Understanding user behavior can lead to giant new revenue streams

Prashant — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:11:10 +0000

It’s no secret, web usability is a necessity in order to ensure your business makes the sales you need online. Your website is a 24x7x365 sales machine and it needs to look and function it’s best at all times. Last month I worked on a redesign which was literally only a redesign focused on optimizing user experience. Sure, we’ve done a few new marketing initiatives and spent several thousand more dollars for the client to broaden their reach (which is going to be very promising) but it definitely wasn’t the core of the new 2010 marketing program.

For the time being I’ve decided to not name the business but that doesn’t stop me from sharing the bottom line–numbers. What I’m talking about is a momentous 39% increase in goal conversions. The business went from 72 sales through its website in June 2010 to 100 sales in July 2010 (after I implemented the new redesign). This small business is involved in the travel & tourism industry so those mere 28 sales equates to roughly a new $4,000-5,000+ revenue stream per month. Granted the industry suffers from seasonality, no one is going to complain about more sales in this economy. In addition, the new revenue stream figure only reflects the traceable sales for the one goal that was set in Google Analytics. The analytics goal does not account for increased phone orders, or sales made through third parties such as brokers and agents.

Earlier in the year we set an internal goal for the business which was to make sure we hit the same gross sales from last year. That won’t be the case this year because we’re going to blow that number out of the water. I’m very proud to be involved with a project that’s making real strides in a down economy.

So what’s the takeaway from this? Selecting a internet marketing company or “web designer” is not just about who can make things look the nicest. You need to work with a company who can deliver both form and function in order to make real sales.

There’s a reason why a website costs $15,000 through one company and only $1,200 through another. In this example, a $15,000 investment can easily be recouped in a few months leaving the rest of the year (as well as subsequent years) as pure profit. How’s that for an investment?

UPDATE 08/09/10: Did some more tweaking the website and achieved yet another 12-15% increase in conversions (100 goals to now 112-115/month). Constant testing, adjusting, and measuring is the key.

P.S. I forgot to mention that during the process of the redesign, I actually removed some content pages of the website that probably weren’t needed (still working on adding new content). To further emphasize the ROI of a good web design, I can share that the website’s page views actually decreased yet conversions increased.

Optimizing text vs. graphics for user engagement

Prashant — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:55:26 +0000

When it comes to webpage design, who doesn’t like an attractive and fancy design? Cool backgrounds, random pictures of cats wearing hats, whatever it takes to “make people” like and remember your website. But contrary to popular belief, none of that truly matters because when someone comes to your website, they’re looking for information. Remember the days of Geocities when everyone had pictures of dancing babies on their webpage and a whole bunch of other misc animated pictures? Yeah…notice how those aren’t so prevalent anymore? If you want to keep people on your website, and convert casual visitors into sales, it’s text, not graphics that designers and decision makers should be thinking about.

To find out where people are clicking on your own website and where they aren’t, you can employ the use of a heatmap. This heatmap will tell you through a colored visual output where people are clicking, and where they aren’t. If you’re a decision maker, the light bulb might be going off above your head right now because maybe important content isn’t placed in the best, optimized, location. Google Anlaytics allows the ability to see a heatmap, but for a more elegant solution, take a look at Crazyegg.

For general reference, this picture is an overall good guide as to where the hot zones are on a page:

3.5 takeaways:

1) Move content around on the homepage and other landing pages so that important text is immediately visible “above the fold.”

2) Make sure your calls to actions (CTA’s) are placed in optimal locations where visitors are likely to click.

3) Don’t give your visitors any confusion when it comes to what that particular page is about. Make sure they don’t need to scroll around to figure out the who, what, when, where, how.

3.5) When in doubt, employ A/B split testing to see which method of display is working better than the other.