A strong hierarchy is important to any goal-driven webpage design. While there are many ways to develop a strong hierarchy, directional cues are a great way to help you reinforce it. Directional cues are visual elements that direct visitors’ attention to certain areas of your page. They can be explicit, like lines or arrows that point in the direction of your goal—or suggestive, like a photo of a person gazing, pointing or making a gesture toward your goal. Experiment with different ways to direct visitors toward your goal.
What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?
You can attract all the website traffic in the world, but traffic means nothing if your users aren’t taking any action. Every website has a goal. How efficient your website is at “converting” traffic into leads or customers (the typical goal) is the second half of the battle. Lets say your website gets 1,000 visitors over a month long period. The percentage of those visitors who purchased your product or filled out a lead form is the conversion rate. Let’s say you already have a fairly typical conversion rate of about 5%. That means only 50 people out of those 1,000 visitors actually buy anything! So how can you sell more products? You could spend more money on advertising and increase the number of visitors to your site (95% of which still wouldn’t even buy your product)- or you could better utilize more of the traffic that you already worked so hard to get.
Visitors are leaving your site empty handed for a reason. But, through a little testing and analytics, you can begin to see what your customers’ expectations are and how to cater to them. How can you persuade them to stay and make a purchase or fill out a lead form? What if you tried writing a more convincing headline and 2 more people out of the 1,000 already visiting your site made a purchase? Maybe you tried changing the color of your “add to cart” button and 3 more of those people made purchases. What if you found enough tweaks to gain 50 more sales and doubled your income?!… Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is that process. It’s the culmination of all the little tweaks that together translate into big results. It’s figuring out how to get more of your users from point A to point B more efficiently. And ultimately, making more, with less.
Get started by analyzing your website. Google Analytics is free and easy to get basic tracking up and running. Visit my resources page for links to analytic and split testing solutions.