Architect Web Design

Test usability and get fast results

After reading an article on improving conversions by Avinash Kaushik (this article is also full of free SEO and internet marketing tips) I decided to try out one of his suggestions – Five Second Test

The purpose of this usability testing tool is to find out what the users attention is draw to within the first 5 seconds they are on your website. This information could prove invaluable to increasing conversions and how users interact with your website.

If a user is not sure what the purpose of your website is then you should optimise the design of your site to increase visitor attention and conversions.

The process is simple:

1. Take a screen shot of the web page that you wish to test
2. Go to Five Second Test and register
3. Upload your screen shot
4. Send out the test link or you can wait for random users to stumble upon it using the ‘random test’ link on the homepage
5. Gather feedback on your website

Tester’s are then presented with a screen telling them they have 5 seconds to look at the screen shot and remember what they see. Then a form appears with 5 fields – all the tester has to do is fill in what they remember about the website. This can be anything that the user decides – there are no right or wrong answers!

Here you can find the test that I set up earlier today:

http://fivesecondtest.com/test/jpOVGukN

Using the information that I gather here I plan to create variations of this web page and A/B split test those different variations to increase conversions.

I am in no way affiliated with Five Second Test – if you have experiences good or bad with this service please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you.

wayne Design browser, conversions, free seo tips, internet marketing, optimise, usability, web design

What’s Google Caffeine and what does it mean for SEO?

On Monday 10th August the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog was updated with details of the new Google Caffeine update that Google plans to implement soon. Google are describing this update as ‘under the hood‘ meaning this update should not affect rankings dramatically.

The purpose of the update is to make the coding behind Google search more effective to make searches more accurate, faster and more scalable. Here is the quote from the Google Caffeine Blog Post:

It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions

What’s interesting about this is that this update (no details on when this update will be applied to normal Google search) is the first one in a series of updates. It’s clear Google has been working on this for some months and it is not a reaction to the launch of Bing. Over the next couple of months it will be interesting to see what Google has in store to keep itself as the number 1 search engine in the world.

In the meantime you can test out the new Caffeine update by going to http://www2.sandbox.google.com to test the Caffeine update using the Google.com index. Experimenting with this should give you an idea of what to expect from the update. Google are requesting that if you have any feedback on the update to go to the ‘Dissatisfied? Help us improve‘ link at the bottom of the page and use the word Caffeine in the subject field.

wayne Google Google, search engines, seo