10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites

One article that has made the rounds of Applecore’s inboxes is Paul Boag’s 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites, which we originally found on Smashing Magazine. As Boag states in his introduction:

We all make mistakes running our websites. However, the nature of those mistakes varies depending on the size of your company. As your organization grows, the mistakes change. This post addresses common mistakes among large organizations.

We took these 10 harsh truths and added our own viewpoints, and what your company can do to change them.

1. You Need a Separate Web Division

There needs to be one division for web. Period. And it’s for this reason that outsourcing your web needs is so helpful: no one trespasses on anyone’s turf, and decisions are made for the benefit of the website, rather than anyone’s ego. A single unified team means that the website won’t be a brochure, or an extended resume: it will be an accurate representation of your company’s daily life, and often, objective outsiders can provide the best picture.

2. Managing Your Website is a Full-Time Job

This is self-explanatory. In order for a website to be truly useful, it needs to have a dedicated team. But something else to think about: it needs to have a dedicated team that’s empowered to make forward-thinking changes.

3. Periodic Redesign is Not Enough

Careful consideration through every stage of the website’s life, along with a willingness to tweak minor things that don’t seem to need drastic makeovers, can save so many hours of redesign in the long run. Sometimes, the only way to get this kind of insight is by asking a third party to consult.

4. Your Website Cannot Appeal to Everyone

A website designed without this in mind will be too incoherent to serve your business well. You can’t please everyone. You can, however, determine which of your demographics is the most important to your business.

5. You are Wasting Money on Social Networking

In other words, when you proceed into social networking, make sure you understand what makes social media work: that it’s people connecting to people, not just another venue to talk about your company. Use social networking to make your company more human, because at the end of the day, no one wants to visit your blog or Twitter account if they don't get anything in return.

6. Your Website is Not All About You

Self explanatory. No jargon, no insider acronyms. Your website isn’t being designed to suit the tastes of your staff; it’s being built to cater to the needs of your users. After all, they’ll be the ones spending their time there, so their requirements shouldn’t be ignored.

7. You’re Not Getting Value From Your Web Team

A web designer brings much more to the table than simple programming. They understand what makes a website work, what translate best to the web and what features are most helpful to a user. Use this amazing resource to produce the best possible website.

8. Design by Committee Brings Death

Harsh, but accurate. Design by committee is well-intentioned, meant to give everyone a fair stake in the decision making process. However, often what’s required is an educated, objective decision.

9. A CMS is Not a Silver Bullet

A Content Management System is like any tool— it won’t make the decisions for you; it can only make the decisions easier to implement. You need to have the resources in place for timely, relevant updates.

10. You Have Too Much Content

Constant review of content ensures that there’s no useless information taking away from your most important messages—only what is fresh, relevant and useful.

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Does any of this sound familiar? If so, interact with us--the solution is closer than you think.

Understanding Bounce Rates

by Greg Pike, Applecore Web Developer

Bounce rate. It's one of the top Google Analytics metrics and yet many people are still confused by it. What does it mean next to exit rates? What's the difference?

 A “bounce” is when a user has shown little interest in your website. In other words, when a user hits your website only to leave or ignore it immediately.

 The bounce rate is therefore the percentage of users who bounce. If four out of every ten users bounce, your bounce rate is 40%. This says four out of every ten users came to your site, didn't find what they were looking for, and left.

 Bounce rate: "I came. I puked. I left." - Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Analytics Evangelist and author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.

Average Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a performance measure for a website, particularly websites keen on converting users into customers like e-commerce websites. Most bounce rates will be somewhere between 35% and 60%. It's good practice to strive to reach the lowest possible bounce rate you can for a website.

Causes of High Bounce Rates

High bounce rates can be caused by a number of factors.

• Poor content. Users are nosy and want to learn more, but if your content isn't useful or not relevant they will not waste their time.
• Misplaced links, buttons, graphics or ads. Web users are very impatient and if they don't see what they want right away, they'll simply leave. Review how you're communicating to your users or redesign your website to draw them in. Google’s Website Optimizator will allow you to compare visitor metrics for multiple versions of the same page. Try creating several versions of a page to determine what will perform better.
• Abbreviated domain name. Many organizations share abbreviated names. For example, MWI is both the name of a search engine marketing company (mwi.com) and conflict mediation company (mwi.org).
• Start pages. Any user that has your website set as their start page will hit your website every time they open their web browser.
• Information pages. Users can be quick to jump around to find the information they desire. Information pages tend to have high bounce rates because users hit them to learn something specific, and when they acquire that knowledge they return to where they came from or move on.

There are some websites that will have high bounce rates and there's very little that can be done to change it. For the other websites that want to take action and lower their bounce rate, there isn't really one solitary solution. Every website has different content, different audiences and many other distinctive factors that make it unique-- which means improving bounce rate can only be taken on a case by case basis. That magic word or one-step process to give you a better bounce rate? It doesn't exist. 

Bounce Rate and Exit Rate

At first glance, it might be difficult to see a difference between bounce and exit rate. Exit rate is similar to bounce rate, but differs in that it calculates the percentage of users that "exit" the site from any particular page. For example, a user hits the default landing page and navigates to a news article. There is no bounce because the user stayed on the website. Then the user goes to google.com and searches for something. This is an exit. Exit rate is the percentage of users that leave the site from a given page divided by the total number of users that visit that same page.

 Let's break it down.

Ten users visit the Applecore Games page.

Two users hit this page from a search query and the other eight all get there from the site navigation (meaning they were already on the Applecore site before going to the games).

One of those two users (from the search engine) leaves the page and goes back to their search results and the other one clicks a link and plays one of the games.

Of the other eight, three users leave the website and go to eBay to buy books on the definition of Exit Rates.

The other five click on links and also play the games.

Bounce Rate: 1 / 10 - 10%
Exit Rate: 3 / 10 - 30%

 

Exit rate is not necessarily a bad thing. Users cannot stay on your website forever. It does, however, give you insight as to what pages leave your visitors feeling the need to move on.

Understanding Web Readers (and Non-Readers) − Creating Usable and Effective Web Content

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Newspapers need to reinvent themselves

It’s no secret that the rise of the Internet has hit the newspaper industry hard. A recent survey by Pew Research Center illuminates this fact, revealing that more than 50% of 259 papers surveyed reported significant layoffs of newsroom staff.

To combat this attrition, newspapers are fighting back by creating blogs and microsites that allow readers to focus their attention on specific topics, and journalists are being trained to create and upload video content for the Web. Niche online ad networks are also gaining popularity, whereby newspapers band together to sell ads online. Industry observers are suggesting that newspaper publishers should publish digital editions for PDAs and cell phones and also publish more Web-only content.

Source: Mediaweek