The more complex the product or service, the more time it may take your customers to make a commitment. What are the risks associated with making the wrong decision?— Is the product expensive? Does it require a significant time commitment? Could it pose a health risk? Put yourself in your users’ shoes. How much information would you require in order to make an informed decision? The more risk associated with potentially making a wrong decision, the more research we typically seek out as part of our decision-making process. Experiment with things such as copy length, filtered content and comparison charts. Don’t be too aggressive up front and make sure you’re providing your user’s with the right amount of information.
Focus on a single call to action
Multiple offers confuse the user and confused users means lower conversions. Determine which single call to action is most important and make it the focus of your page. Make all other options clearly secondary. Create an obvious hierarchy. All links are not equally important. Attempts to be all-inclusive can create leaks in your sales funnel by distracting users ready to commit with unnecessary information.
Look at your users’ decision-making process
We typically require differing amounts of information depending on where we’re at in our decision-making process. Early in the process, users will most likely be researching and gathering information. During this educational phase, try utilizing lengthier page content or microsites that provide more information—especially for products or services that require a more complex level of consideration. As users move from the research phase and drive closer toward their decision, don’t distract them with unnecessary content. The closer you get to closing the sale, the less you should have on your page. Consider testing anything that could be reduced, from supportive copy to design elements to navigational items, or even implementing a single-purpose landing page.
Clean up your layout
Overcomplicated, busy designs have a tendency to be distracting. Try a crisp, clean layout that will allow your call to action to be the focus of the page. A clean layout will also help your content appear more organized, allowing your users to more quickly find what they’re looking for.
Minimize the number of choices
We think we want a lot of options to choose from, but psychological studies show that when it comes to decision-making, the more choices we’re given, the less likely we are to actually make a decision. This especially holds true on the web, where attention spans are less than ideal, and can apply to everything from your product and service tier offerings to your navigational structure and information architecture. Take the time to categorize your options and simplify until they’ve reached their most intuitive, logical form. If you have a lot of products, use filters to help narrow down the choice.
Simplify!
Take an inventory of your website, landing page or email template and remove anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Look at design elements, copy, form fields, and anything that isn’t needed to get your point across. Resist the urge to include every last detail. Excess information can clog up your conversion path — especially late in the buying cycle. Simplify until there’s nothing left to remove. Be direct and to-the-point. Avoid fluff copy, big words and fancy verbiage. Sum things up. Figure out which aspects are the most important to your conversion funnel and make them a priority. Follow Pareto’s law of the vital few: What 20% of your page is contributing to 80% of your goals?
Show some social proof
We’re all subconsciously wired to seek to be a part of a group. If you have a sizable following, whether it be on social media or a general customer base, show it off. Knowing that there is a large group of people with whom your users share common goals and interests can add reassurance to their decision-making process. Publish your social media follower counts or even individual post “likes” and shares to your page — but be mindful that a lack of followers could also have the opposite effect! If you’re still building your social media following, try simply utilizing supportive calls to action. Think along the lines of McDonald’s “Billions and billions served”.
Address fears, doubts and uncertainties
Find out what fears, doubts and uncertainties your users have and address them. Consider what you’re asking of your users. What risks do your customers face by interacting with or making a purchase from your site? Does the reward outweigh the risks? Depending on your scenario, it could be as simple as adding things like an SSL security certificate, trust emblems, testimonials, or offering some kind of guarantee. You may also consider addressing any specific concerns directly through strategic page copy. If you need more insight into your users’ thought processes, there are a number of tools and usability testing software and services available, such as UserTesting.com, which offers some quick, free user testing services.
Provide sufficient information
About 50% of purchases are not completed due to lack of information. There’s a reason why wildly successful online merchants like Zappos dedicate a huge amount of time to photographing every product from every imaginable angle, and even shooting video of their products. Ever gone to a brick and mortar store to check out a product before making the purchase online? We like to be able to see the item, hold it, flip it around, read the box, maybe talk to a salesperson about it or even try it out before we’re sold. We like to see and know exactly what we’re getting. And the product’s monetary value usually plays a role in how much information we require. How big is the potential loss if the product doesn’t work out? The bigger the risk, the more research you can bet will be done before a decision is made.
Show some evidence to back up claims
Anyone can make a claim about themselves, their product or their business. But why should users believe your claim? Provide users with some kind of evidence, preferably from authoritative third parties. Your product is “the best”, but according to who? You? According to your customers? And what’s so great about it? Testimonials, ratings and other types of social confirmation are great ways to support your claims and have often been shown to be even more influential to customers than saving money.