John Cow dot Com » web design

Communication in Your Web Design

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:45:59 +0000

Continued from previous post Website Design & Being a Trusted Expert

While ‘content’ usually refers to the written part of your communications, it really includes all the visual elements, as pictures also communicate to your users. So really…

‘content’ is anything and everything that the user sees that will affect how they perceive you!

And web design is more important than you think; users make judgments about the authority and credibility of websites based on their design.

You could have the most informative, authoritative written content in the world, but if your site looks like it was designed by a 12 year old with ADD (or even worse, a 60 year old with no web experience) the user will reject your site.

Web design also goes beyond the look and feel of the site to its usability. This is something that a lot of advertising agencies were forgetting about for a while: they were designing these beautiful, meaningful, and significant websites that won a lot of creative awards, but were absolutely horrible to try and navigate or get any kind of useful information out there. This was the most self-indulgent import from the world of traditional advertising – the habit of creating advertising for people in the advertising world, not to accomplish the goals of the business.

In traditional advertising, it was hard to say that a campaign hadn’t worked when it had gotten so much good press (which, first clue, was about the ads and not the products) but in this online world, where everything is measurable, it became obvious quite quickly that advertising for advertising’s sake wouldn’t cut it. (That’s not to say that it doesn’t still happen, but you’re too smart and now well-informed to let that happen to you, right?) Truly remarkable sites are beautiful and easy to use.

Unfortunately, those beautiful and easy-to-use sites are few and far between. But there are a lot of small changes that you can make to improve both the look and the functionality of your site. Above all, you can’t underestimate the importance of your usability; your decision process about the design choices you make should be subject to the same amount of scrutiny of your other business decisions.

Remember, whether or not a user completes a transaction on your website depends heavily on the experience and usability of your web design. If you haven’t prioritized your resources to include some time spent on your web design and how it communicates to your targets, it can have an adverse affect on your sales.

Website Design & Being a Trusted Expert

Jason Katzenback — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:08:24 +0000

To best leverage the power of that great, targeted, persona-driven, Trusted Expert-making content that you’re coming up with, you need to make sure that it is easy for visitors to find what they need on your site. And you do that through…

Smart Design

Let’s start with the (very) basics.

All of the technical aspects of your site must work properly. You can’t have any dead links, no images that fail to load, etc. You can single-handedly ruin any thought leadership that you’ve built through your communications strategy by pointing people towards a site full of broken links.

You also need to have a site navigation that is designed and organized with your potential buyers in mind. I mentioned this before, but let me repeat that again, as most people fail to do this with their websites: design the navigation of your site to reflect the potential buyer’s process, not how you have things organized for yourself.

Because really, your buyers really don’t care how you organize things in your business; they want to see navigation laid out in a way that will give them what they are looking for in the easiest way possible. What’s In It For Me rears its ugly (well, not ugly, since it’s a necessary part of understand buying motivations) head again.

To design your site properly (i.e. to get the most conversions) you need to learn as much as possible about the buying process for your product. You need to know how people find your site, and the length of time in a typical buying cycle (i.e. small purchases, short buying cycle, medium purchases, longer buying cycle, large purchases such as cars or homes – much longer buying cycle.)

The first thing a buyer wants to see when entering your site is something they can relate to; the site has to resonate with them. If they can see something of themselves in the site, they will inherently trust it more. You need to think about the site organization – you need to make sure that there are the appropriate links that relate directly to what buyers are looking for, and that follows their thought process so that it looks logical and organic to them. You want to move them off the home page (generic) to product and category (more specific, aimed at them) pages as soon as possible.

Once you’ve identified the situations that your targets are finding themselves in that causes them to seek you out, and you have the starting point for how to organize you navigation. Make your buying process follow the path of solving those problems. You then have the opportunity to communicate your expertise in solving these problems, build an empathic report with them, and move them further along to completing the buying cycle.

Who your target audience is will also influence the formats in which you talk to them. You need to think about your buyer’s preferred media and learning styles. Some groups will love to read long copy, while others prefer things short and to the point. An older target audience might not enjoy videos or podcasts as much as a younger audience.

Whatever the personality of your target audience, your site also has to have its own distinct and memorable personality. And you need to make sure that, once you’ve decided on what that should be, that you stay consistent with that tone throughout all of your communications.

As you start to get repeat visitors, they will develop and emotional and personal relationship with you. They will expect to see and hear things in a certain way from you. To change that voice drastically without any warning will undermine the trust you’ve built with them. That’s not to say you shouldn’t be testing things (more on that later) but you need to make sure you’re not making dramatic changes in the personality of your site without cause.

Don’t forget the importance of images and pictures in setting up the personality of your site. They are powerful tools that, when chosen correctly, can really resonate emotionally with your audience. When chosen incorrectly, they can be off-putting, and ruin the atmosphere that you’re trying to create.

Last but certainly not least, make sure that there’s a way for visitors to provide feedback to you. Make the contact us information easy to find, use rate this buttons for your products, and have either forums or comments enabled on your blog so that people can express their opinions easily. You can get valuable information about how well your site is resonating with its intended target (or not).

Prune & Water Your Money Tree – How to Make More Money Without Increasing Traffic

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:29:32 +0000

To which you react with horror and suspicion….

How could it be possible to increase my sales without driving more people to my site?

And the answer to that is simple:

convert more of the visitors that are already visiting your site!

Yes. Mr Cow, you say, that would be great. But do you have any actual helpful tips to, maybe, you know, help me do that?

At this point I realize that my imaginary reader is quite sarcastic today, and I might want to lighten up, because it obviously says something about my own issues.

Anyways, fear not, imaginary reader, because I certainly do have advice for you on how to improve your conversion rate without spending money on additional traffic.

The secret is: make simple changes to your website to improve its overall performance. The best part about this is, unlike buying traffic, which is a short-lived benefit (i.e. only for as long as you’re paying for it) the changes you make to optimize your conversion rate is the gift that keeps on giving.

The first thing that you need to do is figure out your list of priorities, and I can’t tell you what these should be. Look at your metrics, and find out if there’s an obvious place to start – i.e. a page where the drop-off rate is drastically higher than anywhere else on the site. If there is, then start with that page. If there isn’t an obvious place to start, then I would start with your checkout process and work out from there.

You need to identify where people abandoned the buying process, and try to figure out why. Go over those pages. Is there something that would turn a buyer off, or lose trust in you as a seller. Are you asking for too much information, or is the buying process not transparent? Look at things from a buyer’s point of view – what do you look for when you’re buying something?

Here’s a list of simple things that are easy to do that could help improve your conversion rate, without much effort on your part:

Make sure your ‘buy now’ button looks like a button
You’d be surprised how many people miss this. Your purchase button should be the most prominent thing on the page, and make sure that it’s obvious that it’s a button.

Give security assurance at the point of purchase
People want to know that they’re buying in a secure place, and that your site is a safe place for them to buy. Don’t assume they’ll see the https://, tell them about it on the page.

Make sure you’re providing what your ad promised
Even if you’re offering the same thing, if you word it differently, people may think that you’re not proving what the ad promised. (Eg. – Ad says buy one, get one half off! Website says buy 2, get 25% off both! It’s the same thing, but it sounds like a different offer.

Be clear about the whole buying process if it includes multiple steps
People don’t like thinking that they’re almost done, only to have to keep filling out page after page. By letting your customer know how long the process will take, and what information they will give and get at every stage, they’ll be less likely to drop out in the middle of the process.

Be clear about shipping charges as soon as possible, if you have any
If you’re shipping out physical product, let people know what the shipping charges are before the final checkout screen. Surprise shipping charges are the cause of a lot of mid-checkout abandonment’s.

If you’ve already done all these things, then great. Start testing other elements to see what else you can do to improve you conversion rate. If you haven’t then start now! The true benefit of these improvements is seen over a longer period of time, so the longer you wait, the less money you’ll be making.