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

Report stolen content to Google

I recently discovered a website that had stolen the content from the website project I am working on. I found the duplicate content culprits using Google, I took this to mean Google had indexed their page and was not indexing mine due to the search engine seeing my content as being the duplicate.

This has been a real problem for me in my current role as Google Webmaster Tools is telling me that Google has indexed 2/116 URLs of the website. This is a big problem concerning SEO’s – I need to find out why Google isn’t indexing the pages and what to do about the stolen content.

After studying the website that copied the content, and the process needed to go through with Google in order to remove their page from the index I decided not to go through Google. It seemed to me that the process is a bit drawn out and involves correspondence with not only Google but the site containing the stolen content.

Here is the process to report stolen content to Google

Basically there is a copyright act for the internet called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This act protects content owners publishing content on the web – providing they publish the content first. You have to write to Google in the US declaring stolen content, then the website that stole your content, and somewhere along the line hopefully the matter is resolved.

I do not have the luxury of time, as of course we all know – time is money! So I decided not to contact Google in the US, as I am in the UK and the offending website is in Nigeria. I instead decided to re-write the pages they have copied. This new content should draw the search engines back to the website and have them index the pages.

Looks like the under-handed criminals have won this battle – but with my much more SEO text and less spelling mistakes in the new content, they will not win the war!

wayne Google domain, duplicate content, Google, index, internet marketing, search engines, seo, URL