Great Web Design Can
Kill
Your Sales Conversions
It's
said that beauty is in the eye
of the
beholder, and that it's only skin deep. When it
comes to your web site, beauty is expensive not just in designing the
site, but in what it may do to your traffic. The internet is
laden with web sites that are gorgeous works
of art. They have flashy graphics, subtle cues, beautiful cascading
style sheets, and more.
And
they're losing money. The
internet is about commerce, and your web site should be about commerce,
not about art.
As sad
as it is to say, web site aesthetics
are not what drives a customer to pull out their card and
order. Now, a bad (as in ugly, or unusable) web site can
drive people away, but beyond the bare bones basics, your web site
should be attractive, and above all else, USABLE.
Avoid
excessive clutter, make sure the text is
readable (both for color and contrast and for size) and do what you can
to make it load fast. Beyond that, focus on what the web site
is supposed to do for you, and, most especially, for your visitor.
Most
visitors to your web site came there
because of a link from a search engine, or from a link from some place
referring to your web site, via a blog, an article directory, or a
conventional advertisement.
These
visitors can be at radically different phases of the purchase
cycle. One may be looking to Buy Right Now. Another
may be looking just for information on a product. A third may
be in their active Hunter Gatherer Shop Comparison Mode.
Your
web site needs to provide venues and
avenues for all three of these types of visitors. Most web
sites really only try to do the first. I'd say this is a
shame, but it means you can do better and win out in comparison.
Now,
it's possible to do this yourself have
pay-per-click ads lead to different landing pages, and pick the
keywords to find the people who are comparing, buying now, or just
browsing (using the same adword phrase with "info", "buy" and "compare"
is one way to do this, albeit a basic one.)
However,
it's worth it to hire someone who
does this for a living, as there are a lot of tricks out there for
conversion, and web design, to make this all combine to raise your
profits and sales conversions.
The
benefit of hiring someone else to do this
is simple: You're getting the benefit of the mistakes they
made earlier on. Now, finding horror stories about Yahoo! And
Google Ads That Turned Out Badly is fairly easy.
Finding
people who've analyzed those stories,
and found the patterns and common elements is not. Finding
people who've succeeded is also doable, but even better is finding
someone who succeeded, and knows why and knows what not to
do. This can be the difference between a revenue machine and
an ad budget that looks like a sucking chest wound.
Finding
a qualified consultant is,
fortunately, straightforward. Both Yahoo and Google offer
certification programs. Google Certified Professionals and
Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassadors are the respective
titles. These people have intimate knowledge of how
the process works, and has gone through a training program, and there
are recertification exams to make sure the knowledge is kept up to
date.
So,
just remember beauty is expensive, but
expertise is affordable, and you'll be good to go.
Brett
Smith has been placing customer's ads at the
front of the search results of the major search engines for over 12
years. Discover how to increase your sales, get better cashflow and
increase your customer base with targeted effective search engine
advertising.
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by Leadpros.com in Association with Ground
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