Missguided Archives - The Last Drop of Ink

Back in October, one of my first articles was relating to a company called Misgguided. You can read the original article here What a Silly Design Flaw – Missguided.co.uk. They had just had a new website redesign, but neglected one crucial thing…

They had lots and I mean lots of keywords stuck in images.

Before:

This is a before screen shot and was the basis for the article:

Missguided With Lost Keywords Hidden in Images

Looking Closely

And you’ll see that 38 words are hidden from search engines as sadly search engines cannot read words contained in images. Yes they can read ALT and TITLE tags, but having the description on the page is far more important.

And Today We Have?

Something different. While not so pretty as the first, they’ve not only remove the text from the images, they’ve also included the category links.

We have all text now, including new category links

Superb, Yes?

Nope. While releasing the keywords from the images and adding several as links into the sub categories, we’ve reduced out keyword weighting and also reduced the appeal of the header section.

First off, we’ve lost the style of the header, namely the particularly ‘fit’ model and the accessories line. I’ve high lighted these in blue below:

Loss of Two Key Sections

Also while actually gaining two words to the word count, we’ve lost the flow of the text.

From:

Scarves, bangles and bows… charms, belts and bags- add delightful details, luxurious lockets and perfect pearls to complete any outfit! See below for our full range of bags, belts, bangles, bracelets, eyelashes, necklaces, headbands, scrunches, watches and sunglasses.

To:

Get the latest accessories to go with your perfect outfit. We’ve got the latest trends to complete every outfit for all occasions.

Hats, Scarves & Gloves Bags & Purses Jewellery Gifts Beauty Tights & HosieryNail Polish Hair Accessories Belts Sunglasses Slippers View All

So What Would be better?

Join the two together, just like in the original article. We take the styled images for the category header name, the model, the decent description and the raw text and combine it together so it looks something like this:

Excuse the Photoshop Skills, but it makes my point clearly

Anymore?

Yep. Check the top menu out, they’ve actually fixed the issue of the top tabs not being links themselves to the categories (pet hate of web designs #3, I need to find another example for this now), but have left a dead link in the header as shown in the image below.

Category Menu Dead Link

Importance of Excellent Design

The visual appeal of a website is only one part of an entire picture of how the websites performs, I’ve worked with dire looking websites that have been successful because of the other factors far out weighing the lapse in design. Its when you get everything right, is when magical things happen.

Watch This Space

So watch this space, the earlier changes did not happen by accident. If you now see these changes happen you know where they found out about them ;-)

I’m not sure who designed this site, but I do know it was only very recently redesigned. They’ve managed to make a very common and very silly error in their design structure, they’ve got a wealth of text, hidden in images.

Take a look here or in any of their top level categories, a screen shot is below, clearly highlighting the issue:

Missguided Lost Keywords Hidden in Images

That’s right the following text is lost, because search engines cannot read images, even worse they’ve just loosely labled the image with a title & alt tag of ‘Accessories’. So instead of seeing this:

Scarves, bangles and bows… charms, belts and bags- add delightful details, luxurious lockets and perfect pearls to complete any outfit! See below for our full range of bags, belts, bangles, bracelets, eyelashes, necklaces, headbands, scrunches, watches and sunglasses.

Which is 38 words, search engines see ‘Accessories’. Doh!

Don’t you make such a silly mistake too with your website, use text descriptions for your categories. Of course, by all means use images of models and perhaps in this example, put the peace, heart, ampersand & accessories in an image for style. But never, ever sell yourself short.