What exactly is orientation? On a website, orientation is a behavior whereby users determine their position in a website with reference to another point—establishing a sense of place.
Many times, the reference point is a home page or a website’s domain name. However, when people click a link from an organic search listing or a search engine ad, they don’t always go to a site’s home page. They most likely land on a page in the middle of the website, or a landing page created specifically as a destination from someone clicking on a search engine ad.
For web searchers to feel confident that a page or a site offers the product, service or information they desire, web pages should present clear “you are here” cues. Web searchers use a wide variety of “you are here” cues to determine a sense of place on a website—both textual and graphical cues. As a search usability professional, I want to understand which textual and graphical cues are important to my target audience. Where should these cues be placed on a web page? If it is a textual cue, how should it be formatted (color, font/typeface, white space)? If it is a graphical or multimedia cue, how large or small (in dimension) should it be? Where should these cues be placed on a category page or an article page?
Here are some questions we commonly ask web searchers during usability testing to determine their mental models before they click on a link on a SERP:
- Whose website are you about to view? How did you determine this?
- Which section of the website, if any, are you about to view? How did you determine this?
- What content do you believe you will see after clicking on this link?
- Do you believe that the information you desire will be available after you click on this link? Why or why not?
For example, if web searchers use a URL or domain name as an information scent, which is extremely common for navigational searches, they often look at the logo, which is a graphical “you are here” cue to establish ownership of the site. A tagline or a slogan can also be a “you are here” that establishes and reinforces site ownership. Web searchers can also quickly scan the URL, which is a textual cue. This orienting process occurs very quickly (often in less than 1 second) and is a normal process when people navigate from web page to web page.
Read the full article by Search Engine Land >>>
Social Links Sidebar