The Dangers of Digging

A Few Words on Accessibility

by Rupert Sharp
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk

Last updated: 12 Sep 2007

When designing a website the sole most important thing for search engines and customers alike is accessibility, if you can't access parts of the website easily how is anyone meant to find them? Easily viewable links, directly accessible Content from the homepage, well explained page titles and sections will all help to stop people 'digging' to find what their looking for. Just like search results, people start to seriously lose interest if what they are looking for is not on the first to third pages, the same applies to web-design.

The first page a customer or Search Engine reaches is usually the index/home page, this is the central link center for your website, the second page a customer will reach are the different sections attached to the home page these pages should contain clear and well written content about the section explaining what that particular area is about and links to the content associated with that page. The third page a customer would see is the main content for example the news articles linked from news section (2nd page), this is where it should usually end. Search Engines are just like people in the way they will get 'bored' if they have to dig further than the third page or tier of your website, search engines will start ignoring pages and customers will go elsewhere. A fourth tier can be acceptable for a more specific explanation of certain aspects of the previous page but generally not a good idea to put any vital content in a fourth tier.

Another important factor of accessibility are meaningful sections and links, people don't always know that they want the ZX70329 Alpha model because they haven't a clue what it is. If a customer has to trawl through hundreds of different products trying to find one that suits their needs they're going to get a tad hacked off, always group products and indeed content into meaningful sections. For example if it's a line of different duck shampoos you're trying to sell don't call the section 'Shampoo' as people won't be able to tell what type of shampoo it is, it could be Head and Shoulders for all they know, in a case like that you would maybe group it into 'Animal Shampoo' or more specifically just 'Duck Shampoos'. Search engines will notice well grouped and relevant content and will in turn increase your position in the search engines for related terms in those groups, from a customer point of view it will make their life easier and therefore make a sale a lot more likely. The moral of the story is you must always model your website from the view of someone who doesn't know what they want (as tends to be the case), show your content, explain what you do and aim them quickly in the right direction before they start falling asleep.