When should I bring in the usability team?
Combined with an SEO campaign, usability and accessibility can be improved at any stage in a web site's lifecycle, whether during the build or after the web site is up and running. Naturally, the earlier in a site's development that usability and accessibility are implemented the better, to save on any re-design or re-engineering, however, the following improvements can be enjoyed at any time:
- Faster to use - some web site design software, such as Dreamweaver, can add a lot of superfluous code. During the SEO process, this unnecessary code is stripped out, making the site faster to load and use. If the site needs to be re-coded, using CSS, (Cascading Style Sheets), because it separates style and layout from content, makes it much faster to download, as well as more search engine friendly.
- Easier to navigate - as part of the SEO process, the navigation of a site is often re-optimised, to reflect the most popular search terms used by the target audience, according to data supplied by the search engines themselves. This not only improves its visibility, but improves usability, by focussing the site's structure on the topics of most interest to visitors. In addition, a site map, breadcrumbs and descriptive text links (rather than just 'click here') are very search engine friendly features which also enhance the visitor experience.
- More relevant and content rich - making a site more search engine friendly often involves adding more relevant, keyword-focussed content, in the form of product information, news, glossaries. This turns any web site into a more useful resource for visitors.
- Better connected - Google in particular, places a high value on the quality and relevance of third party links to and from a web site. This 'hub and authority' concept is a key part of Google's ranking algorithm. Likewise, a well-connected site, that links to a range of relevant, content-rich sites, is of benefit to visitors, as well as search engine spiders.
- More accessible to disabled visitors - as part of the optimisation process, a site is often re-engineered to be 'spiderable'. With a spiderable site, search engine spiders can get into it, read the tags and content and follow the links and then decide what the site is about and what its ranking will be under a particular search term.
Assistive technologies used by disabled people, such as text readers or Braille displays, work in a very similar way to search engine spiders, as they 'spider' the site, read the content and links and present it back to the user in a visitor-friendly format. Therefore, a site that's search engine friendly is already a good way towards being disabled-accessible. By giving informational images ALT descriptions and giving decorative images null ALT descriptions, (or alt="") or by making forms accessible, for example, both spiders and disabled visitors can experience more of a site's content, more easily.
