Accessibility is Optimization

There are different ways of defining accessibility. To most people, they probably think it means making the website easier to be understood by those with seeing or hearing disadvantage. While I do agree that all web design should strive to build sites with this in mind, we are going to be talking about another perspective.

There are many schools of thought on what is the ideal number of choices that should be presented to a reader of a site. Too many might confuse or overwhelm your reader, and too few might project the wrong image of not having enough. Like going to a garden store and finding they have only three types of plants to choose from. Or conversely to go to an auto parts store and find an unending list of parts with no guidance as to which one would be right for you.

I'm sure somewhere there is a magical number that can tell you what the exact number of choices are, but that number should be determined by what the site has to offer.

A sports centered site may have hundreds of links, they cater to just about every sporting event known in existence to mankind, so they need to provide the appropriate number of links so that any visitor can find the topic they are looking for.

Now, if you head over to the Nike website, the home page loads up a flash movie, and it has a total of 5 links found on the page. There are 4 regional choices for the user (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America). Once you select your region it opens up to a site that you would expect from a shoe retailer - sizes, models, colors, etc.

Since Nike is not trying to be everything to everyone, their site calls for less options - so that the visitor can focus on what they came to the site for.

So how is all of this related to Search Engine Optimization?

Traffic from Search Engines like Google can bring you tons of visitors, but if those visitors can not find what they are looking for, you have wasted time and energy getting that visitor to your site. So many times a site fails not because they couldn't get the potential buyer to the site, they failed because the site did not make it easy for the visitor to find what you promised them when they clicked on your listing.

Here is an example of what I am talking about.

www.coenosium.com

Here is a website that has a lot to offer however because of its poor design it really does little more than frustrate the visitor. The person that put it together is obviously very knowledgeable about plants. Unfortunately, that great knowledge is not translated by the terrible design of this site. Too bad really. What I often hear from people like this is that the internet really does not work for them. Not realizing the gold mine just beyond their reach, their business will dwindle and die when hard financial times come. When all it would have taken is a redesign of the website to open up markets beyond what they could ever hope to reach.

I am not saying you can not build your own website and succeed. You can and many do. But those people really put a lot of effort into how they present what they have to offer. In order to really capitalize on the huge potential that the World Wide Web has to offer, your site has to look trustworthy. If you have information that a searcher wants, your website has got to present that information as soon as the visitor arrives on your site.

Imagine a traditional store, brick and mortar, that has put tons of money into advertising that they have a particular book for sale. You get to the store and wander around trying to find the book. If this is not the only store in town that has this book for sale, you leave and buy it elsewhere. The same is true on the internet. The store owner has just wasted a lot of money in advertising and his potential customers are just going to the next store to buy what he has to offer.

Optimizing the website to enhance the visitors ease of finding what they are looking for is just a part of what Search Optimizing is about.