Siteta - conversion, usability and learning

Designing a winning landing page

alsonotinuse — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:10:00 +0300

These notes outline the procedure we follow in designing landing pages. Adhering to the principals of card sorting the aim is to establish the importance of the various elements on the landing page.

For the sake of argument; if you could only have one element on your landing page - what would it be?

How would you add a second, a third or even an eighth element to a landing page?

Below is our thoughts on how we would do it:

1). The action button
Some might argue it should be your logo or your headline, we tend to favor the ‘action button’. In this very hypothetical scenario a user would be able to trigger your desired action - even if they don’t know what it is yet.

2). Your offer
The offer presented in text, a headline or in an image. The user will know the offer that goes with a button

3). Company Logo
The first of a few trust elements we’ll add to the landing page. The user will now know who you are. Don’t expect a good logo to automatically lead to a sale, but also know that a bad logo can definitely harm you.

4). Unique Selling Point
Why should a visitor do business with you instead of a competitor, - what sets your company apart?

If you are not able to give your users a strong enough reason to buy from you they probably won’t.

5). Testimonials
On every landing page test we have been done; - adding testimonial(s) increase conversion.

blah, blah blah blah, blah-bla-bla-blah

Users gets comfort by seeing other people are trusting/recommending your company.

6). Trust elements
Users trust payment options such as MasterCard and Visa. All of the following will increase customer confidence in you: awards, reviews, trusted partners, certifications, approvals, many years in business, ‘as seen on tv’ etc.

7). Product images
Images should be used to either show off a product/service or to show how happy your product has made other users (think volleyball on the beach or a magically clean kitchen floor). An image can add a personal touch to your landing page. Note: Caption text is one of the top items visitors will actually read - so make it work for you!

8). Information about your offer
Are the visitors presented with enough details? Too much or too little information tend to drive visitors away. Strike the balance with easily read text (stick to less than 60 characters per line) and add a couple of bullet points. Keyword bolding will help grab the attention of people skimming through your content.

This list is not conclusive, but it gives you a good start a designing your landing page.

"‘If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse’."

alsonotinuse — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:59:00 +0300

“‘If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse’.””

- Quote attributed to Henry Ford

HiPPOs don't make good Conversion Rate Optimisers

alsonotinuse — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 12:19:00 +0300

a) Hippo, from the ancient Greek for “river horse, is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa.

b) HiPPO, “Highest Paid Person in Organisation” too often is the person calling the shot. Also goes by Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

HiPPO’s effect on Website Usability/Conversion explained:

HiPPO’s rule the world when it comes to creating customer experiences. And that’s a bad thing. No matter what you think the optimal customer experience should be on the website it is quite likely that you walk into a meeting room, or office, and regardless of your competence the HiPPO decides what goes on the site.
- Avinash Kaushik

In Europe, the HiPPOs influence on decisions being made on Usability/Conversion is diminishing and HiPPO presence at design meetings is no a rare sighting.
SA should aim to follow.

Meanwhile - some tips to improve your HiPPO herding skills:

Smile
Use the three E’s; explain, explain, explain
Herd the HiPPOs, don’t just ask and try to appease
Use data to back up your findings
Add competitive data and benchmarks - let experts back you up!
HiPPOs loves a steady diet of graphs and charts

Tips for optimising the speed of your website

alsonotinuse — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:32:00 +0300

The loading time of your website is crucial. If your site is slow, Search Engines will punish you and visitors will abandon your page quicker than you can say “I should have done that”.

Image optimisation
Use the right dimensions (don’t scale anything), optimise your images for web and look at using Sprites (more further down).

CSS optimisation
Getting rid of any unnecessary CSS is a good start, but it’s often hard to know what is superfluous - and in the past it has been a lengthy process to determine. Here, though, is the tool for you: Dust-Me Selectors is a Firefox extension that helps you find unused CSS selectors.

Also, we would advise you to run your CSS code through a CSS compressor - we strongly recommend you go and check out the CSS compressor page.

There are other elements you should look at like cache control and javaScript compression, but do the above first and you are off to a good start.

Two other tools we would like to bring to your attention are: 1.The Page Speed lab (from Google) and 2. A tool from Yahoo called yslow.

Image Sprites: If you are new to the concept of Image Sprites, think of them as a collage of all (or most) of the images on your website in one image. By using a Sprite, the host server then only gets one request for the images instead of multiple requests for individual images.

Landing Page Design

alsonotinuse — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:47:00 +0300

Landing pages are commonly defined as the pages on your website where your visitors ‘land’ after having clicked on a link, be it an advert or an information page or similar. These are important pages, as the visitors are arriving for a particular purpose (to buy, book, sign up or inquire about something).

When a visitor on your website performs the action you want them to (For example, to buy, book, sign up or inquire about something) it is called a conversion.

The design and layout of your landing pages are crucial. Firstly, define your desired action (your business objective) for that specific page. Complete this sentence: “When a visitor comes to this page I want them to _______?”. Really focus on this sentence as you set up, or change your landing pages.

If your objective is for visitors to spend money on your site, they need to be assured that your business is trust-worthy. A clear message on a professional-looking design is a good start. If your objective is to get your visitors to sign up for a newsletter, then convince them that you are not going to spam them!

Don’t be scared to narrow the focus on your pages. If a user is sitting there with a credit card in their hand impatiently waiting to sort out their Car Insurance, they are not going to care about Pet Insurance or Unit Trusts. Remove any obstacles/distractions in the way of achieving the objective.

Final notes: focus on always having a very targeted headline and clear communication (text) on your ‘action button’. Make sure your forms are only the bare minimum of what you need. Cut down 50% of your text on your page and when you are happy with what you have cut it down by, take of another 50%. People don’t need more to read on the internet - so don’t scare them with too much text.

If you are making the designs yourself, then a good advice before you launch your site is to run the design by a few people first as a quick test. Is everything there that they would want on the page? Is all the content (and intent) present?

Siteta specialises in making landing pages. We are here to help you at any stage during the process: right from the early concept stage and making the designs, through to doing the coding and testing pre- and post- launch.

Usability DIY Part 5: Test, Test, Test

alsonotinuse — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:00:00 +0300

Test everything and then test again.

Imagine for a second that you could increase conversion by 1% by just changing one element on your website. Consider changing your headline, the button color, button text, your lead image, adding trust symbols, form fields, testimonials etc.

With just 1% conversion increase, the time you invest in the changes is really worthwhile.

Now imagine you changed 10 elements on your website. Surely the prospect of a 10% increase will make testing worth your while…

Start off by looking at your headline; is it up to scratch - could it be more punchy? Consider making your action button bigger and the text bolder. Try changing wordy paragraphs into bullet points.

Try it out, one element at a time - and always be testing.

Google Website Optimizer is a free product that lets you set-up and run various tests on your website. The two most commonly used are A/B and Multivariate testing.

A/B-testing is used when you want to compare web pages side by side. An A/B test is perfect for seeing if one design performs better (leads to more conversions) than another one (or two, or three).

Multivariate testing is perfect for testing smaller changes. With Multivariate, you can run one test that will tell you which page has the best performing page elements. For example; you might have 2 versions of the headline, 4 different hero images and 3 different button colours. A Multivariate test will tell you how your visitors respond to these element changes.

The scope and success of any test will be closely targeted to the traffic your website is getting. The smaller your site is, the more basic your tests should be.

Usability DIY Part 4: Unique Selling Point

alsonotinuse — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:54:00 +0300

Reiterate your unique selling points: What makes you the company of choice within your field?

People need to feel they are getting something of value - a real bargain, a top-quality product. Tell your visitors what makes you and your products unique - and give them reasons why they should never go anywhere else, ever.

Here are some examples: “All our products come with a 5-year guarantee”, “Not just any regular coffee bean: ours are from the Chanchamayo Valley in the Andes”, “In business since 1994”, “Organically grown, home-made produce, endorsed by a celebrity chef”, “Plenty of FREE parking”, “Voted best R45 Road-side Cafe for 3 years in a row”, “The only gluten-free yoga mat in India” - ok, I’ll stop.

People want to trust companies, give them reasons to trust yours.

Usability DIY Part 3: Keep It Fresh

alsonotinuse — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:00:00 +0300

When was the last time you changed content on your website? There are two very strong arguments as to why you should be changing the content on your website from time to time:

You will see an increase in pageviews/interaction from your visitors.
Search engines will rate you higher (changing content is always preferred to stale content).

So what can you do?
The list is only limited by your imagination. Try changing a headline or two. Change images. Rotate the products listed. Include a feed from a blog (preferably yours). Write product features and include (and rotate) testimonials.

Usability DIY Part 2: Business Objectives

alsonotinuse — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:00:00 +0300

Think about what your business objectives are and how you introduce your company when people ask you about it. Then look at your website and see if it conveys the same message.

Firstly, look at your company image. When you pick up to answer the company phone; is your tone of voice jovial or quite formal? Maybe you are a ‘serious’ company needing to convey authority and trust; “..your money is perfectly safe with us. Currently our investment portfolio…”. Or is your approach more ‘fun’; “no seriously, I’d never get bored of making balloon animals”.

Look at your headlines, your content, images and buttons - are they aligned with what how you want to convey your company?

Secondly, look at site navigation. Is it obvious for users where they should go for the information they need? One indicator of whether you’re doing well on this score is to look at the inquiries your business gets; anything from opening hours, older models of Samsung plasma screens, your service guarantee to an about us page.

In addition to this, look at Usability DIY, Part 1: task-based testing

Usability DIY Part 1: Task-based Testing

alsonotinuse — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:05:00 +0300

To set up a task based test, find 1 user (or more) who is new to your site and assign them a task. Observe how they complete that task.

Let the chosen task be related to your most popular product/service. After your introduction and test outline, leave the talking to the candidate. Encourage them to think out loud. If you think of any questions during the test, it is better just to write them down and ask them after the test is completed.

Pay attention to what they do as they move around your site. Write down any learning no matter how small; positive or negative.

After the candidate has completed their task ask them about what they liked and didn’t like. Don’t ask ‘binary questions’ - the ones giving ‘yes/no’ or ‘true/false’ answers, rather encourage longer answers with questions like ‘Is there anything you like about this product?’, ‘How would you use this feature?’ or ‘Rate how important the various features are to you on a scale from 1-3’.

After your findings, look at how resource intensive the possible changes are and put them in a list of priorities. We find, more often than not, that the changes are text-related (headlines, fields, action buttons etc.).

People are scared of failure, so make your ‘candidate’ feel at ease and let them know it is your product being tested - not them.

The UX wheel (revisited)

alsonotinuse — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 11:18:00 +0300

Particularly useful for those interested in UX: - The UX-wheel model identifies the design process, subjectively considering each associated common deliverable.

To read the model, start from the center of the circle.

The pdf will short the full circle.

1). The first circle represents ‘VALUE’, the purpose of any user experience interaction. Within ‘value’ there are two sides: ‘provider’ and ‘customer’, the two entities for which value is intended.

2). The second circle is the user’s experience of the webpage. It is directional, starting at the third circle’s ‘findability’ and ending with ‘usefulness’. It is cyclical, as good user experience helps reinforce intentions.

3). The third circle represents a series of phases. In short, these six criteria must be fulfilled in order for the user experience to provide value for ‘customer’ and ‘provider’.

findability; how the user finds the website
accessibility; all the users must be able to access the website
desirability; the user has to like/accept the visual layout of the website
usability; users should be able to ‘use’ the website in any way they like
credibility; the user must put their trust into the website
usefulness; the user must find a purpose to the website

4). The fourth circle shows the technical aspects to the website, contributing to the phases in third circle. The strength of this model is that these elements can always be improved upon. The placements of the elements in the fourth circle are deliberate.

5). The fifth circle shows how, in developing a website, a user-centered development process would work.

Even though the circle is visually complicated, it is able to explain most (if not all) aspect surrounding the field of User Experience.

“Value is what we want to accomplish—for customers and providers, positive user experience is a win-win situation—to achieve this we work backwards, starting and ending with search engine strategy, and going through and making a choice about each of the factors.”
- Magnus Revang

The full article was first featured in Magnus Revangs blog in April, 2007.
http://userexperienceproject.blogspot.com/2007/04/user-experience-wheel.html.

Vienna brothels and nude girls

alsonotinuse — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 15:30:00 +0300

Sometimes new ideas for your website come where you least expect them. A while ago we noticed that one of our websites was suddenly attracting visitors on the keyword ‘vienna brothel’.

Although the site in question was a travel website that did cover Vienna, ‘brothel’ wasn’t a topic we had touched on. What we realised was that the keyword had come from a user comment recommending a bar that was situated in a former brothel.

On another website, we have content on SA rock band Springbok Nude Girls which explained the increasing traffic we started seeing for ‘nude girls’.

The point to this is that you will benefit from keeping an eye on the keywords people use to get to your site. One quick win is to make sure that popular keywords are present in your headlines. Another is by making article text bold - if it fits the context. Additionally, take advantage of the search keywords by which people find your site by adding a new content section using those keywords to keep eyeballs on your site.

A joke springs to mind - it went something like: “An SEO consultant walks into a Bar, Cafe, Pub, Public House, Shebeen …”

Benefits of Webmaster Tools

alsonotinuse — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 11:44:00 +0300

We are lucky enough to be meeting with ‘webmasters’ and website owners pretty much on a daily basis and we are surprised to find that most people are not using Google Webmaster Tools (or similar products from Bing and Yahoo for that matter).

They are all FREE services - and the benefits are massive.

In a single swoop you will be able to see the following:

the top search queries leading visitors to your site (from Google, Bing and Yahoo)
daily updated information on incoming and external links
any crawl errors, your sitemap(s) and robot text
all indexing and crawling activity on your site
relevant HTML suggestions
subscriber statistics and Sitelinks management

We can’t think of a single reason not to be using any (or all) of these services.

BTFUMK32BSAV

Siteta launching knowMe.co.za - Affordable Web Design for new South African companies

alsonotinuse — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:01:00 +0300

knowMe is offering affordable and professional websites to help new South African companies get online.

Currently, we are providing two web design packages; one basic (priced @ R1,600) and one CMS (priced @ R4,200) - both including co.za domain and SA hosting for the first year.

Understanding that expertise is a desirable commodity, Siteta, with our skills in usability and conversion, has teamed up with Traffic Fundi on SEO and TheRebellion on marketing to help new South African companies achieve the best results.

Please have a look at: www.knowme.co.za

Why usability?

notinusex49z — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:04:00 +0200

The increasing focus on web presence means that the competition for customers online is hotting up. So in essence; if your home page is not communicating the benefits of why the users should be there they will go elsewhere.

If the information you are presenting does not answer the users’ questions/concerns they will go elsewhere. If the user gets lost or confused whilst navigating ,they will go elsewhere. You get the picture.

Each user who clicks away from your site is equal to lost potential earnings.

If a user can’t find your products they surely can’t buy them either.

Usability is often defined by various components:

Learnability: time taken by user to complete basic tasks - first time
Utility: do the features of your website cover your users’ needs?
Errors: when a user makes an error, how do they get back on track?

Other components are Efficiency (the time it takes a user to complete a task), Memorability (the interaction of returning users) and Satisfaction (does users get satisfaction from the design?)

How to improve the usability of your website
The most straight-forward way of studying usability is what is known as user testing.

Find 3-5 people that represents your average user
Present the user with a predefined task
Observe what the user is doing

- DON’T lead the user, it is important to let them do most of the discovery and for you to try and understand their reasoning. Take notes of what comes easy, what is hard, and where your users struggle with your design.

- DO test your users individually and also let them work out the problems on their own. Every little thing you do to help them will just pollute your test results.

- Now analyze the users feedback, make applicable changes and test again.

Whatever works
There is a common perception that usability hampers creativity. We disagree with this. When you are designing a website that is going to compete with already established websites in your sector, users will only give you a measured amount of time before they go elsewhere.

This is somthing thatwill happen whether you focus on usability or not, but what you WILL get from focusing on usability, is accountability for various features in the design phase.

Your designers can then focus on real problems. In many cases we see that usability actually offers designers ideas on improvement.

There are certain conventions in web design that your users will know, for example: To assume blue underlined text to be a link, for button-looking images to have actions etc. Use these to improve their experience of your site.

Be careful that your your un-conventional features do not demand too much of your users - they might just go elsewhere.