Note: Aside from quotes by others, the ideas set forth in this article, mainly, that Usability Trumps Adwords in ROI, are my own opinions based on years of experience working with organizations to improve their site’s findability and conversion. The ideas are meant to incite a small riot and discussion. To date, I’ve spent embarassingly little on adwords, yet those organizations found their site traffic increasing dramatically and return visitors and conversion improving.

‘Usability Can Complement SEO to Up Conversions’

An article entitled, “Usability ‘can complement SEO to up conversions‘” just appeared this month in the UK‘s DirectNews news source. Similar articles are popping up all over as organizations begin to realize that the two are somehow related. This article caught my eye though because of a reported quote by Herndon Hasty, a senior SEO evangelist at Range Online Media.

Herndon Hasty, senior SEO evangelist at Range Online Media, claimed that a site with a high search engine ranking and low usability is on a par with a site that offers good usability but cannot be indexed by search engines at all, Online Media Daily reports.

An article in MediaPost News reports that Hasty and Chris Knoch, a search engine marketing specialist at Omniture, presented and fielded questions during a Search Marketing Now Webinar, “SEO and Conversion Rates: Hand-in-hand.”

A site that ranks well in search engines but can’t convert customers from browsers to buyers is just as bad as a site that provides a great user experience but search engines cannot index it, Hasty said.

It’s a great connection organizations often overlook. Throw in Web standards too for that measure.

Usability + Accessibility + Web Standards = A Winning Plan + Optimized SEO

Usability + Accessibility + Web Standards – that’s the winning combination for me.

The Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) and Knowbility have teamed up to create a curriculum and training program designed to enhance usability practitioners’ knowledge and understanding of accessibility standards and what constitutes an accessible product. The first offering will be at Access U in Austin, Texas, on May 11-12, 2009.

The Web Accessibility Evaluation Certificate program is designed as a way for usability professionals to:

• Expand their “toolkit” of professional practice to include accessibility.
• Understand the standards, guidelines, and US and international laws that apply to accessible information technology.
• Learn a set of tools and benchmarks to gauge success in the implementation of accessible design goals from a user perspective.
• Gain skills needed to accurately assess and report on web application compliance to standards and best practices in accessible web design.
• And prove to their companies that they have gotten the training they need to do all this.

More information, check out UPA Voice February 2009 article about the Web Accessibility Evaluation Certificate program or the 2009 Access U curriculum and course descriptions.

The Web Accessibility Evaluation Certificate program advisory board includes:

• Leaders
  • Whitney Quesenbery and Paul Sherman (UPA past-presidents)
  • Sharron Rush (Knowbility)
• Members
  • Cindy Lu (UPA Member)
  • Karen Mardahl (STC AccessAbility SIG)
  • Amanda Nance (UPA Board of Directors)
  • Mike Paciello (The Paciello Group)
  • Ginny Redish (Redish & Associates)
  • Sarah Swierenga (MSU Usabilty and Accessibilty Center, UPA representative to TEITAC)
  • Gregg Vanderheiden (The Trace Center)
  • Kate Walser (CX Insights and member of TEITAC).