Your website is your virtual shop window. It’s there to show off your wares and entice people in to ultimately interact and become customers.
So what can you do to make the user experience – the UX – convince your visitors to metamorphose into paying customers?
- First impressions count
From the moment your visitor lands on your page, they need to know they’re in the right place. Make sure your headline is attention-grabbing, relevant and on message. Not too wordy. They need to be entertained and engaged, not overwhelmed. Think of them as demanding children who need the information now, in easily digestible and relevant pieces, before they wander off elsewhere, bored and dissatisfied. Perhaps incorporate some gamification – think Google Doodle – if relevant to your brand.
- Sealed with a K.I.S.S.
An old acronym, but one that frequently applies. Always keep it simple. Use few words, small blocks of text or bullet points and use appealing graphics and pictures. Only give straightforward, minimal, but keyword-rich information likely to have been used in a search. You don’t want to have lured potential customers thier under false pretences.
- Be specific
If your landing page contains a form, only ask for the information you need. You can get extra information once they’ve signed up and are part of the gang but in order to hook them in the first place, just get the basics. We’ve all become pretty impatient and the less information you’re asking for in the first place, they less likely customers are to tune out and go elsewhere.
- Be obvious
Is your call to action a button? Then make your button stand out. Obviously not in a glaring, flashy (and literal) bells and whistles way but so that your visitor can see what they need to do. Don’t lose the click by being too subtle. Consider stepping away from your colour palette for a moment and add an extra pop of colour. And definitely don’t lose it on the page – wherever your potential customer scrolls, make sure that CTA follows them.
- Promises, promises
Equally, choose wisely how you label your button. Anything too generic or with negative associations or connotations, such as ‘sign up’, ‘submit’ or ‘subscribe here’ won’t cut it – tell your audience what they’re going to get for their click – ‘make me rich’, ‘find my future partner’ – and make sure it is something you can deliver.
There are many other tricks you can employ to increase your conversion rates – make it easy to share your page on social media, educate with a simple product walk-through, show some stats or sterling testimonials.
We would say creating a super-successful, high-traffic converting site isn’t exactly rocket science, but we’d be doing ourselves out of a job. It’s actually really hard to get it just right so let the experts do the hard work for you.
