Sk-etchbook

I just remembered there were a couple of useful nuggets of information picked up from yesterdays seminar. I shall share them with you...

When creating copy for online delivery the rule of thumb is to write for an age of 14. The majority of people scan and get bored quicker so you need to be obvious.

When browsing if they are using a search engine like Google then you should consider:

Google uses over 5 million algorithms to produce search results, constantly updating this to weed out growing SEO tricks and to give you the results most relevant to your search query. After all if a search engine constantly gives a list of more directory sites like what was happening at one point you would start to get fed up and use a competitor. It is in a search engines interest to be good therefor whatever SEO tricks are devised they can never replace "good quality" and "relevant" content.

Bearing the previous point in mind. If a user is searching for 'shoes' they will get a large amounts of results, even if your listed first it doesn't mean you will sell anything. Test your site. If a user clicks through to your website can they tell what you sell/do within 3 seconds. If they can't or your site is slow loading they may just click back and go to the next site in the list.

Once a user is on your site think about what they will be wanting to do. Is it immediately obvious how to navigate the site.

Aesthetics has to be mentioned here, without going into details, does design support content? Could you tell what the site was for without text?

Content. As mentioned before internet users have 'browsers' not 'readers'. Keep text, short, bullet points are good, large amounts of text should be broken up and usually not overtaking the prime screen space ('F' shape). Slow loading videos or masses of text are good however if they meet a specific need. People will wait for something they want.

Final point would be that the internet is a massive audience. Common goods and services especially ones which are not geographically dependent will always meet stiff competition. The internet is best at getting a niche product or service out to it's audience so if you specialize in something sell yourself on it's merits. 'Shoes' for example gets loads of results however 'white woolen winklepickers' is likely to yeild far less results.