Boosting Response
Will your website win a design award or win you customers? Plan to convert visits to actions.
Gaining attention is the fundamental purpose of web design. Once you get past the colour schemes, layout, graphics and typography, it all comes down to guiding and shaping the viewer's attention.
"Creative without strategy is art"
Visitors will only respond when doing so meets their needs.
Planning
- Visitors are of no value unless they act upon their visit.
- There are many ways that interaction may be encouraged.
- Beyond the 'buy' response, there are indirect indicators of interest.
- This might be social media referral or providing contact details.
- The number of visits is less important than quality of these visits.
- "Quality" means that the visitor has buying motivation.
- In complex sales, conversions rarely happen with a single visit.
Process
- How do you want visitors to interact with you: both online and offline?
- Decide what you want: a direct sale or to start a conversation.
- You have milliseconds to engage visitors, so make your "want" clear.
- Consider that visitors will land on all pages, not just "home".
- Design the site to direct visitors to the content that will meet their needs.
- Don't assume visitors will figure out what you want them to do. Ask.
- Think of the process as individualised direct marketing.
Pitfalls
- Not asking for the action, or multiple options that confuse the visitor.
- Ingoring the keyword and activity data (evidence).
- Assuming what will encourage visitors to act rather than testing.
- Talking to a general audience rather than a specific niche of individuals.
- Blowing the budget on decoration (creative) at the expense of research.
- Allowing visitors to click to social networks before they have acted.
- Setting the wrong metrics as the objective: activity rather than action(s).
Ready to consider the 3 P's? (Planning, Process and Pitfalls). It's time to start your plan: