Tools for designing successful websites

This article is the second in the series of ‘websites that attract and convert customers‘ and focuses on some practical tools you can implement to ensure that your website is doing what it is supposed to.

Part 2 - Tools for success

Review and Compare (the devil’s in the detail!)
Take a look at your existing website and note down: (if you don’t yet have a website use these points to consider what you will need, and perhaps look at a close competitor’s site with these points in mind).

• how does your content come across (tone/language/purpose)
• how usable and apparent is the navigation (intuitive/straight forward)
• how professional does the site look (first impression/fits the direction of the business/design/branding)
• what sort of impression does the site give (experienced/recommended/trusted)
• what are the positions of key ‘calls to action’ (relevant, clear, obvious – don’t forget that not everyone will visit your homepage first, so they should  appear elsewhere in the website)
• the overall experience of using the site is…? (positive/negative – don’t frustrate your customer!)

These points should be discussed in detail with your team and then with your website design company so that they can translate your requirements into a working solution.  A competent web design company should understand usability and customer conversion. They should be able to guide your decisions and help you craft an approach that will work well regarding the site’s architecture, calls to action and other supporting elements so as to meet business and user needs.

Answering these questions will help you begin to visualise how a user needs to interact with your website in order for it to work efficiently and add serious value to your business.

Supermarket Sweep!
The way a user interacts with your site, is key to its success.  Consider the analogy of how a supermarket interacts with its customers.  They will try and make you walk past all the items they need to sell you.  They will make sure that the more profitable products are within easy reach and at eye level.  They will even make you walk around the shop in a certain direction.  Translate this to your website and look at how you think it is performing!  You cannot expect a customer to buy something they cannot see.

With this in mind, get your crayons out.  Draw out the sections of your website on a large piece of paper like it was the floor plan of gigantic supermarket! Then look at the various routes people can take (this could be from any page given that any page could be a landing page):

• are they seeing what they need?
• are they seeing what you need them to see?
• does your site structure support your sales process or hinder it?
• will your current structure bounce users if they don’t find what they need in 10 seconds?
• is it a positive journey?

Playing supermarket sweep with your website, whilst being immense fun! (I need to get out more), will allow you to turn your visualisations into an actual plan and strategy for your site.  The idea is not to come up with a rigid, inflexible set of rules of what you must do, but to remain open to the idea that you may be able to go back and revisit some of your initial questions and site shortcomings.  If you find areas that are weak or areas that need more supporting information (case studies, background information, Q&As etc) Great! That’s the idea.  You are working your way through and identifying what you need in order to a) meet the needs of the business and b) meet the needs of the user.

What do people do on my site?
Analytics packages are an excellent way of finding out how users interact with your site.  Intelligent use of programs such as Google Analytics (free from Google) can point you to poor performing pages, customer loyalty figures and bounce rates (the rate at which users leave your site as soon as they get there!) amongst many others – you can even find out what screen resolution your website user has!

When users first visit your site they may not come via your home page.  Google will hopefully point them to the most relevant part of your site (landing pages) – that is if your site is optimised well or even indexed by Google (see below).  Analytics can also show you how people are reaching your site whether this is direct (i.e. typing in your address into an internet browser) or from search engines, yell etc.  All this information can help you enhance, develop and mould your site so that when potential customers visit your site, they are taking the path you have given them.

Yes we have a stats package on our site I hear you say.  Being able to tell how many visits your site had last month, is nothing compared to knowing where they went, what they did & for how long, how they found you, why they left, did they return etc.

Can anyone actually see me?
How does your site look from a Search Engine perspective?  Type your web address (i.e. www.yourbusiness.com) into a Google search, preceeded by ‘site:’ For example, the bbc would type site:www.bbc.co.uk . By doing this for your existing website, you can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google’s vast database of websites.  If you know your site has 60 pages and you can only see 15 in Google’s index, you need to know why.  Poor design, Flash sites, and sites designed in frames are a few reasons why but ensuring that your site is designed well for users generally means your site is designed well for search engines.

Appearing in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is the beginning of your journey into Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and if driving traffic to your website is a key part of your online strategy, this is important.

More Conversions
Once you have asked yourself the questions, played supermarket sweep and changed your design and structure, how will you monitor the progress?

Using analytics packages like Google Analytics (mentioned above) allow you to set up sales funnels and goals so you can ensure that people are taking the route you want them to before encouraging them to do something (download a file, make an enquiry, purchase a product or service).  If they are not simply revisit your plan and ask yourself why.

A website, like a 2 year old, needs constant attention.  If you don’t try different approaches, content and calls to action, how will you ever refine your site so it can be the money making, lead generating, customer converting monster it has the potential of becoming.

If you missed part one in the series, visit: websites that attract and convert customers.

Category: website design
Tags: online customer conversion, usability, website design