Attention grabbing web design will kill your sales!

Written by Per Strandberg


Continued from page 1

When they arrive you need to keep their attention and inform them about what your site is all about and describe its benefits.

You need to keep their attention, but not by an attention grabbing web design! Instead, use attention grabbing text! The most important attention grabbing text isrepparttar headline! The headline will break it or make it!

Does this mean thatrepparttar 132651 web design can look sloppy or amateur like? No! It just means thatrepparttar 132652 design of a site should not be made with extensive graphics or flash presentation. This will just confuse and take to long time to download. If you make a clean and easy navigational web site you are much better off!

Yet, what one see onrepparttar 132653 Internet is to often sites with advanced web design that leave you asking what its all about and what its creators are thinking!

If website owners and webmasters concentrated much more of their effort on text information and less on design they will see much better response from their potential customers.

There is no need to hire a web designer and pay them several 1000 of dollars to make a site attractive and to make it commercially viable. In most cases this is contra-productive.

The web designer often will kill your sale by creating attention grabbing web design. Instead, put your effort onrepparttar 132654 text information on your site!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Per Strandberg is a software designer and web site maker! He has a web site which offer data backup information at www.data-backup-and-storage.com ==> Visit his site with web traffic generating tips at http://www.catch-traffic.com +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Per Strandberg is a software designer and web site maker! He has a web site which offer data backup information at www.data-backup-and-storage.com ==> Visit his site with web traffic generating tips at http://www.catch-traffic.com


Without Conversion Rates You Don’t Know If You’re Mickey Mouse Or Mickey Mantle

Written by Steve Jackson


Continued from page 1

Again, conversion is an important measurement here. It can be applied to all ofrepparttar changes you make to your site as you eliminate these ‘Butt Brush Factors’. Later in this article, I’ll explain how.

Attention All Shoppers…

“Forrepparttar 132649 next fifteen minutes, inrepparttar 132650 frozen food section, free passion fruit sorbet for everyone” is a perfect way to instill urgency in shoppers to go to that section ofrepparttar 132651 store and getrepparttar 132652 freebie. They know they only have 15 minutes, and they know that after that time they won’t getrepparttar 132653 lovely sorbet. This was Paco’s way of showing how stores could be more imaginative. The store knows that that section ofrepparttar 132654 store is going to be jammed with people for that 15 minutes and can capitalize on impulse sales. That’s how it works inrepparttar 132655 retailing world, but what about online? Instilling urgency online is a major factor overlooked by many business websites. Some examples of how you might want to start employing this technique online are listed below.

1) Time Expiry Offer. Just as inrepparttar 132656 above example, you could let your readers know they will miss out if they haven’t subscribed or bought your product by a certain time.

2) The First Number. Your website could offerrepparttar 132657 first 50 subscribers a free e-book or could advertise thatrepparttar 132658 first 50 items sold will be at a 30% discount. This could be combined with a counter showingrepparttar 132659 number of places/items left, so thatrepparttar 132660 browser thinks “I have to subscribe before those places are taken up”.

3) The Nth Number Competition. The website states that if you are subscriber number 1000, you get a free website makeover, again combined with a visible counter ofrepparttar 132661 current number of subscriptions. This could be tied into a referral deal so that ifrepparttar 132662 subscriber is notrepparttar 132663 lucky number and does not getrepparttar 132664 deal, at least he could be offered something for makingrepparttar 132665 referral while his friend might still end up beingrepparttar 132666 lucky number and winrepparttar 132667 prize.

So how does conversion relate to all these changes? The conversion rate should and can be measured in every instance.

The Science Of Online Marketing

There are two incredibly significant lines in Why We Buy:

“Science is by and largerepparttar 132668 study of very small differences” and “When you change one thing, everything changes”.

The first ‘very small difference’ and ‘changing one thing’ situation I came across in my online marketing career was a complete mistake. I was working for a large press organization and one day I had to change some HTML code on a sales form. By mistake, I removed a voucher entry field fromrepparttar 132669 form. As a result, people could no longer enter their voucher number to get a cheaper deal. Conversion improved by three times. I told our editor who was amazed but instructed me to putrepparttar 132670 voucher field back onrepparttar 132671 form while they figured out what to do. There was a good reason forrepparttar 132672 voucher; in fact, it wasrepparttar 132673 entire reasonrepparttar 132674 page was there. However, puttingrepparttar 132675 voucher entry field back resulted in a drop in conversion to almostrepparttar 132676 identical sales that we had been getting before my mistake. The voucher idea was eventually scrapped on that page and sales sky rocketed again. The reason, we ascertained, was that visitors figured that they could get a cheaper deal with a voucher. The voucher could only be gotten by physically buying a newspaper and that limited us to around 10% ofrepparttar 132677 audience. Nine out of ten people visitingrepparttar 132678 website did so from a place where they couldn’t buyrepparttar 132679 newspaper at that time, so it was obvious thatrepparttar 132680 voucher idea could only be good forrepparttar 132681 local readers. This experience was a catalyst for me personally, and from then on, I began to understandrepparttar 132682 importance of measurement online. In particular,repparttar 132683 measurement of conversion.

So in order to turnrepparttar 132684 online changes you make into a science, follow three simple rules.

1) Measure Conversion. Conversion is a percentage, a calculation ofrepparttar 132685 number of people who takerepparttar 132686 action you desire as a percentage ofrepparttar 132687 total number of visitors torepparttar 132688 page. Using percentages makesrepparttar 132689 actual number of people arriving at a page irrelevant. It becomes possible to compare a busy week with a quiet week.

2) Change one thing at a time. An average page has lots of variables: graphics, headlines, paragraphs, sentences, links, testimonials and probably a lot more. By only changing one thing and always measuring forrepparttar 132690 same period of time (30 days is good), you will get a fair result. So for instance, if you change a headline, look atrepparttar 132691 page click-through and if possiblerepparttar 132692 length of time an average visitor stayed onrepparttar 132693 page for 30 days beforerepparttar 132694 change. Makerepparttar 132695 change and measurerepparttar 132696 results forrepparttar 132697 next 30 days. Then if conversion is higher (more people reading or more people clicking through), keeprepparttar 132698 change. If it’s lower, revert to what you had before.

3) Experiment. Don’t limit yourself to headlines. Copy, content, graphics, adding competitions, etc. — try them all. But rememberrepparttar 132699 rule: change only one variable at any one time.

Summary

I’ve desperately been trying to keep this article short; I think I could have written an epic on this subject. If I were inrepparttar 132700 same room as Paco Underhill, we would have an awful lot to talk about. However what I’m trying to say is that businesses should start waking up torepparttar 132701 fact that online marketing is as much a science as Paco demonstrates inrepparttar 132702 retailing world. Measuring conversion rates online isrepparttar 132703 beginning of making it scientific.

Steve Jackson is Editor of The Conversion Chronicles, a respected writer and author of the e-book Learn Before You Spend - 6 Ways to measure web traffic costing $30. You can get a free copy by subscribing to http://www.conversionchronicles.com


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