User eXperience (UX) archives

SEO can be a rather complicated and abstract thing. What exactly do we mean by increasing keyword density? How do you start with improving the structure of a site? That’s why I’m going to write a series of Ask Yoast case studies. In these case studies, I’ll take a look at a specific site (the owner …

A few weeks ago, I went to my first proper WordCamp, in London. I went as a designer, and I wasn’t expecting to learn very much, but spoiler warning: I was wrong. In this post, I will explain why going to a WordCamp is worthwhile as a designer, why WordPress needs more designers, and how designers …

It’s official: Google announced that page speed will be a ranking factor in its mobile-first index. But what does that mean? There’s no beating around the bush anymore: you should work on making your site as fast and accessible as possible. Don’t wait, do it now. I mean it. Work on your mobile SEO. For …

We optimize our checkout process continually. To do so, we keep track of our shopping cart abandonment. Why won’t people complete their purchase, even after they have already added your products to their shopping carts? That’s what we’ll discuss in this article. Some of the reasons for shopping cart abandonment are so obvious, that you would almost …

We’ve written quite some posts on Conversion Rate Optimization and A/B testing on yoast.com in the last few years. However, we’ve never really touched the subject of multivariate testing. In this post I’ll explain what multivariate testing is, its pros and cons and when you should (and should not) be using it. What is multivariate testing? …

We’ve written a few posts on how to set up your A/B tests. However, the setup of your A/B tests is only the first step, obviously. Once you’ve set up a test and you’re getting some results, what should you do then? In this post I’ll be explaining how you can interpret your A/B test …

With the current trend of larger and larger header images being used on homepages, there is one thing that seems to be forgotten a lot: the purpose of a website. How often have you found yourself browsing a website, to find out only after a couple of minutes what it is the website owner wants …

At Yoast, we look at sites from all over the world. Websites from different countries can differ greatly in their choices for color, pictures, navigation and site structure. That made me wonder: are these differences due to cultural preferences? It made me remember a study we executed at Yoast some time ago and it gave …

In the last month I’ve been speaking at a few conferences with a talk I’ve dubbed “The Psychology behind Conversion”. In this talk I’m trying to explain why everyone who maintains a website should be interested in psychology and how it can help them. Being interested in psychology, especially when applied to the web, is …

I read a lot of articles about A/B tests and I keep being surprised by the differences in testing that I see. I think it’s safe to say: most conversion rate optimization testing is not scientific. It will simply take up too much space to explain what I mean exactly by being scientific, but I’ll publish …