Designing Web Sites for Higher Sales

NOTE: The two most important recommendations on this page are the book Don't Make Me Think and the Best Web Design notes in the second entry. Post questions and comments about this sticky in the Web Site Design for Higher Sales thread.

Although this might be considered a little off-topic by some for a PPC forum, driving more traffic to a site that doesn't convert has been described by Eisenberg in his book Call to Action as trying to carry water in a bucket with holes in it.

Therefore, I'm going to offer some links, resources, and notes toward more effective design. First, I'd like to mention that those who have been marketing online since the beginning generally have better recommendations than companies that were originally offline businesses. I learn from both.

ONE MUST-READ BOOK

First a book I cannot recommend strongly enough:

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug NOTE: Look for the updated Second Edition

You can read a sample chapter online from Don't Make Me Think called How We Really Use The Web plus Additional Chapters from the First Edition.

There is also an audio interview and a transcription of that interview called Help! My Site Sucks. [Thanks to mj1956 for finding this.]

Don't Make Me Think is excellence in simplicity. If you only do one thing to improve your online business BUY THIS BOOK and READ IT. You will be able to understand it and I do hope you'll apply what you read to your own business.

Call to Action by Bryan Eisenberg & Jeffrey Eisenberg

Call to Action is a far deeper book with complex concepts. When you're ready to get serious you need this book too.

I am increasingly frustrated that advertisers do not understand the importance of making their sites easy to use for people who DO NOT know your business.

IMPORTANT MARKETING RESEARCH RELATED TO ONLINE SUCCESS

Research Archives at Marketing Experiments Journal including:

Optimizing Landing Pages

The Power of Small Changes Tested

NOTE: They have so much awesome research, so many links I could add here, and are constantly adding new research that you should really just make it a point to spend time on their site.

OTHER IMPORTANT THREADS RELATED TO THIS SUBJECT

Why Conversions Trump Traffic Every Time

Why Most Online Businesses are Failing

The Most Common eCommerce Website Design Mistakes

Plan Your Web Site for Profits

How to Choose Colors for Your Web Site [NOTE: Market research has shown three to be the best number: no more than three colors and text sizes are best.]

ONLINE ARTICLES ABOUT WRITING ONLINE

UseIt.com links about Writing for the Web

UseIt.com article How Users Read on the Web

[ Message was edited by: flyingrose 04/13/2007 11:09 am ]

BEST WEB DESIGN NOTES (From IMC Seminar)

I took extensive notes at an exceptional two day seminar given by Derek Gehl. If you can get to one of these seminars I highly recommend it. There aren't a lot of them. See the
Internet Marketing Center site for the schedule.

If you're serious about making money online learn from those who are already successful. You don't have to copy them and some of this company's sites are a little hype-y for my taste; however, the basic concepts are very strong.

Read the complete notes at Web Design Tips for Higher Sales.

[ Message was edited by: flyingrose 08/28/2007 03:03 am ]

HIGH PROBABILITY SELLING

The premise behind High Probability Selling is to spend your resources only on customers who need and want what you have to sell right now. PPC delivers only those seeking you out so this information applies very well to online sites.

Whether you're creating sites or ads, the concepts taught in the book High Probability Selling and their companion site HighProbSell.com are a great resource.

If you're serious about selling I recommend their newsletter. The latest edition is titled The Top Six Words That Sabatoge Sales. Great information and I personally know from experience with using some of these words in ads that they're correct.

Check out the article for the details and explanations. Many of the words may surprise you. Among those six words is "help" which I can tell you from experience can be death on CTRs when used in ads.

[ Message was edited by: flyingrose 08/04/2006 05:01 pm ]

IMPROVING CONVERSION RATES IS CRITICAL TO PPC SUCCESS

The author of the excellent book Call to Action and the new book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark is behind the site Future Now Inc. . This is must reading for anyone who truly wants to improve conversions.

Check out the free article called Increasing Conversion Rates.

Along those same lines here are some definite DOs you don't want to ignore on ANY ecommerce site:

ALWAYS provide shipping information as early in the process as possible, ideally on the product pages. A site that does an exceptional job of that is Cabinfield.

HYPERLINKS should always be blue underlined text and ONLY links should be blue underlined text.

NAVIGATION is critical and should be consistent throughout the site. Make it easy to tell where they are on the site and have an idea where they can choose to go ON EVERY PAGE.

GO WITH THE NORM - the closer your site is to major ecommerce sites your visitors may have used (Amazon, eBay, etc.) the less visitors will have to think to use it. For example, shopping cart icons are almost always located in the top right corner so put yours there too. Don't make it hard for them to pay you!

Only ask for personal information before the visitor has the information required to make a decision if you absolutely must and then ask for only what you have to have - and make the link to your privacy policy and guarantees obvious on that page.

DO NOT force visitors to "join" or "subscribe" to complete a purchase. Ideally let them buy first and then offer reasons why they may benefit from joining such as being able to check order and shipping status, saving their information, etc. such as wishlists, being able to save shopping cart contents, one-step checkouts, etc. Make it their idea instead of forcing them to do it.

If you ask them to sign in on your site only do it ONCE! (That is a good use for cookies.) If they have them disabled, fine. But if not don't annoy them by making them sign in every time they look at their shopping cart or anything else they may do on your site.

[ Message was edited by: flyingrose 08/09/2006 06:01 pm ]