Hey everyone!

I'm so excited for our Monthly Teletopic Call on Websites next week (April 22nd at 4pm Eastern, if you haven't already heard! Click here & scroll down to learn more). I've been immersing myself in information about usability and navigation of websites for the past month or so, and can't wait to share what I've been learning with you!

One of the main problems I see with websites (and with most marketing material, including brochures and videos) is that they are often written from the perspective of the business or organization, instead of written for the the user/reader/viewer.

When we sit down to develop our website, we think of all the information we want people to know about us. But oftentimes viewers never read all that material, even if it's well-written. Instead most people who are on the internet come to your site with a very specific need or question they are asking.

Think about how you navigate when you are on the web. When looking for something specific, like the answer to a question, how do you search? Do you find a webpage and read every word on the page, hoping and trusting that somewhere on that page will be the answer to your question, or do you instead skim and scan, looking for subheads and bullets that will tell you if this page will even answer your question?

Research (and my own personal experience) shows that we do a lot of skimming and scanning, and not a lot of sitting down with coffee and reading the whole website page by page. We grab and go with information on the web. And the design of our websites needs to reflect that fact. Hence Usability and Navigation have become my buzzwords here in the office.

So, of course, I'm now in the process of redesigning the Horse Sense website, actually splitting it into three sites to improve usability and navigation, and to help avoid confusion. Keep up with this redesign process for me and for Horse Sense on this blog and on the telecalls. I always love helping people learn from my mistakes!

Happy Trails,