Andy Edmonds is StomperNet’s usability expert, which means he’s concerned with the ease that visitors can accomplish specific tasks on a webpage – like navigating your site, joining a mailing list or buying a product through a shopping cart. In his talk, he discussed several elements that he’s found to matter when it comes to converting web visitors into buyers. Here were my takeaways.
- Aesthetics matter – Andy mentioned this as number #1, citing a recent case study as an example. As a web designer, I completely agree that how your website looks affects whether people will trust you enough to buy from you or hire you. I explain it this way. Your website is your virtual office. Just as you painstakingly pick out furniture for your office, artwork for your walls, and even the exact location, you should also do so with your website. If your website looks like a high school kid designed it, chances are, you’re going to get far less business from it.
- Consistency is key – It’s important to be consistent with what your visitors expect from a site like yours. That means speaking your visitors’ language. Providing shortcuts for repeat visitors (like using RSS feeds and email updates so people can subscribe rather than having to visit your site regularly.)
- Sweat the small stuff – For the average small business owner who doesn’t know much about advertising, it may seem difficult to fathom how much the little things matter. Andy provided a case study showing that it seems to matter whether the shopping cart says “buy now” or “add to cart” – one works better on weekends while the other works better during the week!
- Know your sales funnel – Don’t assume people will know what to look at on your site. Lead them through it by telling them the next step until they complete the final step (buying from you, signing up for your mailing list, or requesting a consultation). Your sales funnel should be set up to alleviate all your prospects’ concerns so that they are ready to try or buy once they reach that last step.
- Use analytics
– Measure as much as you can with your site. Start off with Google Analytics (see my Google Analytics review) since it’s free and easy to install. Then, as you define your sales funnel, you may want to graduate to a service like ClickTracks so you can track where people are getting lost.
The short and sweet takeaway is that if you want your website to be successful, you must know who your visitors are, why they visit your site, what their motivations for buying a product or service like yours are, and what types of evidence/case studies/educational materials you must provide to convince them that they should buy from you. Everything on your website matters – and you should be using analytics software to measure each page’s (and even each page element’s) effectiveness.
Andy maintains two blogs – Surf Mind Musings and Always Be Testing which provide a wealth of info on web analytics and conversion.
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