Archives : web design
What is A/B Testing – Multivariate Testing for Websites
A/B testing—or multivariate testing—is an experiment that you can use to increase the productivity of your website. A/B testing shows visitors alternate versions of the same web page simultaneously and randomly, to help the website owner find out what elements of the page need to be fixed.
Although A/B testing can be applied to any website, it is most often used for testing e-commerce websites, because you can directly track conversions, and see just how certain elements of a page are limiting or increasing sales.
E-Commerce Website Testing
You can test just about everything on an e-commerce website, but it isn’t necessary or feasible to test everything at once. There are three key areas that get tested the most often, and are usually the most important parts of an e-commerce site. These are the call to action buttons, the product placement and the shopping cart.
A/B Testing E-Commerce Call to Action Buttons
The call to action button is probably the most A/B tested aspect of an e-commerce website. You can analyze the results of different colors, fonts, sizes and more through A/B testing. The different options will show up for different visitors, and you can test their reactions through conversions. The call to action button that does the best can be placed permanently on the site, and we can continue on to test a different aspect.
A/B Testing Product Placement
How do the products on your website invite a customer to click through and purchase? You can A/B test products by putting them in a different placement on the page, making images larger or smaller, or even renaming some of the products.
A/B Testing the Shopping Cart
They’ve followed your product placement, clicked your call-to-action, but then they abandon your shopping car. Why? There are a number of reasons that people abandon their shopping carts online, and we list a few below:
- Login
No one wants to remember another password! A/B test giving them the option of just checking in as a guest, against having to set up an account.
- Asking for too much information
You don’t need to know their birthday in order to sell them a product! Try A/B testing an option where they only have to fill in the essentials, against the option where they have to fill in everything.
- Using a trustmark
If the customer doesn’t trust you—they won’t buy from you. Try A/B testing with a McAfee trustmark, and see if your customers respond well.
A/B testing is a great tool to see what works and what doesn’t on your website, and it’s a feature that Smart Solutions offers to all of our customers. Get the most out of your website, and let us know if you want to try out some A/B testing on your site.
If you don’t currently have an e-commerce website, but are considering one, we’d love to help you convert your site to e-commerce! Give us a call or send us an email, and we’ll set up a meeting to discuss it.
Quick Web Design Tips To Remember
Web design has changed. The novelty of going to the World Wide Web and exploring this new medium has worn off significantly. No longer are users visiting a site and reading through lines and lines of text or watching humorous animated gifs (does anyone really miss the Dancing Baby?) online.
Nielsen & Loranger’s extensive research uncovered four questions users ask when arriving at any given web site: what site have I arrived at, what are the benefits the organization offers, what does the organization do and/or what are the newest offerings, and where do I go next to find what I’m looking for?
What site have I arrived at?
The URL has been entered, but the name of the organization, logo, and tag line should be displayed in a prominent place. This information should remain in the header and carried throughout the site.
What does the organization do and/or what are the newest offerings?
State it clearly and prominently on the home page. It should not be buried in 500 words of content. Images used should also support what the organization does (i.e. a landscape architect shouldn’t have a photo of a city skyline).
What are the benefits the organization offers?
Get to the point. What separates you from the other thousands of sites offering the same services or products? 70% of users are experienced enough to scan a page for the information they are looking for. Adding visual cues as to the benefits of your site will bring you closer to converting that user into a customer.
Where do I go next to find what I’m looking for?
The navigation should be visible and instinctive to use. Drop down menus work well for easily referencing sub pages. Calls to action should be clearly defined with verbiage like, ‘Buy Now’, ‘Call Us Today’, ‘Fill Out this Form’, or include a video with a big play button icon. The less users need to think or read, the more open they are to suggestion.
If you keep these questions in mind while designing your website, you will be on your way to lowering your bounce rate, increasing user time on the site, and raising your conversion levels.
For further reference in designing user friendly sites, see Prioritizing Web Usability.
Simple Home Page Design – Tips to Avoid and Best Practices
You’re home page is important for many reasons, as it’s linked to most frequently (for small business) and unless you’re coming in from a landing page or internal blog, it’s oftentimes is the first place prospective clients make the first impression of your company. Moreover, it’s an impression that is created in mere seconds while only absorbing 20% of home page information (source)!
It’s also the hardest to design and SEO because there’s the urge to convey everything about your business (which is often not helpful to both visitors and spiders). Every business has to answer the question, “how do I design my home page to: present professionalism and credibility, intrigue customers to click to additional information, be friendly to search spiders, and ultimately convert customers.
Here are a few tips to effective design home page design and typical mistakes that we often see client’s make.
Typical Mistakes
1) Using images that are too large for your content area
2) Having more than 7 main links or long names in the navigation
3) Use of random text sizes, fonts and colors that are different from your brand style guidelines
4) Missing header <h1> tags
5) Not knowing what the goal of the page is and understanding where it lies inside of the overall site goals. (This is the most overlooked and most important!)
Usability Best Practices
1) Use bullets and numbers to highlight text
2) Know design standards and understand when to break them or not
3) Keep link text consistent and clear (all links underlined or all links blue, etc.)
4) Design to your target audience (tween or baby-boomer?)
5) Always be testing! (A/B testing or multivariate testing)
There’s a few in the industry of web design usability and search that stand out. Those are Jakob Nielson and Shari Thurow. At the top of their game, their research and testing is top notch. View the History of SEO interview with Shari Thurow.
Is Your Site Design Getting in the Way of Your SEO?
If so, it’s time for a redesign! Don’t whine about the cost of a redesign, the lost opportunities without effective SEO will cost you far more in the long run. In today’s highly competitive Internet realm, it’s absolutely critical that your site is based on a search engine friendly structure; but what does this mean?
Your site should be HTML based, with limited use of Flash. Your code should be simple, W3C compliant, and should be kept as light and error free as possible. For instance, I’ve seen a site improve its design and include added functionality, yet cut its actual code length by over 70%. This was accomplished mostly by employing CSS in the design, ridding the site of Viewstate code, and moving all possible elements to external include files.
In addition to having concise HTML, the following should be adhered to:
- Absolutely avoid any type of frame, unless you’re trying to hide its content from the engines
- Your navigation should be text based, with meaningful words that are simple yet targeted to the subject of each page
- Images should be optimized (condensed) for the web and include ALT tags
- URL, Title tags, H1 headers, breadcrumbs, and hyperlinks should all be optimized around the particular subject of each page
- The content of each page should be targeted to the precise topic of that page alone
- Address, phone number, and other contact information should be in text – not image form
- Your SEO Friendly Content Management System should allow full control of all of the above elements
The typical lifespan of a website is 3-5 years before your customers will expect a fresh look and feel, with newly added technology and interactivity. As you’re looking at the investment itself, think about the amortization of a new site. Even a fairly expensive site, amortized over 5 years, is an incredibly inexpensive business tool likely to drive substantial ROI.
Keep in mind, the best design in a search friendly architecture still requires ongoing marketing. Just like your offline business needs branding, marketing, and exposure to gain customers, so does your website. Internet Marketing Services are offered in a myriad of formats, timeframes, and cost structures. Shop carefully to find the right marketing partner for your business.
New Design Trends Lend to Better Success Rates
Too often in a prospective client conversation, at the moment when a redesign is discussed, the client is thinking more about all of the information they would like to present instead of how they want to present it. Giving too much user choice as to ‘where to go next’ is a trend that’s dying. No longer are there new sites with multi-level navigation front and center, with an endless plethora of choice.
Smart designers and smart SEOs know better. It’s up to us to guide the client to best understand who’s coming to the site and what they want. Drop down navigation menus are being replaced with two or three call to action buttons, proactively guiding a user through the site…to the ultimate conversion.
Now, each page has a purpose, a placement in a highly organized or siloed structure, a call to action; information combined with a gentle (or not so subtle) push to the next step toward conversion.
Smart sites are designed with the ultimate purpose in mind – which may vary from purchasing product, filling out a lead generation form, calling direct or visiting a particular page. They work backwards internally and create the site around a specific and direct set of keywords and actions they would like to be found for and what products and services they offer.
Recent home page designs are clean and straight-forward, which guide the user to the next step and meets them at the point of their buying process (whether research or purchase driven). Since you have an average of 15 seconds to get your point across and invite a visit to click deeper into your web site, the need for simplicity is imperative.
Does your home page have a purpose? Does your site have a goal or set of goals?
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