Your website’s layout is perhaps just as important as the volume of traffic it receives. It is remarkably easy to ignore the on-page conversion factors by making a pretty website and focusing entirely on inbound SEO. A pretty website is not a functional website. Your goal is to convert visitors to customers, not just wow them with your website’s design.
Since I’m a big fan of practicing what you preach, I decided to pick out a random SEO consulting service and analyze their website for conversion factors. You would be surprised to see what I have discovered. To get our subject I did a quick Google search for a long-tail keyword and clicked a few pages back to make it more random and fair. Let’s see what our friends at Artdriver.com are doing to maximize their conversions! To be fair to everyone, this report has been shared with Art Driver and I have been informed that a new layout is already under construction.
Starting with Basics: The Screen Resolution Test
We’ve all heard the news that 1366×768 has become the most popular screen resolution worldwide. The typical resolution we tested for prior to this announcement is 1024×768 and I’m going to stick with it, only because 1024 fits perfectly within 1366 so why not play it safe?
Great news, the team at Art Driver knows how to make their site friendly to all resolutions. As you can see from the screenshot above, all of the major elements necessary for clicking the action button are above the fold (meaning I don’t have to scroll down to understand what it is they want me to do). Let’s examine some of the UI element placement in detail:
Call to Action Positioning
Humans scan the screen from left to right in a diagonal “Z” pattern, with the final resting place at the end of the Z. Art Driver is aware of this factor and has placed a large call to action button “Get a Free Quote” in the proximity of the Z tail and made sure that it really stands out from the rest of the layout (They just earned +1 from me).
Notice: although it is quite understandable that the orange color is part of the website’s design as seen in the logo and link colors, orange is not a great choice for a call to action button as it often indicates caution and might make the person think twice before clicking it. Yellow is another one of those colors that should be considered carefully. Overall this is not a huge factor for Art Driver due to their choice of complementary white and dark grey colors.
Call to Action Reinforcements
As we follow the “Z” pattern we notice a long line of sample portfolio projects that Art Driver shows off to its visitors. This is a great visual cue to establish authority. The visitor is being told “Hey, we know what we’re doing, take a look at all of the projects we’ve worked on, and by the way there’s more… (View our full portfolio)”
Examining the Copy
If we take a step back and reload the page, what do you notice? By now you will probably notice some of the things I’ve covered because they are fresh in your mind. Think back the first time you came to the home page, what did you really notice? My first encounter with ArtDriver.com triggered me to notice the amount of text I was looking at. Having a website that is has too much text to explain the services can be daunting to visitors. In fact, bullet points are always a better way to present various service categories. If the amount of information is too long then it should be condensed and organized into a quick video that gives potential customers a clear understanding of what it is you are offering.
In the above example I highlighted all of the text that is on the page. Ask yourself this question: Can any of this text be replaced with bullet points or be organized in a way that grabs my attention quickly and gives me an idea of what I am looking at?
Art Driver has attempted to present the company’s image in the “Who We Are” section and highlight its main service – SEO and even compiled a list of 3 bullet points to highlight the reasons for choosing them as an SEO service provider. The idea is right on the money, however in terms of conversions there may be a better way to present the points above.
Skip on Ambiguity, Use Hard Facts
Any SEO will tell you that using stock photos in places where real company photos can be used is a bad idea since stock images are too ambiguous and offer no real value to the visitor. The same is very true for text. Even though the landing page in our example uses bullet points to highlight important phrases, the text is too vague.
- Can we really define “top-notch?”
- What does “competitive pricing” mean to a potential client who has no idea what others are charging?
- “99.9% customer satisfaction” – Oh really? Prove it.
- “We are masters of utilizing SEO and digital marketing to improve our clients’ search engine rankings and deliver high conversion rates that bring an outstanding ROI.” – a very loaded statement with nothing to back it up as facts.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not here to grill the ability of the staff at Art Driver to deliver results. This common trend of ambiguous language may sound great at first, but ads no value to conversions.
Do yourself a favor and opt out of ambiguous language in your copy and instead use hard, fact-based statements that speak volumes. Let us take a look at one of my favorite landing page examples from MaxCDN:
Why This Page Works
- The statement “load faster” and the meter below quickly communicate what this site intends to do for me.
- There is no block text that forces me to read the fine details
- The bulleted statements are supported by real facts: “Easy, 100% uptime, real time reporting, free shared SSL, 24/7 Support, money back guarantee, more capacity, better performance, higher rankings.”
- There are images of people’s faces on the page with the words “Your Friends” that make me think that my friends approve of MaxCDN and somehow communicates the idea that perhaps MaxCDN is already my friend? A great A/B test done by 37signals for their Highrise product gave us some insights into how human faces can increase conversions as much as 100% or more. MaxCDN has most likely conducted its own testing and utilized the social cues to enhance conversions.
The only bold point that I might find hard to believe is 100% uptime, but this is once again backed up in the video below. Once we watch the video and understand how CDNs work, we are confirmed with their ability to stay up 100% of the time.
If it doesn’t Add Value, it doesn’t belong
The mantra behind page elements with intent to boost conversion factors is simple:
If it doesn’t add value, it doesn’t belong on your site.
With every element you add to your page, there must be a precise reason for it being there. All too often, companies design landing pages that are stuffed with extra fluff that adds no real value to the conversion factor.
I’ll pick on my friends at Art Driver (who probably can’t stand me by now – sorry guys I only mean well!) The section about “Who We Are” is questionable and takes up too much valuable space. Does it really add value? Do we really need to know that you strive for 100% customer satisfaction? I only care about my website’s placement in search engines why should I care that you are based in Washington DC?
Don’t get me wrong, all of the information in that section is very important, but it simply does not add any real value when it comes to convincing me that your SEO services are a must-have item on my list. In cases like these, companies are much better off using real stats from real previous campaigns that highlight the effectiveness of your SEO services and make me want to buy now.
So You Don’t Want to Talk to Me?
One of my good friends has designed hundreds of online Yahoo stores for real businesses nationwide. He pointed out that most online businesses make a crucial mistake of not placing a highly visible phone number at the upper right hand side of the screen. In fact, he claimed that some online stores saw an increase in conversions by 1% (33% increase in sales). This may not seem like a lot, but for an online store that brings 10k UV’s per day converting at 3.5% on a page without a phone number that’s a gain of 100 customers.
10,000 x 0.035 = 350
10,000 x 0.045 = 450
But if you’re selling a product worth $130 a unit, that’s an extra $13,000 in sales.
Phone numbers create a sense of trust, even when the customer is not planning on dialing them. Seeing a real phone number indicates that someone is there to help us when we need help most. Even though some folks don’t see better results as in the case of the kissmetrics study, phone numbers should always be included on your website. I am sure Art Driver is well aware of this detail and is already integrating it into their next design.
Social Buttons
Facebook’s Like Button, Like Box (faces), Google’s +1 and Twitter Count buttons are all great for conversions. Similar to a written or a video testimonial, the social buttons establish trust simply by showing that someone out there is impressed with this content / page. The only thing I would point out is having them sitting up there lonely, with no counts whatsoever. For Art Driver this is obviously a new feature on the page, but it’s something worth considering when placing the buttons in a prominent location such as the upper right hand side (which gets quite a bit of attention as we scan the page).
When possible, place the social count buttons near the content that is being promoted. If your page is advertising a set of product features then place the buttons near the features list. If you are trying to put emphasis on a customer testimonial video then the icons should reflect the fact that your visitors are liking what the customer had to say.
Conclusions
In the field of Search Engine Optimization and Marketing there are far too many insights on how to get people to your website, but a small percentage actually discuss how to turn those visitors into paying customers. In this rather lengthy post I only scratch the surface of the many factors that affect conversion rates. I have covered the very basic issues visible in our example’s home page (above the fold), without picking apart the actual service pages (I’ll be nice this time…). Having a great looking website is nice, but having a finely tuned conversion beast of a page is better.
Is your website guilty of making some of these mistakes?
Author Bio: Gene is an internet marketer currently working with Fisher & Talwar. He applies the same marketing principles no matter what website he’s doing work on.
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