Fulfilling the visitor's goal
Good Experience – The Page Paradigm
Like another thought about bread crumbs wherein it is posited that people who use them tend to be the regular users of the site and not the visitors who are there just looking for something.
Another thing I noticed and emphasized in a page design (currently re-worked by someone else) is the search page on the bowdoin web site. I knew from search keyword reports that a lot of people were searching for the phone directory, addresses, and such. Funny since the section navigation (left hand) on the search page held all of those commonly appearing terms. So the solution was (and will be again) to put the most commonly related links right above the search field so to say “also available: phone directory | common addresses” and the such… the phrases dropped off but since the page was re-worked when we put google search on I notice in the google reports that the keywords are appearing again.
This article reinforces many thoughts.
The author Mark Hurst closes with this:
Practicing the Page Paradigm
Designing a user experience with the Page Paradigm in mind requires three steps:
- Identify users’ goals on each page.
- De-emphasize or remove any page elements (or areas of a site) that don’t help to accomplish the goal.
- Emphasize (or insert) those links, forms, or other elements that either take users closer to their goal, or finally accomplish it.