Play for Profit Podcast

Why Website Accessibility Matters with Laura Barr

• Najela

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Laura Barr, CEO of Barr Web Services, breaks down the essential elements of effective websites and why they matter for all businesses. She explains the science behind website usability while sharing practical tips to make your site more accessible, user-friendly, and effective at converting visitors into customers.

• Most websites lack clear calls to action, preventing visitors from taking the next step
• Effective websites require four elements: SEO, usability, analytics, and accessibility
• Website accessibility is legally required in the US, regardless of site size
• Using simple language and scannable content helps visitors find information faster
• Writing clearly demonstrates expertise better than using unnecessary complex words
• Consistency in styling and formatting creates a professional impression
• Anchor links can help balance SEO needs for longer content with user experience
• Small changes like descriptive link text instead of "click here" improve accessibility

For more website tips, follow Barr Web Services on Facebook where Laura posts weekly advice, or visit her website. Contact her for free consultations—she believes advice should always be free.


Speaker 1:

Hi, this is Nigella Carter. This is another repurpose episode from my previous podcast about four years ago for my book coaching, so you may hear some references to books, authors writing and other things, but I still think it's pretty relevant. This has to do with SEO, websites and accessibility, so enjoy the interview.

Speaker 2:

What is your name and what do you do?

Speaker 3:

My name is Laura Barr and I am the owner and CEO of Barr Web Services. I do almost everything related to websites. I do content, I do search engine optimization, I help with the design and the look. I help with images. I do something called accessibility and usability. If it's related to your website, I can help you out with that.

Speaker 2:

What kind of clients do you typically work with?

Speaker 3:

I work with a wide range of clients. My background is in higher education, manufacturing and government. Right now I'm working with a group that sells scooters, a conservation agency and a tutor, so it's a pretty wide group. You need to do market research into each individual group, but in the effort there's a lot of things that are very general across every website. And then you do market research and you do something called benchmarking, which is looking at somebody's competitors to find the niche for your specific client and what will work for their needs for their specific website.

Speaker 2:

Okay, can you tell more about that? You said benchmarking, so what goes into that process?

Speaker 3:

When I do benchmarking, what I'm looking at is how a client position themselves. What the client feels like is their niche and their selling point, and I look at other people who have similar niches within their industry. I'm seeing what kind of language they're using, how their navigation is set up, what images they're using. A lot of it is looking at things they're doing well and things they're doing poorly and trying to make sure that I can position my client in the best light.

Speaker 3:

What's really important with websites in terms of navigation and page layout? To make sure that you're putting information in places that people are used to. For example, I did usability research, some user testing, where they were having trouble because no one was able to find their applications to apply for a job position, but it was in the top navigation and the reason people weren't finding that is because we have been trained that content is in the About Us section or it's in the footer, so people weren't seeing it because it wasn't in the areas that we've been trained as website users to go to. Some things are general, like employment, but some things are industry specific and I'm not going to know that because I work with a wide range of industries, unless I really research your industry and the trends within it.

Speaker 2:

How long does that process typically take you to do?

Speaker 3:

So for me pretty quick, because I know what I'm looking for. I spend about three hours researching and reviewing websites and just going through. I usually select around five different websites to get a good range of them.

Speaker 2:

What are some of the common mistakes that you see on some of the research or websites that you see on some of the research or websites that you've researched?

Speaker 3:

So probably some of the bigger ones is not having a call to action. A call to action is what you're asking people to do from visiting your website, whether it's buy this product or sign up for my newsletter or whatever it is that you want someone to do. A lot of the times, either they don't have any or they have eight of them, and then people are like OK, what am I really supposed to do here? What do you want me to do? How do I get to the next step? So unclear call to action is probably one of the biggest offenders and it's one of the ones that hurts industries the most. No matter what your industry is right, people can't confidently take that next step. Your website is essentially not doing its job. The whole goal of the website is to move people towards buying your book, signing up for your newsletter or whatever it happens to be. If you don't have a clear call to action, it's not doing its job.

Speaker 2:

You discussed usability, seo, analytics and accessibility. Can you define each of those and why they're important and what happens if you have one of those missing from the formula?

Speaker 3:

Look, that is a really great question, because I think that whole missing from the formula is people like oh, I really just need SEO. So SEO is a search engine optimization, and I'll explain what that is first and then I'll tell you why you need that in combination with these other things. So search engine optimization is essentially using a combination of content and coding your website in a way that will make it easy to find through search engines. The most common is Google, but there's also Bing and Yahoo. You can optimize, which helps with the other search engines, or you can do some niche finding if you wanted to optimize really for Bing or Yahoo, but it's the most common way that people get to websites nowadays is through search. So it's helping to make it so that your website is findable.

Speaker 3:

And now let's say that your website is really easy to find but it's not usable. So you'll have a whole bunch of people coming to your website and, exactly like that call to action example, they won't know how to sign up or how to buy something and then they'll leave and they won't do the thing that you want your website to do. So that's why usability is so important of a thing that you want your website to do so. That's why usability is so important. It makes sure that people can find what they need, use what they find and that everything is easy to understand For analytics that's really how you can tell if your site is doing what it's supposed to.

Speaker 3:

That's the data side of things. If you just had SEO and usability, you might have a really good site, but you wouldn't be able to measure that. You wouldn't know are these things that I implemented actually working? So analytics is most typically Google Analytics, but there's also Google Search Console and some other things that you can add, like Hotjar, to your website that lets you look at how people are using it and make sure that people are using it accordingly. To look at how people are using it and make sure that people are using it accordingly, and if they're not, you can make adjustments and tweaks and see did this do what I need it to do?

Speaker 3:

Finally, accessibility is making sure that your website is accessible to people using assistive technology or people with disabilities. In the United States, this is really important because we're legally required to do this. It does not matter the size of your website. You are legally required to do this, but when you look at the population, there's over a million people in the US, and way more than that abroad, who use assistive technology or have disabilities. This is a huge population that you're essentially saying I don't care about you and personally it's a really important mission of mine. I don't make websites that aren't accessible. I don't think it's right that someone who is blind doesn't get equal access to information that they need.

Speaker 3:

It's just not ethical in my opinion, so it's something that I make sure is incorporated in every single website that I do.

Speaker 2:

What can people do to make their websites more accessible?

Speaker 3:

When people think about accessibility, a lot of the times people think about coding, and that is a big portion of it. But a lot of the content management systems like Word or Wix or Squarespace have some accessibility features built in. Content has a big portion of it. The biggest frustration for people who are visually impaired is having an image that has content on it. Right is having an image that has content on it right, because if you have an image with words on it, that whole thing is immediately inaccessible to anyone with a screen reader. So posters are a big offender of that, and so are infographics. But an easy way to get around this you can have that content just on the body of the webpage. If you have your book and you of course have a lovely image of your book cover, which is wonderful, just next to it you would have the book title and the author and then any other. So if there's a blurb on there about somebody saying the book is really awesome, maybe an author review or something featured on the cover, that would just be featured over to the side in content and all of that information is accessible.

Speaker 3:

There's some language stuff you can do Like you never want to do a click here. That's really frustrating for people who are using screen readers, because they can actually do this really cool thing. They can do something that lets them just read all of the links. So say they want to buy your book, right, and your buy your book link was a click here. They wouldn't know what that was if it was read me all the links. But if you said buy title of book online, then they would know what that link is and they'd be able to click on it, then go, and a lot of things for accessibility are actually great for everyone, right? Because we know that people will scan a web page for those links visually as well, and so if your link includes the title of your book and that it's a buy link, people are going to know immediately that's what they want and be able to click on it and do that next step. So you're just making that easier for everyone.

Speaker 2:

Which is so interesting to me, because when you spend a lot of time in the online marketing space, they say to make it really catchy and sometimes, like you said what the language is. Okay, that doesn't tell me exactly what I need to do, opposed to just saying buy my book. It might not be catchy, but it's straightforward.

Speaker 3:

It's super interesting that you say that, because I feel like I can always tell people who started in websites versus people who started in marketing right Sites. You want to be super clear, because that helps with search engine optimization, having catchy marketing language. That's not how people talk. They say discount flights. They don't say something like oh, I want super deals on flights to so-and-so. You want to use the language that people are actually using when they put in search engines. You don't want to do anything super fancy.

Speaker 3:

People read websites quickly and no one likes to read super complicated language. You want to get in, get out and get that information as quickly as possible. So that's again a backstop from this marketing language, where you're like I want to be unique, I want to stand out, and websites is no. I want to clearly express my selling point. If they're coming to your website, you already stood out, you already were unique. They are here for a reason. They just want to accomplish whatever that goal is. So for me, the marketing language is more what you do to get people to come to your website and then, once they're there, that's where you're like all right, I'm going to make your job super easy. I'm going to be really clear. I'm going to give you what you want.

Speaker 2:

One of the links talked about making a website concise, scannable and objective, so how would you define those things and how do you think these concepts would translate for online writing platforms?

Speaker 3:

Concise is something that's very common in my world. We always say shorter is better, and then once you think you have it as short as you can, you should make it even shorter. When people are reading websites, they read anywhere between 80 to 60% of the content that you have. So the less words that you have on a page, the more likely they are to read the words that you want. Right, if you're thinking about what? 80% of 500 words versus 80% of 2,000 words, there's a good chance. Once you hit 2,000 words, they're missing the point. They're missing what you want them to have. So we want to make sure that we're giving people information as quickly as possible, and that goes into the scannable as well. We know again through this research and the research I sent you is based off of Nielsen Norman Group and some of my own personal user research. Nielsen Norman Group is a wonderful resource if anybody wants to look at that later, but we know from that research and this has been consistent over the last 20 years that people scan websites right. Unlike when you're reading a book, you're not reading every single word. All I want to do is sign up for these services and that's. I'm just trying to figure out how I do that, or all I want to do is figure out what the next book in the series is. So I'm going to scan real quick and boom, there's the book I want to read and off I go. The easier you make it for people to scan, which is just viewing the information on a web page super quickly, the easier they're going to be able to get that next step. And then objective. In this case, I think they're probably meaning objective language.

Speaker 3:

I come from government and learned something called plain language. There is a government initiative called the Plain Language Initiative to make government language on websites clear. Not everybody does it, as we well know, but there is an initiative and they're trying. Plain language means speaking in the clearest way possible, which tends to be the simplest way possible. Instead of using the word utilize, you would use the word use. Utilize does not give you. There's no reason that you would ever need to use, utilize rather than use.

Speaker 3:

Use is smaller, it's easier to understand and it's faster to read. Everything about websites is about getting people information as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that is with clear, objective language where people aren't wondering OK, do I need to read this again? What were they actually saying here? That's not what we want on websites. We want it to be clear and easy to understand. It's not just websites. So we did a study on presenting reports.

Speaker 3:

I worked for Hennepin County before this. We did a study for our executive boards as high as we could go in Hennepin County and gave them a report that used those $5 words. It was very professional, very prestigious sounding, and then we simplified it. We gave them quarter words, as easy as it could get, and unanimously they preferred the one that was easier and simpler to read. If you're talking to someone, you've pretty much already proven that you're smart If you can get your message across clearly. You're not going to prove that you're smart by using big words. You're going to prove that you're smart by being able to articulate your point as clearly as possible. And I just used a big word articulate, but it is the one that is best for that sentence, so it's fine to use big words.

Speaker 3:

I don't want people to be afraid of them. I just don't want people to use them unnecessarily. Right, don't pull out the thesaurus to make yourself sound more intelligent. It's the usability thing, right. Once you actually get them to you, you need to be so awesome that they're like all right, I'm buying this, I love this person, and so I think people will look at just getting people to them and then stop thinking about it. And that's a hard piece of it. But once you get them there, if they don't like what they're reading, they're never going to look for you again. If they see you again, they're going to be like, oh, like, with their reading, they're never going to look for you again. If they see you again, they're going to be like oh, I remember that person. They did nothing that I cared about.

Speaker 2:

They didn't relate to me. They just added a whole bunch of words I didn't care about. Right, you got to think about it long term. How do I use that word of mouth If it's easy to read, if it's accessible? If you're writing without that accessibility piece, you are losing a big chunk of your market.

Speaker 3:

So it's interesting because the reason I started my company it's very nerve wracking starting your own company. I kept hearing and talking to people. Once you tell people you work with websites, they're like oh, see mine. Or oh, what do you think of my web person? That's very natural. And then, like the people who I'm going to be talking about, I mean like, oh, what do you do for accessibility? And they're like I didn't even know my website had to be accessible and I'm like you can literally get sued, so let's make this happen.

Speaker 3:

People tend to specialize in websites, like they specialize in design or content. I'm very fortunate and I think part of it is my personality. So I worked on a very small team at the university I worked at. I see a hole in our team and I feel like we need that, so I'm just going to learn. That was how I worked. I became the expert in accessibility and I became the expert in analytics and I became the expert in usability because I didn't think my content base was enough. I didn't want to depend on other people for those skills because they balance each other so much.

Speaker 3:

When you hear about web content, most people don't talk about why you need all of these things. They talk about the thing that they know the most, which is understandable, because that's probably what they can write the most about. But really you do need everything, and you do need to either dedicate the time or the resources to either educating yourself or finding someone who is educated to make sure you're presenting the best thing possible. The best thing about educating yourself with this is communicators love to talk, so there are free resources on this, like literally any Google search, as long as the correct terms, with usability, search engine optimization, accessibility. Like we love to talk, we love to share. We are all about bloggers. So much really great free content out there that's available. So this is not something. If it's a time restraint, then, yes, it would be something difficult to pick up or it might not just be your jam, but this is definitely something people could get educated about and have a good foundation to get them going. I'm waiting for Google to catch up with this.

Speaker 3:

So the reason that all of those sales pages are so long? And recipes I love hearing the joke about recipes how to find the recipe you have to hear about how this person's grandma brought it over from Italy and how they made it with a mortar. That day is probably coming because you're hearing more and more frustration from users being like just give me the information that I want to know. There needs to be a balance between having content that is, search engine optimized so people can find you, but also making sure that you're not frustrating, like we talked about. You don't want to frustrate users with giving them content that's unnecessary and doesn't help further them.

Speaker 3:

So when you're talking about marketing pages and wanting them to be long, there's things that you can do with that to have a long page that's still user-friendly. Anchor links are a great way to make something much more user-friendly. An anchor link is essentially a link on the page. If you have at the top of your page essentially what the different topics you're talking about and then you anchor link to them so that people can just pop down to the one they want. This way you're not having that frustration with I have to read all of this information that I don't care about, and but you still get that SEO benefit of having a long page. So stuff like that can help quite a lot. I feel like websites have become so important to any kind of business right now.

Speaker 3:

It can make or break people. It's very important to look professional in terms of your website, right? You don't want a website that looks like it was built in 1995. Yes, there's a lot of resources out there that can help do it cheaply and easily, especially when you're looking at WordPress themes and whatnot. Like a quick Google for be like professional website WordPress. Like that will give you some great results and a good foundation to build on. But you don't necessarily need to spend lots of money, but you need to make sure that the end result looks professional.

Speaker 3:

When someone has come to your website, the hardest part is already done. They're there interested and want to find if you are the right fit for them. The easiest way to do this is to give them a snippet of your book. They can learn about your voice and who you are. That's your call to action and that's just going to help them make that next step easier and make that clear. Right, grammatically correct and spelling is important, but also consistency and style. You should be capitalizing words consistently. You should be using the same kind of AM and PM formatting phone numbers. The same way if you offer any phone numbers or anything like that. How you format. Things should be consistent throughout, because that's what gives that extra polish to a website. I do a lot of style guides for people and I like to say that 90% of a style guide you can't contradict me on because it's based off of science.

Speaker 3:

I don't think people realize how much science and research goes into websites and so if there's anything I would take from this, the accessibility would be one of the biggest things. There's a lot of great free resources and I don't think it's talked about enough, so definitely investigate that and look further.

Speaker 3:

The company I own is called Bar Web Services. We do free consultations and advice is always free. People are more than welcome to come. I just want websites to be better. A bad website is frustrating for everyone, so I'm just here to make it better. I'm on Facebook with Bar Web Services and I have the website. I do Facebook. I post a weekly tip about improving your website on there. Just Bar Web Services. I should be the only Bar Web Services out there. Oh, and it's B-A-R-R, so it's my last name with two Rs.

Speaker 2:

We'll definitely put a link in this show notes. Thank you so much for your time today.