If you have been using computers and surfing the Internet for some time, as is likely the case since you're visiting a site for webmasters, you would probably have acquired a large number of skills that enable you to find things on the Internet, navigate a site, deal with the annoyances that some sites pose, and the like. The problem with such proficiency is that it is easy to lose touch with how a large portion of Internet users actually operate on the Web, and thus design a site that does not take advantage of the special needs of these "average users".

I realize that some of you will probably take exception to my use of the term "average user". After all, it is difficult to pinpoint what an average user is. The "average user" in the computer industry is vastly different from, say, the "average user" in the agricultural sector.

My use of "average user" here might appear to some to have the connotation of "novice user". I refrained from using "novice" because many of these users are not exactly new to using a computer yet their level of competence in surfing the Internet and their knowledge of the use of the computer is at best rudimentary. With the explosion of the Internet reaching into many homes in the world, it seems to me that such users are continually increasing in number. Where once upon a time when we think of a computer user we imagine a nerd, now, just about everyone uses a computer, even my elderly parents. This widespread use of computers also means that the computer is no longer the province of an elite few who actually understand the innards of a computer. The average user is no longer that computer professional, but the large number of people who treat the computer as an appliance, somewhat the way we regard our toasters or VCRs.

This in turn has implications on the things you can do on your site and the things you might want to avoid.

1. Visiting a Site When a URL is Known

If I were to give you a URL like "naxtor.com.au", how would you visit that site? Typically, you would type it into the location bar (also known as the "address bar") in your browser and the browser would immediately retrieve the page from the site.

It's amusing to watch how the "average user" actually handles a URL. Take my mother for example. After watching a TV show which gave her a URL "oprah.com" to visit, she went to her browser, typed "oprah.com" into the Google search engine form, and sent the query to Google. When Google returned the search results, among which was a link to (what else?) oprah.com, she would click the link to finally visit "oprah.com".
She's not alone in this. According to a report from Metacrawler, some of the top search engine queries were for terms like "hotmail.com", "www.hotmail.com", "google", "yahoo" and the like! It looks like many people do not know that they can directly access the URL by typing it into their browser's address bar.

The lesson here is simple. Even if your site is a local site that advertises its URL via local TV, calling cards, printed newspapers, etc, it pays to have your site listed in the search engines. Otherwise, some of your "average users" will come to you and complain that your site could not be found!

2. Reviewing Search Engine Results

I find it educational to watch others search the Net and then navigate the web sites they find. One of the things I notice among these "average users" is that they really read the title of the pages returned on the searches.

For example, when you search Google for, say, "chicken recipes", Google returns a list of pages with the titles of the pages hyperlinked. My observation is that most people review the list carefully and only click those hyperlinks which have titles that appear relevant to them. In this regard, I'm fairly confident that most experienced searchers do the same too.

Lesson: make sure your pages have an appropriate TITLE tag. The TITLE tag should contain the keywords that you're targeting in the search engines so that people who search for those words will see the relevance of your page and click on the link. The TITLE should also be more than just a string of keywords strung together - it should make sense and sound relevant.

3. Reading the Web Page

Where the design of a web page is concerned, the KISS principle ("Keep It Simple, Stupid") may actually help you to keep your visitor. A cluttered page with too much information tends to confuse visitors, and cause them to think that the information cannot be found on your site.
It doesn't mean that your site has to have the spartan appearance of the Google search engine or naxtor.com.au. It can be decorated with colours and images, etc. But if there is some central information that you want to convey, or product that you want to sell, making it appear prominently on the page helps the average user zero in on what he/she is looking for.