Our Thoughts

A Winning Conversion Path

May 7, 2010 by Duncan Shand

Every website exists for a purpose, whether that is to sell something, to deliver information, to educate or to entertain. However, all too often something gets in the way of your visitors satisfying their needs. The first thing a new visitor does is quickly assess the site and determine whether it meets their requirements. To achieve a greater conversion result you need to ensure you have a great site, a usable site and have a clear conversion path.

Map your conversion path

When you’re looking to improve your conversion results it’s important to clearly define the target customer groups. Look to define the questions and issues they’ll have as they navigate the site and make decisions. The insights generated through this process can be used to map out the path your customers will go through.

When mapping out the path there are two key concepts that can be used to move visitors toward the desired goal. These are the call to action and resolution points. Let’s look at each of these in turn;

Call to Action: Each page on the site needs to have a clear purpose with a clear call to action to move the visitor to the next step in the process. Each page should have one main objective to move your visitors along. On the page you can use highlighted areas, hyperlinks, headlines and buttons to get your visitor to take the next step. Remember making a sale is a process, people need to browse, educate themselves, and understand the details before they are confident enough to click the “buy now” button. So remember the call to action only needs to take the visitor one step further along the process, not all the way.

Resolution Points: There will always be a number of questions visitors must answer before they can make a decision to proceed. These questions are the points that need resolution or “resolution points”. These might be questions around alternative models, colours. They might be about all the technical features of the product, shipping costs or your returns policy. The point is, there are a number of questions your visitors will want to understand and resolve. Therefore it’s important to understand what these are and provide easy access to specific pages that resolve these issues, so they can get back on to the conversion path. If they cant resolve them they wont be able to progress along the conversion path.

In summary make sure you understand the thought process your customers go through. Make sure they can find the answers to the questions they have and ensure there is a clear conversion path leading them to your conversion goal. To make sure you are on the right track test the usability of your site. Get people from your target market to test the site for you, watch where they come unstuck and make adjustments.

Remember high performing websites aren’t created at launch and good conversion results aren’t the result of one key idea or silver bullet, they’re the result of constant researching, adjusting and improving.

Work hard, be patient and the results will come.

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Tags: conversion tips, conversions, pain points

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