You can work on speeding up your site for Google, and that’s a good idea, but really having a faster site is ideal for users and may even keep you from losing conversions in the long run. We had a conversation with Joshua Bixby, President of site acceleration solutions provider Strangeloop. He also maintains the blog Web Performance Today. We asked him how important speed is to a site when there’s good content. 

Is Speed As Important As Content?

"There’s an excellent quote from Fred Wilson, principal of the VC firm Union Square Ventures," Bixby tells us. "He said ‘Speed is more than a feature. Speed is the most important feature.’ If your website or application is slow, people won’t use it – it’s that simple. Study after study has confirmed this. Companies like Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Shopzilla, Microsoft and AOL have proven time after time that when they make their sites faster, they get more page views, more conversions, more revenue, happier visitors. When they make their sites slower, even by just a couple of seconds, they see immediate negative results across the board. What’s even worse: even after they speed their site up again, the negative word of mouth takes months to shake off."

"Having good content is your bedrock," he adds. "You need it. But if you can’t deliver it quickly to the people who want it, you’re doing your content a huge disservice."

The Mobile Situation

With mobile becoming a much greater part of consumers’ everyday browsing habits, this would appear to pose a problem, because let’s face it. Mobile is slow. 

"The mobile world is like the web was 10 years ago, when site speed barely registered as a critical usability element," says Bixby. "It’s taken until now for speed to get the spotlight. I see mobile following a similar path, but the timeframe will be seriously compressed (i.e. 10 years of progress will take place in about two years)."

"We tend to improve speed on things we can measure, so the first important step will be measuring and benchmarking mobile web performance across industries," he continues. "We are already seeing some movement on measurement, but this remains difficult for a couple of reasons:

- Not enough companies have a true mobile web presence. Instead, they’re serving the desktop version of their site to mobile browsers. According to a recent Forrester report, 57% of companies surveyed either don’t have a mobile strategy or are just beginning to work on one.

- With dozens of mobile browsers in use, each with its own preference for rendering mobile sites, it is incredibly difficult to find a ‘one size fits all’ performance test."

"When there are a significant number of mobile sites, and when there have been some compelling mobile performance studies, we’ll see the business and development communities rise up and start taking mobile performance seriously," Bixby adds. "In conjunction with that, we will see the transformation vendors start coming out with specific mobile features."

HTML5 and the Browsers

Much has been made about HTML5′s impact on the web, and it’s becoming a focus of modern web browsers. What impact will it have on overall speed and performance? Maybe not as big of one as people would like in the near-term, but that doesn’t mean it’s not significant. 

"In terms of overall web page speed, HTML5 will have minimal impact in the immediate future, but far-reaching impact down the road," suggests Bixby. "HTML5 has been touted as a kind of Holy Grail that will save the web by introducing a universal standard that will solve everything from poorly performing proprietary plugins to clunky web apps. The actual truth is much more nuanced than this."

"Divested of all the hype, HTML5 is a markup language," explains Bixby. "As with any markup language, HTML5′s adoption is dependent on how browser developers and web developers choose to implement it. Right now, there’s a serious disconnect between these two development worlds."

"For example, Internet Explorer 9 is probably the most HTML5-compliant browser available today, but in a recent Strangeloop study of the top 200 Alexa-ranked retail sites, we found that sites performed no more quickly – and in many cases performed more slowly – in IE9 than they did in IE8," he continues. "We concluded that this is because IE9 is aimed at HTML5 acceleration, but most of the sites we tested do not exploit HTML5′s potential."

"From a web perspective, HTML5 has significant impact, but this will be an evolution rather than a revolution," says Bixby. "As sites evolve to take advantage of the benefits of HTML5, we’ll start to feel its impact across the web."

Don’t Lose Holiday Sales Because of Site Performance

Site performance in general becomes particularly important to e-commerce sites around the holiday season, because this is when sales can really flow in (our out). Black Friday isn’t too far off (not to mention cyber Monday), and as businesses give attractive deals to customers, they’re going to get a ton of traffic. "The impact is always the same: horror stories of outages, down time, lost revenue, etc. This is the day e-tailers dread," Bixby says. "But this year we are seeing a number of forward-thinking retailers start preparing, not just in terms of adding more servers, but also embracing site transformation and we are very excited about how they will fare."

"It would be really interesting to see a post-holiday breakdown of which e-tailers suffered and which ones triumphed, and then correlate that with those who took an aggressive approach to site optimization," he adds. 

As far as where we’re headed in the next year or so, Bixby also shared some interesting predictions about browsers, mobile, and performance in general. He thinks Chrome will become the #2 browser in 2011. "IE is here to stay, in terms of worldwide share, but Chrome will soon overtake Firefox and split share with IE. I see a world where Microsoft and Google share the majority of world’s eyeballs, with Safari in third place." He also says Android will become the #1 mobile platform. 

"Mobile web performance will become as important as desktop web performance," he says. "People will stop focusing on when a web page fully loads as an indicator of site performance, and instead start focusing on when a page starts loading and being useful to visitors."

"Major initiatives like Google SPDY will start changing the way the internet works at its foundation."

There’s no question that Google has largely been leading the charge in trying to speed up the web. The question is whether or not it will work. Google and other organizations can do everything they can, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s going to take webmaster cooperation around the Internet. That’s easier said than done.

The downtime message called the previous incarnation of Chatroulette an experiment, but this version is already far less usable, particularly if you don’t have a webcam installed. With no camera, you have nothing to do on the site but drag around some rectangles and wonder just what exactly it is you’re supposed to be doing, or what site you’re even on – there is nothing other than the URL in your address bar indicating your using Chatroulette. It looks something like this:

If you do have a camera installed and are able to use the service, there is a good chance you’ll just see a bunch of dudes exposing themselves. This has obviously been an issue with the site from the start, but Chatroulette recently put up a message saying it was working with authorities to clean things up. On the new version of the site, there isn’t even a single character of text, save for the camera/microphone drop down menus.

Something tells me this isn’t the final product, but either way, users are likely to gravitate toward other options. The novelty of the random video chat will probably die out on the non-pornographic level, as people can just video chat with their friends. Between Skype, FaceTime, Google Voice and Video Chat and other options emerging all the time (like this Facebook app), ChatRoulette may have a hard time keeping up – particularly with this kind of usability.

As referenced in the previous article, eye-tracking research has been a major indicator in how sites are viewed by consumers. Such research can help webmasters understand where they eyeballs are going, and help them determine how to arrange the layout of their sties.  The quicker user eyeballs get to what they are looking for, the better experience they are going to have.

Applying Usability Concepts to Content

With this in mind, it stands to reason that in article writing,  it is a good idea to use visual elements to help readers find what they’re looking for. Matt Bailey of SiteLogic Marketing spoke with WebPronews about structuring content so readers can easily find the answers they are looking for.

As Matt references, studies have shown that people are frequently not reading content in its entirety when looking for information online. They’re scanning articles for the answers they seek. Matt suggests using:

- keywords in titles
- keywords in headers
- bullet lists when applicable

Essentially, "lead them where they want to go."

That’s not to say that content is all about getting attention. The quality should be there once you do have their attention. It’s just helpful to lead the reader where they need to go visually, to get them to read it in the first place.

Note: There is plenty more useful information in the videos embedded in this article than the points I have referenced. I suggest watching the interviews in their entirety for some helpful advice.

Chris Boggs of Rosetta talked about digital asset optimization, or optimization of non-text content within web pages, and how they can affect rankings (things like video, images, rich internet apps, Flash, etc.).

"It really becomes a matter of resource allocation," says Boggs. "We’ve found, especially within specific verticals such as consumer product and retail, or healthcare, there’s closer needs that align to the development of such content, whether it’s a video that explains how to replace a printer cartridge, or what the bumps are on your five-year-old son’s arms."

"There’s a lot of reasons that people may look to the Internet and do a type of search that lends itself better to a video result or an image result, or even an interactive application," he adds.

This is essentially why the search engines now deliver blended (or Universal) search results. Marketers should take into heavy consideration, that in addition to the old-fashioned SEO for organic results, that Universal Search not only takes up a good deal of that SERP real estate, but commands user attention. Google has released eye-tracking research efforts on this in the past. What captures a user’s attention on their screen can play a large part in whether or not they click through to a search engine result.

In another conversation at SES, Shari Thurow of Omni Marketing Interactive talked about recent eye-tracking research, which she says, "endorses universal search". This is why you must consider the elements of blended SERPs that are relevant to your content.

WebProNews also discussed eye-tracking with Dr. Susan Weinschenk (aka The Brain Lady), who talked about research from a more biological standpoint:

The information obtained from eye-tracking research means more to marketers and business than simply how you may attract the attention of search engine users. It should also be taken into consideration within your own site (and landing page) design. Google’s own research was basically aimed at enhancing the usability of Google. While Google’s usability is ultimately important to how searchers may find your content from Google, your own site’s usability is  even more important to you.

Ultimately, your goal is to get traffic to your site, and get the conversion. In fact, Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com even started a whole conference based upon this principle. "You really need to consider the efficiency of your landing page first, regardless of how you get traffic there," he tells WebProNews.

While user attention (as highlighted by eye-tracking research) may play a significant role in that efficiency, it is not the only element. As Shari Thurow touched on in her interview above, architecture is also a key. Long time usability expert Kim Krause Berg talked about this more with us as well.

"What happens is, first they design the website, they achieve search engine results and rank, then when the conversions take a nosedive, they come back and they say, ‘I need some help with my usability. Let’s improve the user experience…’", she says. "So the next thing we start to look at is the foundation of the website. We find that there’s a lot of problems in the navigation…"

Search engine rankings don’t mean much if the traffic doesn’t convert. Users must be delivered an ideal experience once they click through to the website. This is why Google is talking about taking site performance (or speed) into consideration as a ranking factor.

It’s about giving users the best experience possible. If that experience is not there, customers will be less likely to convert anyway.

Some web addresses help you understand the structure of the site and how the specific page fits into the site hierarchy. For example, consider a search for the biography of Vint Cerf (Google’s Internet Evangelist). The URL for one result, "www.google.com/corporate/execs.html," shows that the page is located in a page about "execs," under "corporate," which is on the "google.com" site. This can provide valuable context when deciding whether to click on the result.

Often, however, URLs are too long, too short, or too obscure to add useful information.

That’s where the breadcrumbs come in. Google says the feature should be available globally within the next few days.

Original Article: Google appears to be testing breadcrumbs in some search results, at least in some areas. If you are unfamiliar with the term breadcrumbs, it refers to the hierarchical display commonly used in site navigation. For example: Home Page>Product Page>Product A Page.

Do you utilize breadcrumbs on your site? Comment here.

Several bloggers have noticed Google displaying these types of breadcrumbs in various places in seemingly random results to some queries. For example, Rob Hammond provides the following screen shot:

Leo Fogarty provides another, which shows the breadcrumbs displayed in a different position within the search result:

Google’s use of breadcrumbs appears to only be a test, and a limited one at that. Google has talked repeatedly about sites having good site architecture in the past. This allows Google to more easily and quickly crawl sites.

Bing acknowledges this too. Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center recently said, "You can have great content and a plethora of high quality inbound links from authority sites, but if your site’s structure is flawed or broken, then it will still not achieve the optimal page rank you desire from search engines."

Here are some tips from both Google and Bing regarding site architecture issues. In addition, Google recently provided this related information on getting your site crawled faster.

If Google begins incorporating the breadcrumbs display as in the above tests, on a mainstream level, that will be all the more reason to clean your site architecture up, at least in the navigation area. Site architecture certainly goes beyond this, but it is a key part of usability anyway.

Have you seen breadcrumbs show up in Google results? What do you think about the idea? Share your thoughts.

With said holiday season in full swing, it can’t hurt to brush up on a few usability tips. Usability issues are sometimes debatable, and a matter of opinion, but accessibility plays a vital role. Make sure your site is accessible (at least to the best of your ability) to those with disabilities. It’s not only the right thing to do for them, but it also opens up the door for them to give you their business.

Designer Chris Spooner has a nice list of usability crimes (things to avoid). This list includes things like logos that don’t link to the home page, not specifying visited links, not indicating active form fields,  not using alt descriptions on images, etc.

In a recent interview with WebProNews, Frank Bauer of Web Tuning Garage (who is also a moderator at the WebmasterWorld forums) shared some tips about URLs, which can play a crucial role in usability.

Don’t use intrusive ads on your site. Ads are fine. You have to promote your stuff (or if you’re a content site, ads are usually your primary way of making money). Just don’t use ads that intrude on the user’s experience. Don’t use ads that take up the whole screen if a user happens to mouse over something. It will only annoy them and they may leave. Perhaps these kinds of ads actually work for you, but if they’re not delivering you good results, it may be time to ditch them. They could be hurting you more than you know.

Brian Terry, another designer, has some pretty good tips in this article. "First it’s vital that you know exactly what you want your ‘ideal’ website user to be doing when they come to your page," he says. "It’s a good idea to map this out ie: when a new visitor comes to my webpage I want them to see ___________and do ______."

He also discusses things like sitemaps and tracking. One thing he touches upon is the use of "breadcrumbs" for navigation. If you are unfamiliar with the term breadcrumbs, it refers to the hierarchical display commonly used in site navigation. For example: Home Page>Product Page>Product A Page.

Google recently began displaying breadcrumbs in search results. So not only will they be useful to users on your site, they can be useful for getting users to come to your site in the first place, if they happen across it in a Google search. Breadcrumbs in the search results give the user more points of entry – more words/links that they can potentially click on. On the site, breadcrumb navigation can provide a good way to keep users browsing your inventory.

There are certainly plenty more tips out there for improving the usability of your site. We’ve merely brushed on a few. The larger point is that if your site is not as usable as you can possibly make it, there is a good chance your sales will reflect that. This is especially worth noting during the time of the year when nearly everybody is shopping.

What usability tips do you have? Share them with WebProNews readers.

Related Articles:

> Google Rolls Out Breadcrumb Display in SERPs

> Accessibility Information Webmasters Can Use

> Satisfying Usability And SEO

"In the past, the only way to view these documents was to download them and open them in a separate viewer application," says Google. "To provide an alternative, we made it possible to quickly and easily view these files as HTML right in a web browser by clicking ‘View as HTML.’ This was an improvement, but unfortunately the ‘View as HTML’ option loses some of the formatting from the original PDF, such as graphics, tables, fonts and other elements."

The new links are based on the same technology that is used by Google Docs and Gmail. Google says they’ve actually been rolling out the feature in search results since July, and now they have more than half of the PDFs in their index available this way.

When you click the "Quick View" link, it will open the PDF in your browser, and will look something like this:

Google recently gave webmasters a new way to display PDFs (as well as PPTs and TIFFs). They launched the Google Docs Viewer, which displays these types of files directly in a user’s web browser without requiring a download. The tool for this can be found here. 

Do you know the main demographic using your website? Is it meant to attract women, men, or both? If targeted toward a specific sex, there are some things you might need to know about how men and women use websites and approach the buying process. So take the following information, gleaned from studies and surveys, and apply it how you think best.

1. Men want to complete the task and get on to the next task. Women want to experience the task. Guys, I know that sounds stupid, like forming a relationship with pain, but this is why women are good at taking care of you. Generally, they seem to be more thorough, which is why she’s never ready when you’re jingling your keys at the door and why you might survive getting stuck in a blizzard once you finally get out the door. (That’s a poor example. She’ll likely know there’s a blizzard coming and will protest leaving at all. Men believe they will defeat the blizzard. Women, I know this sounds stupid, but this is why men are good at killing mammoths, and why they’re good at protecting you. In the end, it’s all about taking down the beast.)
2. On the Web, both genders agree that ease of use is the most important aspect of usability. Pose as a visitor. How easy it is to upload/download/view/purchase? However, men prize download speed over easy navigation, while women place both easy navigation and accessibility ahead of download speed. Customization was the least important to both. 

3. Women are more holistic when shopping. They want to see and weigh all the options, want to be advised, and want to take their time making a decision. One explanation of this is that women tend to think more long term about their purchases: Will this still work in six months? Will I be able to wear this next year?
4. Men want to get in, buy it, get out. They don’t want help unless it involves help at the checkout to speed their exit. They think of immediate need more than long-term need. It’s a very simple thought process: I want to grill some meat. My grill is old and doesn’t cook meat well anymore. I need a new grill to cook meat with, one that makes it easier to cook meat than this old one. I’ll buy a new grill, take it home, grill some meat. Meat grilling problem solved. Women want to know if the grill is easy to clean, if the buttons still work when summer rolls around again, if it looks good in the yard, if you can steam vegetables in it. 

5. Men like coupons because it narrows the choices and provides clear-cut incentive to buy one particular thing they can go in, buy, and get out with. (Think: There is animal. Animal is dead. Now go home, show female, eat animal.)
6. Women prefer sales for exactly the opposite reasons. Sales present many options with many different benefits to many different people other than the woman shopping and the right product is its own reward. They form relationships with the products and then decide which relationship works out best. (Think: There are lots of different berries, nuts, herbs. Some are poisonous. Some make the baby sick. Some go bad quickly. Some are at the top of the mountain and are dangerous to get. Some cost a goat. But this one is good for everybody, is safe to eat and gather, doesn’t cost a goat, and will last through winter.)
7. When it comes to photos, women focus on faces and pay special attention to pictures of couples entwined. Men, as in real life, focus on, well, other parts and don’t give any special attention to couples. Depending on hormone levels, though, women may also focus on, well, other parts.
8. Here’s something men and women generally agree: the color blue. In one survey, 42 percent of people (35 percent of women, 57 percent of men) listed blue as their favorite color. Women’s other favorite color was purple, which actually factored significantly on men’s least favorite color list, right up there with brown and orange, the least favorite colors of everyone. In a fascinating twist, people seem to like more blue and less green as they get older. Green seems to be a young person’s color.

How can you use this information when designing your website? Hold on to that question. The first question is about identifying your target market. Is it young men? Your site should fast, simple, easy to understand, and whatever other usability concern one needs to address to make using the site as quick and painless as possible.

Don’t worry too much about relationships. Men want just as much relationship as is required to successfully complete a transaction. (You don’t want to be friends with the mammoth or think about mammoth orphans when you kill it, you know?) Men like blue, and prefer objects over people, unless the people are naked. A naked girl flipping burgers on a grill against a blue sky and green grass backdrop? Perfect. Now add verbiage emphasizing how quick and easy the check out process is.

This may be why women make 85 percent of purchase decisions. (This is also why women think men are insensitive Neanderthals and don’t believe us when we say we were thinking about nothing. Ladies, it is possible to think about nothing at all, I promise. But it’s not insensitivity. We just have no task before us, and without a task our brains shut down. It’s an efficiency thing, which we’re sure you wouldn’t understand, either. ;-D) 

It’s also why, unless your website is very niche, that when you design a site for general use, you’re really designing a site for women. If you can make it fast and easy, and leave out the purple, men will like it, too. Mint.com grew by 20 percent just by making the site more women-friendly. 

You know how when you get more than one conversation going based on one message, you don’t always have time to read each new one? It can get pretty confusing when trying to remember which ones still need to be read when you go back to them. If you mark the whole thing as unread, then you have to wade through the ones you’ve already read.

It’s almost as if Google was reading my mind because I was annoyed by this very thing only yesterday, and shortly after that they made the announcement that they were fixing this.

"Now if you’re reading a conversation that had unread messages when you opened it and you mark it unread, Gmail will only mark those messages that were unread when you opened the conversation in the first place," explains Softare Engineer David de Kloet. "It’s a small change, but it’s the little things that can make a UI feel right or wrong, and we hope this makes Gmail a little bit more right."

I haven’t dealt with the issue again yet, but I’d say it’s definitely a step in the right direction. de Kloet notes that the feature only works for desktop browsers and not phones at this point.

Hitwise recently reported that Gmail had surpassed YouTube in visits recently. Gmail use should only continue to grow as Google continues to make tweaks to its usability.

As of a week ago, Gmail was number 10 in the rankings of most popular sites in all categories according to Hitwise. Yahoo Mail is number 2. Gmail is number 2 among Google properties.

What this means is that we often have the power to make a difference in the efficiency, usability or general usefulness of these products because we can leave feedback. Obviously our ideas aren’t always going to make the difference, but companies care what customers think about their products (though there are certainly exceptions), and will listen to what users have to say, often leading to the implementation of suggestions.

A couple of examples of this our currently being hilighted on company blogs. A post from Christina Holsberry on the Facebook Blog discusses creating "the best experience" on Facebook, and doing this through the open communication between users and the company.

"At Facebook, we think it’s important to listen to the people who are using the site, since you are our biggest fans, experts and critics," she says. "We’re dedicated to making sure your feedback is incorporated into the decisions we make in order to create the best experiences for you and your friends on Facebook."

Examples Holsberry touches on include:

- emails from users

- product testing sessions (they take people to their offices and observe how they use Facebook [they even use eye tracking])

- Advisory board – trusted group of people who routinely provide thoughts on features

- feedback pages

- reactions

Talk about new features on blogs, forums, Twitter, etc. Companies have people keeping an eye on what is being said about them. If they find out many people feel strongly about certain things, there is a chance they will acknowledge them.

The second example comes from a post at the Yahoo Mail Blog. Here Rick Pal shares user feedback and Yahoo’s responses. Feedback has influenced features like:

- social updates
- the movement of news over connections and suggestions
- new address book

How many Google products do you use on a regular basis? That is another company that is constantly seeking user feedback. Andy they have plenty of ways for you to share it. You can find email links on their blogs, use Google Groups, and like I said before, talk about your thoughts on products and features in blogs, social networks, forums, etc.

The point is that they’re listening. There are so many ways to communicate with companies and potentially influence tools that make your life and lives of others easier every day. Don’t be shy. They want to know what you think. They might not always respond, and your ideas will not always be implemented, but you never know until you try.