There are a lot of “little things” about designing a website that can help make the user experience (as well as the search engine experience) better. When combined, those “little things” add up to a very big thing. It’s easy to forget the collective parts… but MarketingSherpa has published a case study illustrating why those little parts are so important.

When cable network A&E realized that the images in its email newsletter were likely not being displayed by default in most email programs, they knew a change was in order. Instead of dropping the images, which they considered an integral part of their message, they employed our good friend the “alt” tag to alert readers to the purpose of the images.

Not only did the company start using alt tags on all of their images, but they also revamped the layout of the newsletter to allow for more copy. Combined with the alt text in the images, the new format has been a smashing success: A&E has seen a 41% increase in click-throughs from the newsletters… and traffic to the site coming from email has doubled.

What’s the moral of the story? The little things - like alt tags - can make a huge difference in the successfulness of your site.