Newsletter issue #61 - 1st April 2009
This issue
Welcome to the April 2009 edition of the Webcredible newsletter!
In this issue:
- Feature article: How to make the most of your website in a recession
- Top tip: Designing effective map-based browsing
- Useful program: DebugBar
- Top link: Link Appeal
- New articles in March
- Webcredible news in March
Enjoy!
Feature article: How to make the most of your website in a recession
Times are undeniably tough and businesses are looking for a much-needed edge to survive. Recent research shows that lower prices aren't necessarily the answer and may end up doing more harm than good. Customer service, on the other hand, is a great way to distinguish your business from your competitors', meaning that the online user experience is now more important than ever. Find out how your website can give you that edge.
Top tip: Designing effective map-based browsing
In the extremely competitive online travel market, consumers need to get as much detail on their destination or hotel as possible. One of their key preoccupations here is location. If users can't effectively browse packages and deals by location, they'll be very likely to leave your site and go to a competitor where they can. Effective map-based browsing is therefore a must in this market. Be sure to follow these essential guidelines when implementing map-based browsing:
- Start from a high level and allow customers to drill-down When a consumer first enters your site they need as many options as possible. It's important with map-based browsing to start from a high-level map view (e.g. the whole world). Users should then be given large, labelled areas to click on, such as countries, then regions, then cities, etc. During this process you must make each area a single hotspot with a mouse over effect to make it appear clickable.
- Add further detail for customers who want specific places It's very common for travel customers to already know the specific city or region that they want to visit, or even the specific resort. To best cater for these customers you must provide an alternative way to find a destination, such as a dropdown list of the most popular destinations. In addition, you should consider adding landmarks at the most detailed map level e.g. town names or major roads to allow users to pinpoint their destination.
- Remember to offer a way back Chances are that customers will want to look at a number of destinations within a particular region. It's no good making users start a new search every time they want to look at another destination. Instead you should give them a way to zoom out to the previous page.
Useful program: DebugBar
DebugBar is a free Internet Explorer plug-in that offers a number of web development features allowing you to inspect the DOM tree, HTTP/S request to check cookies, JavaScript and HTML validation.
Top link: Link Appeal
Link Appeal is a great tool from Webmaster Toolkit to see if a certain page on a website is a valuable place from which to get a link. Simply enter the URL in which you're interested and you'll find out how valuable a link from that page would be, based on factors such as PageRank and number of outbound links.
New articles in March
Read these and many other articles
Webcredible news in March
- Internet users divided on effects of the credit crunch on digital
- Lloyds TSB International launches new site following Webcredible work
- TFM&A online video presentation slides available now
Read these news stories in full
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Find out more about hiring our facilities
Training courses
Come on one of our training courses and become a web guru! Our 18 courses are run across 5 training streams:
- Usability & accessibility courses
- Website optimisation courses
- Online copywriting courses
- Web development courses
- Online marketing courses
Training courses are held every 2 weeks in London and are fantastic - small class sizes, highly interactive and taught by experts.
