Frank Schulte-Ladbeck

A user interface is more than the buttons and menu bars on your website. There are all types of navigational elements, but the words that you deploy can have a greater impact.

We are careless in our use of language. We take a word that we feel best suits our intentions, even though it might not suit our meaning. Sometimes we are not aware that words imply meanings to others that may be contrary to our intent. Sometimes we reveal our thoughts when we did not intend. Our users though will pick up on the cues that words transmit, so we should consider which words will prompt the actions that we desire.

    You are selling widgets to the public, so you have a page entitled “widgets” or “products”. Standard fare for a website, and a user coming to your site obviously is looking for this item. What if they are looking for items under $20? Does the word “products” help them? Let’s be more specific: what if the customer is looking for a bargain, because they need to save money? Will they find what they want under “products”? They will, but the implication is that they will have to hunt for this item. They may not want to go through that task. What if you have an option “cheap products”? Cheap does imply low cost, but it does have the implication of low quality too. “Sale Items” may work; “under $20″ may be better.

    This problem surfaces on a website more often than you may imagine. The visitor is going to be on our site for a short time span before deciding to stay or leave, so we need to choose the words carefully that will call them to stay. After they have decided to stay, we have to prompt them to take specific actions. There are various techniques in the design process of a site which assist in this effort, but we are not always so creative when it comes to words. Users want to feel comfortable, so we rely on phrases that we see on many other sites. If they want to know about the author , they will scan for an “About” page. If they do not see a page with that label, they may scan for the “Contact” page, since author information is sometimes placed in that location.

    Having consistent lables to other websites can be good for creating a user interface; however, we can take the expected in a slightly different direction to pique the interest of our visitors. Did you notice how I set up the posts on the landing page of this blog? I have an excerpt, then there is the means to click through to read the remainder of the post. Typically the phrase used is “continue reading this post”. To draw attention to the fact that the user should click, designers may increase the size of the font of this phrase, or they may highlight in a box or by a color element. I chose to alter the senetence to “Intrigued? Well read on”. The excerpt is meant to intrigue them, so I am asking were you intrigued? I then ask them to take an action. The basic concept of continue reading is expressed, but not in those words. The phrase does catch a user’s attention, because it is not quite what was expected, but it fits the parameters, so it helps to force a decision. This phrase may not be a big deal, but there are moments like this all over your blog. You could place a header over a tag cloud that states “tag cloud”, or you could invite them to take an action: “explore through tags”.

    Subtle differences from the norm help the user to think, and I feel that may be better for your site. Take the tag cloud example. These are becoming common on sites, and most users understand their function, so they glance over that section without a thought to interact with the site in that way. By having the heading stopping the user’s attention on what has been written, you may have created the opportunity to cause an action that benefits your site. Consider other features, like breadcrumbs. Those are the lines that show the visitor where they are on the site (home>category>subcategory>post). Intuitively the user understands that he can click on part of the breadcrumb to be taken to a page that contains other related posts in a category, or he could go back to the home page. What if you prefaced your breadcrumbs with a phrase like “You are Here”. We imply that this is a map. We have caught their attention, and they may actually click the category or subcategory button to orientate themselves in the site.

    Does this method work all of the time? Each change of word or phrase will effect the visitor, but they may decide not to take the action. Most of our visitors will never read an “About” page, unless they want to know the author better. I titled my “About” page on one site “About the ever curious Frank”, which caused the hits on that page to rise. I have been trying an experiment for a while now, where I replaced the navigation bar that had page titles to one that had icons. Initially, I did see a spike in traffic to other pages, because I think users were curious. I am letting the icons stand, to discover if they will continue to draw visitors in after the novelty has worn off. Personally, I like the clean look of the icons.

   Words carry a weight that we do not always stop to consider, but we may want to think of the possibilities if we want users to interact with the site more. 

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