As part of our Website Rescues conversion optimization and best practices packages, we focus on quick wins for our clients to immediately boost conversion rates. They’re based on key usability findings from research done by centers like the Nielsen Group. Many may seem like common sense, others may change your outlook. For most of our clients, we'll typically make thirty changes on average. I recently reviewed the last several we did and pulled out some that are just plain good advice for any website or landing page.
- Remove or replace irrelevant images.
Obvious stock photos like the classic smiling girl wearing a headset hurt conversions. If you have a product, show photos of the actual product itself. - Use explicit microcopy.
"Click here" and "Submit" are death for conversion rates. Try something big and explicit like "Download your free report now" - Buttons should look like buttons.
It's possible to over design a button until it's no longer obvious what to click, especially with the takeover of flat design. Make sure your buttons are as obvious as possible. Make them bigger, change their colors, add CSS animations to them if necessary. Do the same with links. This makes it clear to users what is and is not clickable text. - Make text easy to read.
Making your website more legible enables users to skim it before reading it. Try starting with black 16pt text on white with a 1.5em line height for your body copy. Reducing line width makes skimming easier as well. - Proofread!
You'd be surprised how often typos or just poor writing makes it in to production. Good grammar improves confidence. - Reduce load times
While this is a service on its own, we've found that unoptimized websites can have their load times cut in half simply optimizing their images using a tool like Kraken
Quite a few changes, and while no one is significant on its own, all of them together will make a better experience for your users. Anything that makes a website easier to use or more trustworthy is going to boost conversions or satisfaction. Test it yourself and see.