You know when a web site isn’t working for you. The beauty of the web is that you don’t have to tolerate it for more than a second before you’re gone… on to another site that better meets your needs.

But what actually happened on that site you abandoned?  Maybe it just didn’t offer what you were looking for… or maybe it did, but failed to let you know.

We can quickly sense when we are on track to finding the content we’re looking for by detecting what some experts call the “scent” of information. As it turns out, people behave on web sites in a manner very similar to dogs sniffing around for food – or whatever else they’re looking for. We get on a particular scent trail and follow it.

So designing and writing the content of your web site around the idea of creating easy-to-follow scent trails is vital to your success online.

Where are the critical scent markers on a web site?

Far more important than your site’s main navigation are the text links that you build into your copy. Each one emits a scent that your visitors can follow. As the scent grows stronger, your visitor’s confidence level increases that he’s progressing in the right direction.

According to the renown studies of User Interface Engineering (UIE) and its founder, Jared Spool, when a link is comprised of 7 to 12 words, people will successfully follow it 50-60% of the time. The optimal length… 9 to 10 words – provided that the copy contains what Spool calls a “trigger word.”

Imagine the language that one of your visitors might type into a search engine to find what they’re looking for on your site.  These are trigger words. Not industry jargon… but the words that a customer would actually use. These words grab their attention.

Having grown so accustomed to “click here” as the only text link on most web pages, 9 to 10 blue, underlined words may feel awfully verbose. But as it turns out, one of the great scent killers is short copy. The most successful sites have surprising long pages and reveal that users are quite willing to scroll.

How many links are too many? The researchers at UIE have yet to discover an upper limit to the number of links on a site’s home page. Users are quite willing to process them and, like your dog, just want the scent to grow stronger with every click.

How do you know if you’re providing your visitors with the scent trails they need to graduate from visitor to customer?

There are a handful of scent killers of which you must be mindful.  First and foremost, if your users resort to the “back” button, you have a problem. When a site’s design forces the use of the “back” button even a single time, only 18% of users will find what they’re looking for. When your users never touch the “back” button, 45% will succeed in finding what they want.

Another sign of failure is what some refer to as “pogosticking,” a navigation path characterized by bouncing between levels of the information hierarchy (and back to the home page over and over).  This is a clear sign that your links are either too vague (to short or too cute), or are simply misleading.

When users pogostick through your site, only 11% will find what they need.  When they navigate without pogosticking, 55% succeed.

Finally, when users resort to using the search feature on your site to find products or content rather than navigating directly to their destination from the home page or category listings, they have failed to pick up a scent. With few exceptions, search features ultimately yield a 30% average success rate for visitors compared to 53% for users who don’t search.

How do you design your site for scent?

Contrary to popular practice, start with your content pages, and end with the home page. Content pages house what your visitors want. Your job is to sprinkle their scent in the appropriate places to enable visitors to find them easily.

Depending on the complexity and scale of your content and/or product offerings, you may need to create an information hierarchy to allow users to drill down to what they’re looking for… home page… product category page (product gallery)… product page.

UIE has learned that on gallery pages, link order is important. And alphabetically is the worst way to organize content. Recognizing that 50% of searchers give up after viewing only one page of search results, longer gallery pages work better than short ones. Certainly there is an upper limit to how many products you put on a single page, but err on the side of long rather than short as long pages beat short ones almost every time.

And as important as anything else, watch your site usage statistics and click paths to find and correct the problem spots.

I’m hung up right now on the issue of online conversion and why conversion rates are, in my estimation, generally so far beneath where they could be.

One reason we fail to convert visitors into buyers online is that we fail to speak to them in a way that coincides with their needs at the time.  Sometimes this is understandable.  We can’t read the minds of our visitors, can we?  In fact… sometimes, maybe we can.

For many of us, the bulk of our site traffic comes from search engines. People turn a question of some kind into a search term/phase; enter it into a search engine; and follow what they perceive to be the most relevant resulting link.

Let’s consider that first action that people take when searching.  They translate a question of some kind into a search phrase or term. Let’s think about two people – each with an interest in buying a digital camera.

The first person searches: “digital camera”

The second person searches: “Nikon D80 10.2 Megapixel”

What can we infer about what these two people need to see in order for them to achieve sufficient resolution to take action on their interest?

We could assume that the first person is earlier in the buying cycle than the second.  She is searching in general terms and therefore may not be firmly resolved on what exactly she needs.  The appropriate landing page for her might help her to narrow her choices. We could invite her to shop by price, resolution, or brand. We could show her the best sellers. We could offer her advice on how to choose a digital camera.

To push for an immediate sale when a person uses highly generalized search terms is rarely an effective approach.

Now let’s look at our second person.  He has entered a highly specific search – suggesting that he is deeper into the buying process.  What might he need to see when he gets to your site?

First, he had better see that particular camera prominently featured on the page. He will probably be interested in pricing, the availability of that particular camera, technical specifications, reviews of that camera, return policies, accessories for that camera, and an escape route to other options in case he concludes that this is not the camera for him.

You see the difference.  Through their search language, each prospect gave us a clue about where they were in the buying process.  From there, we can make educated guesses about what they need to see when they arrive at our site.  It is our job to give it to them through our landing page design and SEO planning. Is this a perfect science?  No.  But if we do this well, we will sell more online.