Here’s an example...

Using our measurement system, we recently made a study of how people used our website. We found that landing page was converting 68% of readers. The objective of landing page is simple: get reader to move to another page. The landing page headline is “Are you driving qualified traffic to your website but not getting enough customers or prospects?” This headline, fact that we go on to describe target visitors dilemma in first paragraph, and fact that there are links to articles which educate reader (more headlines, to pique curious among you) mean that we get a good percentage of readers who arrive and continue further into site. We’re always working on other 32%, but by analyzing bounces, we found that 50% of them were possibly irrelevant traffic. We have an article starring Winston Churchill that describes how colorful language can grip a reader, and many visitors were arriving at our pages looking for a history of great man. And as we mentioned above, we also found that some readers were looking for catalytic converters (the keyword conversion brought them to our website). So overall, it meant that only 16% of our target audience left without doing anything. Maybe phone rang. We can’t measure that!

Our tests on landing page have been numerous, but now we’re frightened to change headline. Seriously! Because simply by changing landing page headline, we improved clickthrough by 36%. That’s nearly double what we were getting over same time period six months ago. So if you think you can write a better headline for us than one that currently grabs attention of 68% of our readers, email me and I’ll test if it is better than one we’re using!

Another thing we tested was urgency. We had a section on our landing page that said you could get a free e-book by subscribing before a given date. The date was cunningly set to change every day to same day’s date. It worked. We got high numbers of subscribers in a short space of time and hit a 35% conversion rate, which we considered incredible. Over 1 in 3 people subscribed to get book. Why did we stop? We listened to our readers who were getting annoyed by irrelevant information on landing page. New subscribers didn’t mind seeing message, but returning visitors, ones you should really pay attention to, complained about same message with an updated date. It proves one thing though. If you have a special offer in mind, urgency works.

Incidentally, fact that all of above was tested on landing page doesn’t mean you should forget about rest of your website. For instance, one of our recent articles is very well visited and got terrific feedback from critics and other web publications. But as an entry page, URL also has a very high 79% bounce rate. We have analyzed it and have drawn a tentative conclusion. We think it’s because we haven’t given readers anything to do when they finish reading. They get to bottom of page and that’s it. The end. Article over. And they leave. So now we’re going to add a new section at bottom of our articles which encourages subscription or clickthrough. Again, by analyzing and changing things, we hope to improve. If it doesn’t make any difference, or in fact makes rate worse, we have lost very little, we simply put page back to way it was. Testing is about trial and error.

In Summary

I will never be too clever to ever stop measuring how people use our website. I don’t know what will work with our visitors first time around. I couldn’t have said that one headline would work better than another until I tested it. I couldn’t have said that using great copy that instills a sense of urgency in reader would work better than not instilling urgency in reader until I tested it. I couldn’t have told you whether adding article links to first landing page would improve click through until I measured it. I couldn’t have said whether one graphic would work better than another until I measured it. I couldn’t have told you that all these small changes altogether would improve our subscription rate to over 15% every month, until I measured it. In other words, by measuring how people use your website, you can continuously improve it and therefore improve conversion rate, which eventually has a positive impact on your bank balance.

In other words what you don’t know about your visitors movement through your website would make a great book.

Steve Jackson is Editor of the Conversion Chronicles, (http://www.conversionchronicles.com) and CEO of Aboavista a Finnish company which improves web prospect and sales conversion rates.

For your menus and other background colours bear following in mind:

Red is stimulating and agressive.

Blue is peaceful and tranquil.

Gree is calm and refreshing.

Yellow grabs peoples attention.

Purple is wealthy and luxurious.

Brown is solid and reliable.

Orange is bright and optimistic.

Sin #4 Poor spelling and grammar If you're selling a product or service online and your website is littered with spelling and grammar mistakes then you're on a loser immediately. I recently reviewed an ebook that had 4 very bad spelling mistakes including word business misspelled in opening paragraph. Inexcusable. We all make mistakes but keep them to a minimum. A visitor may forgive one typo. You may not get a second chance.

Here's 3 tips for checking your webpages.

1. Use a spell checker. Every word-processor has one.

2. Proofread anything you write from bottom to top. You'll spot more mistakes that way.

3. Always proof read anything you've written 24 hours later. You'll be amazed at how many mistakes you'll spot.

Sin #5 Flashing graphics Banners or logos that flash, spin, fade in and out and/or perform any other gimmick are a no go area. Don't use them. Flashing banners and logos say "I've never put together a website before. Cool, huh?" Any website with this type of graphic element turns me off. A website logo or banner should be a static graphic or text. Online marketing surveys consistently report that animated icons and graphics on a website are a major turnoff for visitors.

Sin #6 Hit counters Only used by amateurs. Take them off your website. Please. Any decent webhost can provide you with traffic stats which will provide much more accurate information than a hit counter. Having a hit counter on your website was a good idea 8 years ago. The online world has moved on. You should too.

There's an old rule of sales:

"If I could see through John Smiths eyes I could sell John Smith what John Smith buys".

Design your website for your visitor and not for you.