The InsideOut blog is a collection of our strategy, marketing and online thinking.

Every website exists for a purpose, whether that is to sell something, to deliver information, to educate or to entertain. However, all too often something gets in the way of your visitors satisfying their wants. The visitor’s first task is to assess the site and determine whether it meets their requirements. To achieve a greater conversion result you need to ensure you have a great site, a usable site and have a clear conversion path.
 
Map your conversion path
When you are looking to understand your conversion results it’s important to clearly define the typical customer groups that will use it. Look to define the questions and issues they will have as they navigate the site and make decisions. The insights generated through this process can be used to map out the path your customers will go through.
 
When mapping out the path there are two key concepts that can be used to move visitors toward the desired goal. These are the call to action and resolution points. Let’s look at each of these in turn;
Call to Action: Each page on the site needs to have a clear purpose with a clear call to action to move the visitor along the process. That is each page needs to have a clear purpose. Now there may be lots of other options on this page but your main objective is to get them to do one thing. Therefore when you are designing this page and writing the copy for this page you need to keep this in mind. I would expect to see highlighted areas, hyperlinks, key headlines and buttons all designed to get your visitor to take the next step. Remember making a sale is a process, people need to browse, educate themselves, and understand the details before they are confident enough to click the “buy now” button. So remember the call to action only needs to take the visitor one step further along the process, not all the way.
 
Resolution Points: There will always be a number of questions visitors must answer before they can make a decision to proceed. These questions are the points that need resolution or resolution points. These might be questions around alternative models, colours. They might be about all the technical features of the product, shipping costs or your returns policy. The point is, there are a number of questions your visitors will want to understand and resolve. Therefore it’s important to understand what these are and provide easy access to specific pages that resolve these issues, so they can get back on to the conversion path. If they cant resolve them they wont be able to progress along the conversion path.
 
Improve your usability.
Often in our quest to generate results we become short sighted in terms of what the actual problem is; it must be a traffic problem – we just need to get more people to the site. The site’s not working - we just need to redesign it. Usually there is a much simpler explanation for the site issues and that comes down to how usable the site is.
 
There are many ways to test and check your sites level of usability. The easiest way is to get someone who hasn’t used it before to try and complete a goal on the site. To do this you need to script a clear scenario. For example; “you have two children, you want to buy a new complete outfit for each of them for the summer, and you’re also interested in looking at sale items.” Once you are happy with your scenario, brief your tester, sit slightly behind them, watch what they do, where they get stuck and make notes. If you are unsure what they are doing ask them to explain, but don’t offer them any help or suggestions. Ideally repeat this exercise with 4 to 8 people. Obviously the people doing the testing for you should be typical target customers for the site.
 
With these concepts in mind you can look at any webpage with a fresh set of eyes and see what the goal of the page is, understand the points of resolution and identify the larger conversion goals for the site.
 
Other Usability/Conversion tips

1. Value – the number one conversion issue is value. You need to make sure you have a clear proposition for you site, that is why should people shop at your site compared to the competition. You need to have unique products, better service, easy and more convenient, better information, you don’t have to be better at everything. Target one or two areas that you want to excel in and then match the other factors.
2. Design/Style/Colours Matter – design is important. People make judgments in terms of the quality of products by the packaging. The website is your packaging so make sure it’s up to scratch. With the colours you use on the site, make sure they’re not the same as your competitors and carefully consider your colour choices – colours have meaning. Also don’t use large amounts of reversed font as it is difficult to read and don’t make the font size too small either.
3. Language and Tone – try to use a style of language that’s familiar to your target customer. Also make sure that you are straight forward, factual and brief. Use chunks or bulleted information. Remember people scan rather than read online.
4. Images - While big images may look visually appealing they block the user engaging and interacting with the site. Also use specific images rather than generic stock photography. A generic laptop image will convey the category but a specific image of the latest model will be more engaging. Lastly if you are selling product online make sure you use the best image possible. A good image is worth a 1000 words. Also look to use a product like Zoomifier to allow customers to see the detail up close.
5. Credibility Indicators – use security endorsements or awards where you can. If you use GeoTrust or a similar service, make sure your customers know. Also if your site has been rated or tested use these on your site. Lastly with testimonials don’t just throw up your whole list, use testimonials that answer concerns customers will have at that point.
6. Guarantee & Returns Polices – These is critical for online sales. Make sure these are really clear and easy for customers to understand. These need to be very fair and generous. Test the language you use.
7. General Anxiety Reducing Site Features – make sure you highlight your phone numbers, customer support, guarantee and return policies. Also make sure the about us section and contact us section are well written, clear with full address and contact details.
8. Don’t use more than about 15 tabs for navigation. People find it hard to comprehend and find information when more than 15 tabs are used.
9. Vast majority of people will not scroll down the page. So don’t have anything critical below the fold. If you want them to scroll down, position an image on the fold. People will tend to scroll down to see the whole image.
10. Remember a search box. 50% of people use the search box to find products, 50% will use your navigation.

 
There are many conflicting goals when you are designing websites. The site has to look great and support the brand, the site has to be keyword rich to attract good search engine traffic, the site has to sell etc. At the end of the day the site has to work for your customers. Whilst everything needs to be considered the most important objective is to make sure the site is usable and achieves its conversion goals.
 
In summary make sure you understand the thought process your customers go through. Make sure they can find the answers to the questions they have and ensure there is a clear conversion path leading them to your conversion goal. To make sure you are on the right track test the usability of your site. Get people from your target market to test the site for you, watch where they come unstuck and make adjustments.
 
Remember high performing websites aren’t created at launch and good conversion results aren’t the result of one key idea or silver bullet, they are the result of constant researching, adjusting and improving. Work hard, be patient and the results will come.

If you have had any great results that you would be prepared to share, let us know.