PlusOne - Musings of a marketer

I must admit that after reading this article An Outsider’s Perspective on Your Web Site which is made up of an interview with Joshua Hay, the first thing I did was revisit my Caricature King website and try to view it from a new perspective.

I can see some changes I need to make and have started to implement some others, but to be honest, I am so close to it sometimes it is hard to see the wood for the trees.

The article raises some important aspects for any website and I’ll cover some of what I think are the most important ones here.

One of the key elements in the article mentions a thing called the active window. Now I have heard the term before, but this article places it into perspective:

The active window is the central real estate on your computer screen. Eye tracking studies show that when people are viewing web pages, their eyes start in the upper left corner and follow along the top navigation, until they hit the end of the browser, at which point they travel diagonally through the center of the screen until they stabilize at the left navigation. The sight path then proceeds to go back and forth across the center area, between left navigation and right column, then back and forth, back and forth, engaging within the central area, hence the term active window.

One important aspect is that the active window is PART of the screen, and does NOT include the navigation or the right column if one exists.

The eye tracking mentioned is a bit at odds with other studies I have read that highlight the importance of headlines, and the high levels of readership of text under a photo or graphic. But what both the other study does correspond with is the fact that the eye is moving quickly and taking in a lot of information.

Joshua goes on to say that the active window is also the information that is above the fold. In other words, the information that is visible without the need to scroll.

Within this central area, must be a clear call to action and the Unique Selling Proposition or what Joshua calls the Unique Value Proposition. This he says is the key. It is the one single-most important aspect that gets the momentum happening to bring the customer to the desired end point - your check out page. Not only should the proposition have it clear what the best action to take is, but it should be very easy, and obvious, how to take that action.

The article goes on to look at how this progression process needs to take place on every page, including all landing pages.

Interestingly, Joshua says that using the site navigation bar is less than optimal because it means the visitor has to disengage with the ‘active window’

The article also points to a site that has an awesome navigation menu a real eye opener to a customer centric approach!