Nice Design is a Value Proposition - Ziller Web Marketing Blog

If you ask someone who has no web design experience / knowledge to review a website, the main thing they will base their review on is the appearance of the website. They won’t know much else about how well it is built behind the scenes but they will know if it looks good or not. This topic is often touched upon when Ziller provides initial screen designs of a new site to a client – the majority of their feedback comes in the way of look and design, not the more important factors of website usability, how well it is being built for search engines and if its designed to achieve the overall goal or purpose of the site.

Now if you speak with someone who has web design experience and knows about website usability, they will tell you that the design and or appearance of a website is the very least important part, which in some aspects Ziller agrees with. If you are running an online business, the bottom line is usually the money that the website generates so therefore those other more important factors really come into play. I can pick out a thousand websites that look great, but do not do one thing to help in achieving the goal of the website.

In saying all this, the point of this post is to point out why a well designed website is still so very important, even more important if you are selling online. If you have not heard of a value proposition before, it is a way of convincing your users why they should buy / trust / use your website, usually in the form of text or banners. What I am here to say is that a professionally designed website is one very strong value proposition. Users will subconsciously trust a website if its well designed, and the opposite if its poorly designed. I know myself if I go to a website that is asking for money for a product or service that has a terrible design I am most likely to leave without buying – if they can’t afford to pay someone to design a nice website they obviously are not making much money?

If you currently run a online store that is poorly designed, I think you will be amazed at the increase in your conversion rate with a simple redesign.

When a consumer enters a brick and mortar store and starts browsing some products they are interested in, what will they usually do next? they will choose a item their thinking of buying, pick it up and feel it, look at the front, back and sides and read the fine detail. More often then not they will then choose to buy the product that has better packaging and is more attractive on the outside, then the less attractive product even if the less attractive product is in fact better quality.

If you are thinking of starting a online business or already currently do, how do you try and replace what I just described above using your website? Just because a user is now online it doesn’t mean there shopping behavior has changed. If you cannot give the user a good indication of how that product is going to look / feel when it is in their own hands, the product is not going to sell, or at least not sell as much as if you did.

Having better product images is one of the most complained about factors of e-commerce stores. Too many stores out their place no importance on their product images, when this is one of the most critical areas and one where you should be putting much effort into.

If a user can visualise a product in their hands, the hard work is done. Work hard on that.

Website accounts in shopping carts are common things these days. It is not often that you will come across a e-commerce store that does not offer an account of some type with which you can register, in order to get added benefits. In fact many e-commerce websites make registration mandatory in order to even purchase, which is a hot topic and one which I have touched on in a older post.

As I see it, if you do offer an account with your e-commerce store, the goal would be to have as many of your users register for one as possible. Users who are registered are far more likely to make a purchase, and assuming you gained permission to send them email you can use this to promote new products and or services.

One thing I see common across even some leading e-commerce stores is the poor attempt to sell registration to the user. If you offer registration, whats so good about it? What do you get if you do register and why must the user do it? All these questions should be answered on your account sign-up page.

Take pcparts.net.au as a perfect example – their login page has only a couple of lines of text to promote the creation of an account. At this point in time as a user I have no idea what I get if you sign up so I will be very declined to do so.

pcparts.net.au

If your going to ask a user to not only give up their precious time, but provide personal information such as their email address, you have to offer in return something of equal or greater value.

A few months back one of my posts at half-geek talked about the big mistake many shopping carts make by making it mandatory to register when checking out. By registering I mean making them enter a password when checking out that they would then use to access their account and checkout in the future.

My good friends at getalastic today released a post called checkout inspiration from top converting sites which I thought was very interesting. It backs up the fact that making a user register does cause friction and will result in cart abandoment which any shopping cart can do without.

Looking at Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts which lists the top 10 ecommerce converting sites, you may notice that some of the sites listed here do make you register when checking out. Don’t always do what the leaders in your field do, they may well find it more efficient to loose some sales in order to complete some other business goal.

If you are a regular user of the Internet, there is no doubt you will have come across a CAPTCHA before.  Simply described a CAPTCHA is a question or test used to tell if the person at the other end is a human or a computer, before allowing them to complete a certain action. The most common CAPTCHA used on websites requires the user to enter letters or numbers from a distorted image that appears on the screen.

If you understand the level of spam across the Internet you may gain an insight into why CAPTCHAs are absolutely necessary for many websites. Without a CAPTCHA a website may get automated software performing actions that were otherwise intended for humans, which in turn will degrade the quality of the service, and cause headaches for the webmasters at the same time.

Now that we know what a CAPTCHA is and why it is used, I would like to point out how a large number of them are absolutely killing conversion rates for many websites. It’s not that there is one extra question to be asked on a form, however the fact the so many of these CAPTCHAs are so badly designed. Now when you have a user on your page and you are asking them (more like pleading) to perform a certain action, you most likely already have enough unwanted anxiety and friction on the page to cause them to leave, without having one of these badly designed questions. I cannot tell you how easily I will close a browser window and leave a website if they even think of throwing one of these at me.

There are so many websites out there that are killing their conversion rates and stopping real humans from performing actions on their websites, that could be easily fixed by having a bit of common sense. One thing I would recommend having is a small feedback option for the user to leave feedback about the CAPTCHA, this way if users were having issues you would be able to find out pretty easily.

Before I go I recommend you check out this post on badly designed CAPTCHAs, wouldn’t any of these send you insane?