usability being in the details, I’ve identified a few examples of several minor, yet user-annoying usability issues that can wear down the patience of your users. Each of these minor issues in and of itself is not a big enough deal to make a person throw up their hands and storm away from your application or site. But added together, like the straws on a camel’s back, they can and do cause that effect.
The good news: detailed usability issues are typically easier to fix
The good news is; for the vast majority of detailed usability issues, a simple fix is usually all it takes to remove the problem and improve the usability for your users.
Tip: Find your minor usability issues, they’re easier to fix and can reward you with increased performance
After reading this article, have a look at your own applications or websites and identify where there are minor usability issues. Or better yet, observe someone who has little to no experience with your site or application use it. My bet is you’ll probably uncover several minor, yet annoying usability issues just by watching them go through the process. I think you’ll find finding and fixing minor usability issues is the easiest way to improve the usability of your site or application, without resorting to major re-designs.
The details: Several common usability issues
Usability issue #1 – Horizontal and vertical scrolling of important content
Forcing people to scroll both vertically and horizontally in your website or application is a usability issue because it requires more cognitive load (remembering what was read) and motor effort (moving scrollbars) than by simple presenting data with no scroll, or a vertical scroll only.
Trend micro antivirus is in the business of analyzing and recommending actions based on potential computer security risks for their customers. I’m assuming that typically their customers have little to no security knowledge, so the advice (content) Trend micro antivirus provides is very critical for user success.
It’s therefore a minor yet annoying usability detail that Trend micro antivirus displays a pop-up window whenever it detects the need to provide guidance, using horizontal and vertical scroll bars to display this all-important guidance within the pop-up.
In addition, another minor usability detail is the pop-up is not resizable, thus the customer is unable to modify the size of the display to better read the guidance.
Trend micro antivirus displays important security guidance in a horizontally and vertically scrolling pop-up window that is non-resizable.
Usability issue #2 – Non-alphabetical drop down menus
For most drop-down menus, a common best-practice is to use alphabetically ordered listings of links. This is especially true for websites or applications in which users either lack expertise with the subject matter or are infrequent users. The alphabetical ordering of choices helps users scan and find the link they seek.
GoDaddy.com is a domain and hosting company that provides a fairly large assortment of tools for their customers, most of which are accessible via drop-down menus. For their hosting tools, GoDaddy uses a drop-down menu that is not alphabetically ordered. Because users must read the entire list of links prior to determining which to select, this forces additional cognitive load, in essence slowing users down.
Although this may seem minor, if a customer is only infrequently using these tools, they must “re-learn” the list with each visit to the drop-down, causing additional friction and slow-downs. Coupled with many other small yet annoying usability issues, they could be enough to tip the scales and influence the customer to seek another hosting company.
Considering the low price-point for hosting, ANY customer friction is a potential customer-loser for these companies.
GoDaddy’s hosting control center drop-down menus are not alphabetically ordered.
Usability issue #3 – Poor form instructions and label alignment
Forms are the ONLY online tool your potential customers can use to purchase or request your products or services, so poor alignment of form instructions, labels and entry fields are minor yet annoying usability details that should be corrected promptly.
Taleo has a widely-used online application form candidates use to apply for jobs with a company. The Taleo form is quite long, and is often customized based on a company’s needs. However, attention to usability details in form design can slip, meaning the form causes increased cognitive load and decreased performance.
In this example, alignment issues with the email form instructions and label are causing additional cognitive load. The “Please create your password” instruction is right-aligned and thus displayed to the left above the password field. However, the “Re-type new password” instruction is left-aligned and thus is over the field, and not aligned with the rest of the labels. In addition, it is missing the red “required” asterisk, which will result in an error if the user submits the form without the re-typed password. Finally, note that there are no instructions for password length (which in this case is 6 characters minimum) nor for valid versus non-valid characters.
Many form developers today use a separate page for registration information, so that errors with the registration do not cause the rest of the form entry process to fail.
Taleo’s candidate application form demonstrates label alignment issues
Usability issue #4 – Poor alignment of or missing Action buttons
Another usability detail is proper alignment and use of primary (“Submit” or “Go” etc.) and secondary action buttons (“Save & Exit” or “Cancel” etc.). The point to having people use forms is to actually have them complete and send them, and so details with action buttons are important.
Using Taleo’s application form again as an example, the form is quite long, asking for full candidate information including address, prior jobs, demographic information and more. Because of the amount of time it may take to complete such a long form, providing the ability for people to save their partially completed form, and return later to finish it could be very important. However no “Save and exit” or related secondary action form is included (potentially because sign-up has not yet occurred).
In addition, clearly separating action buttons from other entry fields is also important, to reduce confusion as to their purpose. As demonstrated below the Taleo form has the “Submit” button placed apparently inside the visual space created by the horizontal lines above and below “Certificates/Licenses.”
Some people may be confused, wondering if the “Submit” button submits the entire form, or the “Certificates/Licenses” information only.
Conclusion: Usability is in the details
The four examples demonstrate typical minor yet annoying usability issues, highlighting the importance of paying attention to detail when creating a user experience. Although these common minor usability issues won’t cause task-failure by themselves, added together the annoyance factor becomes great enough that many users may decide to either not purchase or order the product or service, or to discontinue use of the application or website altogether, meaning lost customers, revenue and a poor Brand reputation.
It’s in each designer’s and developer’s best interest to pay attention to the little details. That’s because usability is in the details, which helps define the success or failure of the website or application.
Everyone needs a good shake-up now and then, and that’s why these 5 radical ideas from 5 rad usability presentations are well worth your time. Being influenced by radical ideas can lead to big changes in how you do things, and thus bring big positive results. To improve, it’s sometimes necessary to throw-out old conventions, including some old conventions of usability and user centered design!
The reality is your usability and user-centered design could probably use a boost, to among other things:
Help you do a better job of adding usability to design
Change the way you think about interaction
Present new ideas and new concepts to your processes
Help you sell your new radical ideas to the masses
So, here then are the 5 radical ideas as presented from these 5 rad usability presentations. Enjoy!
This is an excellent presentation that provides great ideas to help you improve; planning, recruiting, conducting analysis and presentation of findings for usability research. I like the implication that they analyzed the problem (boring usability results presentations nobody reads, no follow-up changes based on reports) and created new solutions – by usability testing their own usability research process! Now there’s a radical idea!
Radical idea #1 – Conduct usability testing (and subsequent improvements) on your own usability research methods!
This presentation demonstrates how to tackle the problem of delivering usability testing results in a way that doesn’t bore the clients, and more importantly gets acted upon. This presentation includes very helpful screen-grabs of new approaches you can use to plan, recruit, conduct data analysis and present findings. Way worth your time to watch and learn from, in my humble opinion.
A brilliant little presentation that in 54 easy-to-read slides demonstrates the core concept of a good user experience – the user should not even be aware they are using the application, website, beard trimmer, etc.
Anybody who’s been using WordPress for a few years remembers the major improvements made to the administrative interface not too long ago. That was a pretty radical change! This presentation provides an overview of how the research that influenced that radical change was done, and much more importantly, the mantra that went into the process of improvement. As the quote states:
“That’s when I know WordPress is doing its job: when people aren’t even aware they’re using it because they’re so busy using it!”
- Mark Jaquith, 21 February 2007
Radical idea #2 – Focus your design / development team on the mantra: “We reach application usability success when our users are not even aware they’re using our application!”
This presentation can help you have that all-important conversation with your design and development team, and anyone on your team who’s been using WordPress for several years will know the truth that is provided in this presentation.
Guess what, did you know that simplicity does NOT equal usability? Neither did I! But this amazing presentation walks you step by step through the process of understanding simplicity; why it’s good, why it’s not always possible (or desirable) to achieve, and the 4 ways to affect simplicity. Here’s the core concept; in general, you can try to remove, hide, group or displace complexity. But as this presentation so beautifully describes, each has positive and negatives on design and function that must be understood.
Radical idea #3 – Simplicity does not equal usability, it equals making the experience compact and aligning your design to what’s core in the user’s experience – and recognizing the trade-offs involved in trying to reduce complexity.
Don’t let the 128 pages of this presentation scare you, this is a VERY simple experience that communicates VERY well and will leave you ANXIOUS to try these concepts out yourself. And it’s chock-full of really helpful examples of complex situations with simplified end-result experiences.
This presentation should be considered sacred to all iPhone or multi-touch app designers and developers. This is a very useful and usable presentation that defines the 8 rules of thumb for iPhone and multi-touch app development. Because it includes visuals of the multi-touch UI do’s and don’ts for design of apps, it’s really easy to quickly understand and conceptualize the core 8 rules of thumb.
You should also pay VERY close attention the Application pricing slides, which have an amazing finding – pricing an app higher actually generates MORE trust in the app (does that trust convert into sales?). Technically there are two really radical ideas – but I’m going to group them into one, because, well, it’s more usable that way:
Radical ideas #4 and 4a – Users felt there was LITTLE TO NO DIFFERENCE in pricing between a $4.99 app and a $0.99 app (then why not charge $4.99?), and users are most successful when they can transfer a specific behavior from one app to the next – so copying conventions is key.
Considering the more than 90,000 views of this presentation, probably all the designers and developers that develop “an app for that” are already aware of the 8 rules of thumb. But if not, this one won’t be a waste of your time. And a refresher for those that have seen this already wouldn’t hurt!
Another brilliant presentation, this one clearly and concisely defines how to solve the three big problems of; signing up, first use and ongoing engagement of social software. The reality is however this is the perfect Primer for any application in which you want (need) to drive adoption, social or otherwise. The amazing thing is putting the context of signing up into the correct format, which is to say you can’t wonder how easy or difficult it is to sign up (usability), instead, you should wonder if people are motivated enough to care (persuasion).
Radical idea #5 – Gain sign-ups, first time use and ongoing engagement not by pushing features, but by motivating, not by selling, but by teaching, not by reminding, but by engaging.
OK, this is my presentation, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good! Anyway, I’m not including it in the list of 5 radical usability presentations because, well, I created it and you probably don’t want me tooting my own horn too much, right? And also, the concepts in it are not radical (useful yes, but not radical). But it’s short, sweet and to the point and so it’s worth a bonus mention.
Conclusion: 5 radical ideas from rad usability presentations
So there you have the 5 radical ideas from 5 rad usability presentations. I believe there’s plenty more radical ideas in these presentations and hope you find and try them! I suspect you’ll find the presentations helpful and useful. I would add that watching each of these should help you motivate yourself and your team into new ways to create more user-friendly designs, but I think you’ll come to that conclusion by yourself, and create some new ways to become radical.
Hello, I'm Craig Tomlin, and I've been improving web sites with usability & SEO optimization for start-ups, small businesses and Fortune 500 firms since 1996. I'm a Certified Usability Analyst & Member of the Usability Professional's Association.
