Revisit Your Site Carefully

You should put something like Click Tale on your site so you can literally watch behavior of site videos via video playback. I just did it for a site for the first time and it's amazing what you learn.

I agree with Ken. Clicktale is awesome when it comes to actually watching what users do on your site. Can't wait to see your new look! ;)

I just checked out click tale and it seems like its worth the investment. Thanks Ken Gaebler for the recommendation

Some off-the-cuff points:

- About Video – You're good with short video clips. Why not offer a video introduction of yourself, what you do and who and why people should follow or otherwise do business?

- Twitter Landing – Yeah, Twitter buzz won't go away, but since it's the new phone, why not offer a Twitter Landing page where you explain more about what you do and why following you on Twitter is a valuable thing to do

- Subscription options (with language for “newbies”) at the end of each post [you have this, but maybe offer a link to RSS explained page]

- Know if I've never visited your site before and tell me something you think I should consider doing

- Twitter List Stream. Rather than your main Twitter stream (which may be confusing to new arrivals), offer a Twitter List Stream (I know you're a bit averse to Lists) but offer readers a List stream that's relevant to them (borrow someone else's list, say Scoble) or use the stream of a set of key words or hashtags.

- Column number: I use 3 (but have considered switching to 2). Anymore with online attention obesity, a Zen aesthetic may help with funneling and introduction. 2 columns may be more streamlined.

- Don't offer too many buttons. Decide which 2 or 3 actions are most important to you (and your prospects/readers). Befriend the delete key. ;)

- Ads. Different perspectives on ads, but if you're primary goal is community & prospect relations, maybe ads just add noise and perhaps some confusion to new arrivals.

- Tag Cloud. Your biggest tag is Uncategorized. Do you think your tag cloud is useful? Is there a better way to offer search and/or metadata to readers?

Phil

Interesting that you revisit your site while you are in Amsterdam…. Did you eat some of those french fries and mayo? (Now what's up with that..)

Also working on redo some of my approach after I recently was in Europe. And I was a little visit downtown Amsterdam. Maybe its the air or…..???

And that you ask for our help.. cool… I think your blog has great profile. Agree that there is to many subscription options here. Beside some of the comments here my comment is actually about your newsletter. I would not mind more updates from you true your newsletter. The info I have got there has been really great.. :)

Hey one request is to post some info on how you build your Social Media/Blog Strategy Plans…

Cheers.. Are

Hi Chris, I have been giving my site the critical eye also for a month or so. I bought an update to my theme and am working with a graphic artist to help me. If I were your site designer, I would like your 'about' paragraph right at the top of the column, with the follow options below it and I don't think you have too many. Also, I'd like your book at the top of the other column.

I love the “My Top 10 Posts” widget on sites I visit and want to learn how it works and install it on my own site and would like to see it on yours as well. I like your layout and your colors, and I love your use of video. I agree with the comment about a video introduction and I thank PhilBaumann for it, I am going to do that with my site also.

I think you can keep your subscription section, but make the items bigger within that upper right zone. See http://www.MedicalRecordShow (I use Thesis, too)…pretty much the same options, minus the newsletter, in a 4-rectangle grid.

Your Trust Agents pic is the largest item on your page, above the fold; my eyes keep going there. Whatever you want to emphasize more, should probably be biggest, and also in the upper right, and always above the fold.

From what I understand about how eyeballs work on a website, the upper left is where folks start; Thesis lets you have a column there…

Thanks for TrustsAgents Chris, changed our whole co. thinking – My head was exploding with revelation so fast I burnt 15 copies of the audiobook 4 my staff then went and bought them a hard copy to keep (hope you dont mind – Amazon really need to include bulk purchase and multi-recipient one click download functionality). Anyway, we ditched the board room in favour of the local park to sit on the grass and talk about authentic relationships and how they build and translate in an online context & developed some real key honest themes to focus the group message with as loose boundaries as possible. We'd really appreciate your suggestions on which blog/T.A.'s u think deliver the best “real world” B2B and B2C examples and news on companies engaging these techniques. Cheers, Dan Brian @danlinked

I've been working on these same issues with now with my tech blog. Keep in mind, Chris, that pretty much ALL blogs suffer from what I call the “Times Square effect”. Visual overload – no clear focus. Your site isn't as bad as some I've seen.

It is always a hard thing to balance out with a blog.

On your opt-in, always be tracking your conversion rate. But, sidebar opt-in forms always FAR underperform a squeeze page.

At the end of the day, though, your blog works. Unless you think it is not performing well for you, just leave it as is. :)

Apart from your site objectives, of which a lot of great things were pointed out in the previous comments, I think you have another dilemma on your hand, and that involves your personal brand vs the New Marketing Labs brand. At this point, some of your readers/followers may be confused as to what your objectives with respect to each brand. I for one, find your personal blog frank, personal and to the point, while the NML website seems to be very business oriented (it obviously appeals to a different audience). However, when I try to infer the importance or the relationship, i can see the NML logo on your blog is squished and almost unintelligible… One may infer that NML is an afterthought… I think that explaining to your readers the connection between chrisbrogan.com and newmarketinglabs.com, and how they complement/support each other is a bit of information that may eliminate some of that confusion. Just my 2 cents.

I'm only here because you were mentioned by Peter Shankman. So I know you're legit and enjoyed reading your home page and “Best Of” articles.

I'm no techie, so I signed up for the old fashioned “receive by email” – however a little confusing that there's a newsletter AND a blog.
1) didn't realize there was a difference
2) I already have too much to read. Will signing up for both blog and newsletter be Chris Brogan overload?

That said, I've signed up for both, and plan to unsubscribe if one or the other doesn't have high quality/density ratio.

Chris, I'm a longtime reader, and good design is near and dear to my heart. :)

As great as the Thesis theme is for regular customization right out of the box, I'd encourage you to team up with a stellar designer/wordpress programmer who can really make your Thesis installation sing.

IMO, there's a lot of little things that could be done to tighten up your design and emphasize the calls to action that you mentioned.

For example:

-Standardize all your margins and spacing in your sidebars. When everything's aligned differently, and spaced differently, it's hard to direct the viewer's eyes. If everything's organized, however, then you can emphasize something by breaking the established order.

-Move some of your calls to action (newsletter, rss feed, twitter) underneath your logo in the top left. You're a social media expert. . . in a way, they could BE your logo, or integrated into it.

-Get rid of all buttons and things that look like buttons except for your “subscribe” button (and maybe add the word “Free”?)

-Reduce the pages you display at the top to no more than four, if possible. You want your visitors to click every single one. Put the less important pages high up in your sidebar.

Anyway, those are just a few thoughts. I also agree with a lot of Phil's points, above, and I'd be happy to discuss more ideas if you're ever interested.

A couple take 'em or leave 'em thoughts…

People see things in pictures, not in text. Thesis templates test better than most when it comes to controlled eyepath studies (with vector), however, it's important to note that the double righthand column needs to be used efficiently from a user perspective. In other words, the user needs to be very clear as to what you want them to do. You can have choices, but they work best if there's an embedded hierarchy.

Users see only one screen at a time. They view that screen as a “page.” When they scroll, it's a new page. So it's important to know what your site looks like on the first view. (This will make a difference to you because About Chris and Trust Agents get cut off in ways that make what you are showing a bit of a waste. Everything does NOT need to end perfectly but you should try to get a good message in the space you have.)

On a blog, users tend to look to the right when they exit so you'll want the stuff that you put in the righthand column to prevent them from leaving. Because your righthand columns are very socialist (all things are treated equally), the user will not have a clear action directive. (They won't know exactly what you want them to do.) Listing their “orders” in one area may get you more actions. “Here are 5 easy ways to connect with Chris. 1. Sign up for FREE newsletter. 2. Subscribe to RSS feed. 3. Get the blog delivered daily…” You should put those in priority. (This may take some testing.)

Highlighting Speaking and Work with Me, is a great idea. Even if you just put them in a different color. Also, you may want to rearrange the order of the icons. (Remember, navigation on any site accounts for over 50% of the success. Just because something is clear to you, it may not be clear to your user. The more you perfect the navigation, the better your site will be.)

Bounce Rate — It's an important metric but if you are blogging 5+ times per week, it's going to be higher than average. Speed is also a factor and something you may want to check into. Highlighting Twitter in the righthand column will increase your bounce rate. (This has been repeatedly proven with statistical significance.) Some companies are ok with that, others push it below the fold. Search in the upper righthand corner — on a blog — also has been proven to increase bounce rate and limit the user session. You should look at whether or not people are using your search successfully. (Success is determined in the user's brain — so just because you present something does not mean that it's what they wanted. If they leave on the search page or on the page after that, you may have issues with your search.) As an aside, just by giving the search prominence, you are telling the user you want them to browse, not act.

One of the keys to a site like yours is to know what the percentage of traffic is new versus repeat and more important, to know what your CTA (conversion to action) is based on the type of user. You'll want to know what percentage of the folks sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your RSS feed versus an e-mail. The more important something is, the more you should ask for it. (This is why the most successful ecommerce sites have Add to Cart and Buy Now buttons all over the place, not just once.) This is different for everyone and a lot of it depends on your users' sophistication level (read: how savvy they are online.) For example, on one of my sites I now get 1,327 newsletter sign-ups for every one RSS subscriber I get from a feed. (That site caters to CMO's and CEO's of internet companies. If I didn't have the newsletter sign-up, my CTA rates would make me want to slit my wrists.)

Needless to say, getting rid of choices isn't always the right thing unless you really know what you're in it for (i.e., Tim Ferris) and have already done a lot of testing. (You have enough traffic to test easily, so if you haven't already, you may want to look at using Google Website Optimizer or the like.) Also, either ClickTale or CrazyEgg would indeed be helpful for you.

Thanks for this post and allowing me to comment.

P.S. Phil Baumann made a great point about using video on your entry page. If you consolidate the actions, you'd have room for it. (I would highly recommend push-to-play, not auto-start.)

Interesting point Phil. This is an area that Chris certainly could add value but the nuts and bolts info doesn't seem to be his niche. I see Chris Brogan as a guy who works hard to inspire people to do more, be more and work harder at what they do.

I think the reason his bounce rate is so high is because far less than 20% of the people who visit his site would ever be customers. They will however multiply his message and image because he's one of those easy to like people in this world.

That's my $0.02 anyway, very interesting article and observations.

Hi Chris, I have been looking at my site http://NetAdvertisingSuccess.Com and i am fairly new to the whole site making thing so probably can't comment too much on mine, however if i were to take a guess, i would say there are not enough links to other posts of a similar nature. The newsletter subscription gift really should have a page explaining it in more detail. Any tips from people is appreciated since it is a somewhat new site.

Hi Chris,

Most wonderful blog post. I am working on the exact same thing right now in my College class on web analytics. Like why measure traffic or hits when the site may not be performing the way you would like it to. Big question is the “Why people come to your site” one idea in my class is to survey the readers on an exit survey to see if they are getting what they came for.
When I squinted at my blog, and even before I realized I have too many ads and do not have a clear call to action for the visitors.
I ahve been working to provide value rather than being sure to stay on a specific topic or to have a clear call to action.
I am thinking of switching to Thesis and to also work to get more clients for Strategic Internet Marketing consulting.
It would be great if you wanted to check out my site at http://clayfranklin.com and leave a comment about your thoughts on how I could change it.
Looking forward to seeing how you change your site look and your results on the metrics you use to measure the sites success.
To our success,
Clay

In order to get people to view your blog more often check out http://www.sitevacuum.com/

I inspired my blog design from your website but with my taste :D

http://altaeeblog.com

I feel a bit odd saying this (like I'm telling a Harvard professor how to teach his class), but I realized I rarely look at more than one page on your site. Yes, I'm a bouncer.

I looked at the site more carefully and noticed two things:

1) the recent entries links fade into the background – in fact, though I've visited many times, I don't think I really noticed them before

2) the most prominent topics in the tag cloud are “uncategorized” and “article” – which aren't really topics at all. They don't draw attention, so I'm guessing they don't get many clicks.

Hope this helps.

Chris, it's comforting to know that a pro can be humble and share insights with the rest of us. I'm fascinated to see that you've visited my site (the fact showed up in some analytics). My project these past few weeks has been making great recordings of myself reading excerpts of my book. I want to post the files on a page where I'd like to boost the time spent on that specific page.

A few recoding efforts went well but I failed, for technological reasons, at downloading the files to my site.

I'm still overcoming my dweebishness with recording technology and compatibility limitations with my site. I'll do it yet ;^ )

Next project: videos. I'm uncomfortable with the process of doing webinars as colleagues suggest. Makes me wistful for human contact. Cyberlife is so limiting…

Best,

Yocheved Golani http://www.linkedin.com/in/yochevedgolaniink
http://twitter.com/yochevedgolani
http://www.yochevedgolani.com and
http://itsmycrisisandillcryifineedto.blogspot.com/

*I went two column at my site (thinklikeablackbelt.com) because 3 seem simply too much to digest if a site is about learning and inviting others in. It's hard to invite guests into a cluttered living room filled with signs telling them what to do. It's as if you are sending two messages: Your posts say “let's build something great together;” your site layout says, “Do this (follow/sign up/comment) for me.”

*Your “About Chris” blurb in the far right column might better be written by someone else — perhaps a testimonial? — because the current words sound devoid of your personality. You are far more than that blurb.

*I would highlight your how-to posts a bit more, encouraging people to dig deeper into your site.

I suspect that most people arrive to your website directly from following you on Twitter (as I do). As such they are interested in what you have to say and not in your calls for action and subscription options. You are perceived as a thought leader and not as an affiliate marketer…

Chris;
To all that has already been said, I would only add:
1) High bounce rates are typical for a blog – people arrive on the post, read it and leave. Because the time on page doesn't count in the bounce rate calc, it registers as a bounce because they only looked at one page. So if you bring people to the latest post, many of them will show up as a bounce.
2) It's an almost universal truth involving human perception: less is more. I learned this phrase while learning to write fiction but have since then learned to apply to it just about anything which involves a human interaction. One of the comments suggested focusing attention on just 1 call to action in the visible (above the fold) portion of your site. Sure you may lose people who would respond to one of the other calls you have on the page, but you would win all those who don't take in the call because they are too busy processing all that other information.
As an example of all this in my own field. We're in the business of making sales and inbound marketing automation easy. A complex field and thus to make it easy we were faced with a difficult design challenge for our home page. We could have done what all the Demand Generator companies choose to do, which is to cram their home page with all the buzz words of their feature sets. Good for SEO, bad for the visitors. Instead we tried to focus attention on the benefits and embed the features (and our solution involves Demand Gen and other components, too), in automated pop-ups which can be made to “stick” or pause so you can read them. http://www.inbound-marketing-automation.ca if you wish to see this in practice.
3) Your site is feature rich, benefit poor. We all want, as another of the comments points out, to know what's in it for me when we visit a site.

We have been wrestling with this as well. We have a combination of text and large buttons (like a GPS). We built the GPS-like buttons to highlight 4 main calls to action. Initially we had text above and below the buttons. Then it occurred to me that on smaller screens than my 22″ viewers aren't seeing 2 of the 4 buttons. So, we moved all text below the buttons and are hoping the buttons prompt a visitor to use the site.

If anyone has a chance, let me know what you think about our buttons. My idea was to make the site VERY simple to navigate and use with the metaphor of large automotive style GPS buttons. My hope is that these buttons would accomplish this.

chris… right on the money re: the “purpose” of a site. All too often the very essence of why a site is created in the first place, is lost. also, presenting information WHEN users are ready to view it is highly overlooked.

we too are constantly out to change the paradigms of small business owners trying to embrace the web.
http://local-marketplace.com

thanks for posting this great article!

cheers,
//dave