Be careful to use key words that are simple and clear for your visitors. Web site visitors don’t really read — they scan. Usually, they look for highlighted text and other noticeable keywords that give them quick clues to 1) “What’s on this page” and 2) “What can I do from here?”

The trick is to choose keywords that a user will notice and that will be instantly meaningful. But be careful: words that have multiple meanings can trip up your site visitors. Bottom line is: be sure to use words in the way that your visitors expect — and if in doubt, rewrite.

Consider a woodworking site, whose navigation includes “shop.” Will the user expect it to mean online shopping or about the workshop? If I’m looking to buy, I’d click that link — and if I ended up at a page about the workshop, maybe I’d go back and start over. Or, maybe I wouldn’t, if the phone rang at that moment.

There’s an easy fix for this scenario. Adding a small cart icon or a dollar sign to the nav button (or using “shopping”) would probably clear things up. Or, substituting “woodshop” or “workshop” would provide clarity in the other direction.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Communication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.