A big part of the conversion battle – making visitors take action – is about best practices. True, every site is different and you should test, test, test. But you have to start with knowing what to test. Your web analytics will give you clues -- and here are ten other best practices that you should test on your site to make your visitors be more than tire kickers. Or as one of our advisors says, “Turn those hits into homeruns.”
1. How well does your site say hello? Within a couple of seconds, does the visitor know that he’s at the right place? If not, a home page redesign might be in order, but incremental change is always better – start by featuring pictures of your products, or of people using your services. Remember that many people will not start at your home page but may find you using a search engine or a link and reach deep into your site, so every page has to have the scent of who you are.
2. Is your best-selling product on your home page, linked directly to its product page? If not, it should be. If you are a lead generation site, is your Contact US form on your home page? Let them start to take action right away.
3. Are you merely writing features, or do you sell with benefits? It’s true that your customer is an engineer or a teenager, he makes his purchase for emotional reasons. In business, we merely find non-emotional ways to justify our purchases.
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Now try this one on for size:
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Which one sells better?
4. How easy is it to contact you? Is your “contact us” information hidden behind a little hotlink? Make sure that you get your toll-free phone number and your info@yourcomany.com address high up on the top of the page next to your company name.
5. If you are showing products: Do you have thumbnail product pictures – small graphics the size of your thumb - that load quickly? Thumbnails also give you the ability to have multiple pictures “above the fold” – on the screen where they can be seen without scrolling.
6. Do you speak the customer’s language or do you refer to products and processes in company lingo? Your private code will foil the search engines and no one may get to your site. Even if prospects do find your site, they may not understand what you are selling. Remember that potential customers, online, are often comparing your product to someone else’s – if your product names are too company specific, you may not even reach the competition stage.
7. Are your action buttons above the fold, where the customer has to scroll to find them? Too often, we find the action buttons (Order Now, Click for more information) low on the page – the visitor doesn’t know to scroll for it and leaves, mystified at what his next step should have been.
8. Are your action buttons buried in an ad? You probably look at this one and say, “Well, we definitely don’t make that mistake.” But just because you don’t put them in a real ad doesn’t mean that the visitor recognizes that. If you have a banner-size of color and put a button in it, most people won’t even see it there – it’s a phenomenon that usability expert Jakob Nielsen found and calls “ad blindness.”
9. Do you have on-site search? It is one of your most important electronic salespeople. If you do have search, does it always return a manageable number of responses? Does it return a polite message or try to help when there is no match?
10. Listen to your customers. Ask them what they think of your site – what did they like, what did they hate? What would they like you to change? You’ll be amazed at what you learn once you start asking their opinion.
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