Most of the time your Web content is being referenced visually via an active link or something in print – but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we need to communicate a piece of content through spoken word. This transition is considerably harder to make for most users, unless they are in front of the computer when they hear the information you’re trying to direct them to – even then it’s not nearly as foolproof as something they can read or click.
I became acutely aware of how awkward this transition can be several weeks ago when I heard a radio personality point the listeners to a piece of relevant content by saying over the airwaves: “Visit the site and search for xyz.” I instantly felt my anxiety level go up! It was content that was interested in finding, but the idea of being left to a site search left me feeling hopeless. Why would I trust your site search to give me relevant content? How do I know what to search for? Will the search results give me the most up to date article on the subject matter? The list goes on!
There are better ways of directing people to your content than sending them to your URL and telling them to search.
The 2 standards offer much more direction and give the user considerably more hope.
The oldest of the two methods are giving out your URL and suggesting the user search for a specific keyword. This eliminates most of the anxiety for the user when it comes to searching your site, for one reason: it’s assumed that you have done what it takes to make sure that the keyword is associated with the content and will return the content you’re verbally sending them to. If you haven’t done that, then you should assume your users are now frustrated.
The second, and what I recommend, is to give the url to your site followed by a slash then the keyword. eg. www.ailema.com/localhost This method keeps the user in ONE process – typing in the location bar. Users don’t have to figure out where your search is, whether or not the results are going to be accurate, etc.
Yes, I know my preferred method requires some technical attention on the administrator side – but doesn’t all affective UI?
No related posts.
One Comment
This is a big deal for me, since I work at a radio station. We have a keyword system in place, were people are told to go to our site and put in a keyword. It would be trivial to make it work as a /keyword though.
Part of our problem is speling. People can’t spel. So when we say on the air “go to our site and put in keyword praise”, people put in prays or praize or braize, or whatever. So we end up making a whole bunch of keywords.
I’m not sure saying “go to wcsg.org/praise would be any easier for the end user.