It’s that time again: The Company Quarterly Meeting.
You and the rest of the marketing department have been called into the board room to discuss progress and strategy. The good news is organic rankings remain solid, PPC ads are being clicked and your Analytics is showing that visitor numbers have been consistently increasing for the last 12 months.
Thing is, the website isn’t meeting sales targets and management are pretty unhappy. What’s wrong?
Traffic isn’t the problem, but conversions are. It’s time to talk website usability.
Luckily, management have got some ideas for improving the website that they can’t wait to share:
Thing is, you’ve been in the web industry for years. Perhaps you’ve got a degree in design, or maybe you research extensively around web trends. These people are just going on a hunch and are calling into question all your knowledge and experience of the subject. What do you do? Well, the way I see it, you’ve got two options:
1. Speak up
2. Shut up
Actually, you’ve really got three options because if you do speak up, there are two ways it can go. You can argue your point and maybe come to a compromise in your designs (that is if you don’t get totally silenced) or you can suggest running a test to see which ideas perform best, eliminating any guesswork.
Now the challenge is to take their ideas and formulate them into workable tests.
Let’s move everything above the fold
While it makes sense to prioritise your most important information, it’s a common misconception that users won’t scroll. ClickTale analysed over 80,000 pageviews and found that 76% of users did, indeed scroll and that 22% scrolled all the way to the bottom of a page. An uncluttered layout with a clear key message should be your main focus. Test different layouts, and offer users more information gradually as they scroll, rather than trying to cram everything in at the top of the page.
Let’s add a big red button
There are loads of Case Studies out there that say Red is the “best” colour for your call to action. Hubspot, for example, ran this study and found just that. However, statements like “Red Is Best” should be viewed with extreme caution, as Hubspot point out in their conclusion. Colour is a major influencer of your visitors’ emotional response and just because the red button converted more users than, say, the green button in one instance, doesn’t mean it will always convert best in every instance.
Let’s use CAPITALS and EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!
Ssshhh – why are you shouting? While it can work to highlight an important message, over-use of upper case is actually kind of annoying, and can be difficult to read because of their rectangular contour. Similarly, an exclamation mark can be a great way of creating urgency or can accent something you’re particularly pumped about – but too many can look trite and a bit desperate. Use both sparingly, or maybe try bold?
Fair’s Fair
Experimenting means that everyone in the boardroom gets to trial their ideas – and maybe adding that big red button will work? It’s easy to be influenced by your own opinions, or be pushed into a decision by management, but when it comes to User Experience it’s not about you or the management, it’s about the visitors to your site, understanding what they’re looking for and tailoring your design to meet their needs.
You can go find out about Browser Media’s Conversion Rate Optimisation Service, or if you’d like to get in touch with one of the team, we’d love to hear from you.
