There are some universal concepts that will ensure a good design
for your website. And If you don’t follow good practices you can easily
destroy your website trust.
In this blog post I’ll share some important studies and tips about website design that will improve all your conversions. By conversions, I mean more leads, more subscribers, more readers and of course more sales.
The
researcher Elizabeth Silence and his team conducted a study of trust
and distrust in websites for the University of Northumbria Newcastle –
UK.
The research was simple. Elizabeth and her team put several people to visit various sites on the internet and asked if they trusted or did not trust these sites and why.
And here is a shocking discovery: The study found that when people do not trust these sites, 94% of the time this distrust was related to design problems.
You read it right, 94% are the chances of a new visitor do not trust your website “only” for its design.
So in the end, it does not matter how good your content is, almost all your visitors will just leave if your website design is not good and attractive. For your readers the most important is the first impression.
And this first impression is very fast. You have only 8 seconds to grab your visitors attention or they’ll close the window and search for new content on your competitor.
It’s very common that you visit a new site and you find the following items on sidebar:
But what they don’t understand is that the more options you give to your visitors, more confused they will become.
This is a real fact proven by renowned studies such as Dr. Sheena S. Iyengar for the University of Columbia, named “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? “
The study itself presents two different situations to visitors in a grocery store:
While the table with only 6 jams received 40% of visitors.
These numbers reveals that people prefer to visit the table with more options.
But now the most important question, which situation sold more?
While more people were tempted to stop by to sample the jams when there were more jams – 60% vs 40%, the percentages of people who bought the jams said a completely different story.
Among those who stopped at the 6 jam samples, 30% decided to buy a jar of jam. Among the ones who stopped at 24 jams, only 3% did. When people were provided more choices, it turns out they take less action!
Conclusion
By providing too many options for your clients, you can even attract more people. But possibly you’ll sell less.
On the other hand, offering few options, you will be able to sell more, but attract fewer people.
The main point is the conversion rate. For this reason, it is sometimes better to work your conversion rate than work on getting more traffic to your website or sales page.
This is because we make quick decisions and often by instinct.
So when we have many options, our mind goes into “overheating” process, failing to distinguish one item from others.
Mental fatigue overcomes us and we decided to give up of a possible purchase.
A new visitor landed on your website…
Rather than wanting him to follow you on facebook, click the tag cloud, rotate the world to see how many visits you get from Kazakhstan, recommended websites and so on …
You should offer few options, but extremely important for your online business.
As an example here on DailyBlogProfits, there are only 3 options on sidebar:
Their credibility is already implicit in the “popular” term , no matter if your blog looks like a ghost town.
The email capture box is the last item on my sidebar. It stays at the bottom for 2 reasons:
You can easily see that on google you have only one field to make a research, while on yahoo you have a bunch of links to click that may distract you and eventually make you forget what was your initial goal there.
This is a radical comparison about “One Page, One Goal,” which helped Google to become the giant it is today.
Here at DailyBlogProfits, one of the most important goals that I have is to build my email list. Now try to imagine, if I tried to follow the same pattern of sites like Yahoo with countless options for my visitors, what would happen? Would I get more conversions? No.
And to make this happen, you need to make your visitors trust in you.
What you should remember:
Did you like this post? If the answer is yes, then please share with your friends.
In this blog post I’ll share some important studies and tips about website design that will improve all your conversions. By conversions, I mean more leads, more subscribers, more readers and of course more sales.
Design: The Reason #1 that may destroy your website trust
The
researcher Elizabeth Silence and his team conducted a study of trust
and distrust in websites for the University of Northumbria Newcastle –
UK.The research was simple. Elizabeth and her team put several people to visit various sites on the internet and asked if they trusted or did not trust these sites and why.
And here is a shocking discovery: The study found that when people do not trust these sites, 94% of the time this distrust was related to design problems.
You read it right, 94% are the chances of a new visitor do not trust your website “only” for its design.
So in the end, it does not matter how good your content is, almost all your visitors will just leave if your website design is not good and attractive. For your readers the most important is the first impression.
And this first impression is very fast. You have only 8 seconds to grab your visitors attention or they’ll close the window and search for new content on your competitor.
Paradox of choices: When more options will result in less sales
It’s very common that you visit a new site and you find the following items on sidebar:
- A calendar of site’s Posts
- A monthly archive of site’s Posts
- A cloud of most used tags
- Countless categories
- Recommended blogs
- Visitors around the world
- Etc, etc…
But what they don’t understand is that the more options you give to your visitors, more confused they will become.
This is a real fact proven by renowned studies such as Dr. Sheena S. Iyengar for the University of Columbia, named “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? “
The study itself presents two different situations to visitors in a grocery store:
- A table with 24 jams to choose from.
- A table with just 6 jams to choose from.
- Identify which table gets more visitors to taste the jams.
- Identify which situation sells more.
While the table with only 6 jams received 40% of visitors.
These numbers reveals that people prefer to visit the table with more options.
But now the most important question, which situation sold more?
While more people were tempted to stop by to sample the jams when there were more jams – 60% vs 40%, the percentages of people who bought the jams said a completely different story.
Among those who stopped at the 6 jam samples, 30% decided to buy a jar of jam. Among the ones who stopped at 24 jams, only 3% did. When people were provided more choices, it turns out they take less action!
Conclusion
By providing too many options for your clients, you can even attract more people. But possibly you’ll sell less.
On the other hand, offering few options, you will be able to sell more, but attract fewer people.
The main point is the conversion rate. For this reason, it is sometimes better to work your conversion rate than work on getting more traffic to your website or sales page.
This is because we make quick decisions and often by instinct.
So when we have many options, our mind goes into “overheating” process, failing to distinguish one item from others.
Mental fatigue overcomes us and we decided to give up of a possible purchase.
After all, how this study applies to Internet Marketing?
It’s very simple, instead of offering countless options for your visitors, you should focus on offering only a few important options to choose from.Principles of a good design: Limited Choices
A new visitor landed on your website…Rather than wanting him to follow you on facebook, click the tag cloud, rotate the world to see how many visits you get from Kazakhstan, recommended websites and so on …
You should offer few options, but extremely important for your online business.
As an example here on DailyBlogProfits, there are only 3 options on sidebar:
#1. Popular Posts
They are very effective to transmit confidence for your readers.Their credibility is already implicit in the “popular” term , no matter if your blog looks like a ghost town.
#2. Important Pages
I decided to create these illustrations with bright colors to direct visitors to some specific pages. These pages can be landing pages, resources pages, content pages, or a page where you can promote your products or services.#3. Email Capture Box
Building your email list is maybe the most important task you should do to build a responsive audience that will purchase your products.The email capture box is the last item on my sidebar. It stays at the bottom for 2 reasons:
- My site is already optimized to capture emails, either on homepage or on my posts.
- This item scrolls with the page, and it was placed logically to keep the flow.
One Page, One Goal
If your goal is to do a search on the internet, which site you would use? Google or Yahoo?You can easily see that on google you have only one field to make a research, while on yahoo you have a bunch of links to click that may distract you and eventually make you forget what was your initial goal there.
This is a radical comparison about “One Page, One Goal,” which helped Google to become the giant it is today.
Here at DailyBlogProfits, one of the most important goals that I have is to build my email list. Now try to imagine, if I tried to follow the same pattern of sites like Yahoo with countless options for my visitors, what would happen? Would I get more conversions? No.
Final Conclusion
No matter if you own a simple website, a blog, an online store or a membership site, if you want to make your site a profitable business it will need to convert into traffic, loyal readers and customers that will buy from you.And to make this happen, you need to make your visitors trust in you.
What you should remember:
- 94% of times your visitors will not trust on your site, simply because of your bad design.
- You have only 8 seconds to grab your visitors attention, otherwise you can say good bye to this visitor.
- More options do not equals to more sales, most of times, less is more.
- One page, one goal. You should offer few options for your visitors, you should focus on offering only a few important options that are important for your website.
Did you like this post? If the answer is yes, then please share with your friends.
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