How to Make Your Website Successful: 5 Web Usability Tips that Will Boost Your Conversion Rate
How to Make Your Website Successful: 5 Web Usability Tips that Will Boost Your Conversion Rate
Lack of Funnel Planning
It’s a fact: people won’t do anything unless you ask them to, which means that you need to use calls to action on your site. But you also need to plan the process your visitors will go through to complete the desired action.
Let’s say that you sell t-shirts and your desired action is for your visitors to place an order. Let’s assume that you sell red and blue t-shirts. You should use the home page to get people’s attention and tell them why your t-shirts are so great. Then, at the end of the home page, invite them to visit you red t-shirts page or your blue t-shirts page. They will click on either one and then tell them about your red t-shirts and their benefits. At the end of that page, invite them to add the item to the shopping cart. In the shopping cart page invite them to start the checkout process.
Always take your visitors to the next step, don’t just have the information on your site and hope that people will find it. Plan the process and have appropriate calls to action.
Less is More
The first thing I do when I review a website is looking for elements that I can remove. The more I get rid of, the better the website looks. If you have a feature that 0.01% of your visitors use, get rid of it; it’s confusing the other 99.99% of your visitors.
Start taking things away until you only have the essentials. Resist the temptation of having a lot of stuff in your pages.
Group Similar Sections Together
Organize the information on your site in a way that you only have a few sections and several sub-sections. This is called vertical architecture and it’s the opposite of horizontal architecture (which allows you to access pretty much every page on the site from the home page).
Make Text Easy to Read
Use every-day words for your website. Impress your visitors with your content, not with fancy words. Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Get your point across with as few words as you can.
Use bullet-points, bold text and subheads to make the text easier to read.
Easy-to-read text is the difference between a successful website and a failure.
Say What You Offer Right Away
Every day I see websites that fail at telling their visitors what they are about in less than 30 seconds. Why are these companies putting their visitors through this kind of torture? If you are McDonalds, you don’t really need to explain that you sell burgers. But if your brand isn’t that popular, use a tag line or a headline to let your visitors know what they can find on your website. This is a great way to express your competitive advantage. If you sell dresses and what makes your company unique is that they are imported from Italy, make your tag line “Luxury Italian Dresses”.
How to Make Your Website Successful 5 Web Usability Tips that Will Boost Your Conversion Rate - To learn more about this author, visit Zeke Camusio's Website.
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I review websites every day. The flaws that I find are almost always the same. So I decided that it would be a good idea to write an article on the most common usability flaws and how to avoid them.
Lack of Funnel Planning
It’s a fact: people won’t do anything unless you ask them to, which means that you need to use calls to action on your site. But you also need to plan the process your visitors will go through to complete the desired action.
Let’s say that you sell t-shirts and your desired action is for your visitors to place an order. Let’s assume that you sell red and blue t-shirts. You should use the home page to get people’s attention and tell them why your t-shirts are so great. Then, at the end of the home page, invite them to visit you red t-shirts page or your blue t-shirts page. They will click on either one and then tell them about your red t-shirts and their benefits. At the end of that page, invite them to add the item to the shopping cart. In the shopping cart page invite them to start the checkout process.
Always take your visitors to the next step, don’t just have the information on your site and hope that people will find it. Plan the process and have appropriate calls to action.
Less is More
The first thing I do when I review a website is looking for elements that I can remove. The more I get rid of, the better the website looks. If you have a feature that 0.01% of your visitors use, get rid of it; it’s confusing the other 99.99% of your visitors.
Start taking things away until you only have the essentials. Resist the temptation of having a lot of stuff in your pages.
Group Similar Sections Together
Organize the information on your site in a way that you only have a few sections and several sub-sections. This is called vertical architecture and it’s the opposite of horizontal architecture (which allows you to access pretty much every page on the site from the home page).
Make Text Easy to Read
Use every-day words for your website. Impress your visitors with your content, not with fancy words. Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Get your point across with as few words as you can.
Use bullet-points, bold text and subheads to make the text easier to read.
Easy-to-read text is the difference between a successful website and a failure.
Say What You Offer Right Away
Every day I see websites that fail at telling their visitors what they are about in less than 30 seconds. Why are these companies putting their visitors through this kind of torture? If you are McDonalds, you don’t really need to explain that you sell burgers. But if your brand isn’t that popular, use a tag line or a headline to let your visitors know what they can find on your website. This is a great way to express your competitive advantage. If you sell dresses and what makes your company unique is that they are imported from Italy, make your tag line “Luxury Italian Dresses”.
How to Make Your Website Successful 5 Web Usability Tips that Will Boost Your Conversion Rate - To learn more about this author, visit Zeke Camusio's Website.
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Jay Kubassek(Jay's Full Bio: EvanCarmichael.com/jaykubassek) In five years, Canadian-born entrepreneur Jay Kubassek went from selling mufflers at a Midas franchise to revolutionizing Internet marketing with the 2004 launch of CarbonCopyPRO, a online marketing education company, now worth over $20 million with customers in over 160 countries.
As an independent film producer, his upstart film fund Aliquot Films is currently producing a films with Spike Lee and Abel Fererra (starring Ethan Hawke and Dennis Hopper.)
Jay's entrepreneurial spirit is irrepressible. He’s the owner of five companies, a professional speaker and trainer, international real estate developer/investor, extreme sport enthusiast and emerging philanthropist. Jay resides in NYC with his wife Jamie, son Milo and dog Cooper. Visit Jay's official website: www.JayKubassek.com - Visit Jay Kubassek's Website |
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