I Can’t find my car keys or your website

I often lose my car keys and when it comes to finding them, they always seem to turn-up in the least-likely place. You’d think that I’d learn from this and ensure I don’t lose them again… but no, it happens time and time again. The only comforting thought is that I know I’m not the only guy in the world this phenomenon applies to.

The last time this happened, it got me thinking. This is quite similar to online search.

Your website is your car keys

Without them you cannot drive your car, nor can you drive potential sales to your business if people cannot find your website. The big difference between your keys and your website is that when you lose your keys, you are forced to find them because the majority of us just have the one car – but if your potential customers cannot find your site, they won’t go looking in cupboards, under rugs and in the freezer to find your site (which incidentally is where I found my keys once), they’ll simply move onto the nearest site they find – your competitor – and there goes the sale.

The next thing I realised after I last lost my keys was that when it comes to searching for things – I really suck. Since online searching is a core component of my job, I am pretty good at finding things on the internet, but take away my keyboard and broadband and I’m lost.

Most people aren’t that great at finding things

You’ll always find whatever it was you were looking for in the very last place you look.

This one simple point is quite powerful when it comes to the search optimisation industry – knowing that people will use a whole range of search methods (many of which will be ineffective) to find what they’re looking for.  This opens a whole range of possibilities for ways to structure and promote your website.

Try to cater for things like common misspellings of your products or services in your content. Don’t intentionally misspell things as that can make your site seem less professional, but put a small blurb on your FAQ page about what the correct spelling is and how it’s often mistaken.

Try to cater for different terms that may be commonly used to describe your products / services – for example flip-flops, thongs, sandals, jandals, pluggers and slappers all refer to the same item of casual footwear. By not acknowledging the other terms that some people may use, you’re turning away potential business.

Have as much content as possible on your website because the more text you have, the more variations, options and keyword combination you’re allowing the search engines to index.

The final thing I noticed last time I lost my keys was that my girlfriend was very quick to point-out “why didn’t you just put them on the hook”. This makes a lot of sense, but laziness prevails and the keys never end-up on the hook and subsequently end-up lost.

Knowing that by nature, people aren’t that great at finding things, and what’s worse, they’re lazy – then don’t continue to challenge their search abilities when they do manage to find your website.

Make sure you structure both the content and website navigation in a clear and intuitive manner (remembering that what may be intuitive to you, isn’t necessarily intuitive to someone else – so make sure you ask a broad cross-section of people to help you with your on-site usability testing).

None of this is rocket science, but just like I keep losing my keys, I know that there are plenty of websites that persist in not following these simple rules.

Now… where did I put those damn keys…