Website Fundamentals: How to Generate Amazing Results Online - a summary

Posted by Jeremy on 27 February 2009 | 2 Comments

Tags: websites

I recently attended a free seminar presented by Brent Kelly of ZEALD.COM. A lot of the content (for me) wasn't entirely new, but it certainly structured my knowledge and equipped me with a vocabulary to communicate it. Here is a summary of my notes from the seminar:

2 key factors of a website's success:

Ultimately, the most important factor for business owners: Is my website generating money? If you want to increase the success of your website, you increase one of two things.

1. Number of visitors
   • You need visitors to your site, which is fairly obvious if you care about generating money. The more the merrier.
   • Determined by how well your website is promoted
2. Conversion rate
   • What proportion of your website's visitors are taking the action you want
   • Determined by the persuasiveness of your website content / structure

These factors should be MEASURED. Persuasion should be implemented before promotion, otherwise you'll have traffic to your site, but nobody wants to stick around. This is why Brent focused on persuasion for the remainder of the talk.

NOTE: "Hits" is not an accurate measurement/term for website success. A visit on one site could generate 100 hits, whilst a visit on another website might generate 2 hits. It is to do with the number of elements of a page that are downloaded when you download a web page.

TMT: the key to improving website results

It is impossible to achieve 100% growth by getting things right in one go, first time. However it is easy to achieve 1% growth 100 times over incrementally.

This is done by:

1. Test - identify some aspect of the site to be tested
2. Measure - record performance of site
3. Tune - tweak the part of the site to improve

Persuasion

Persuasion is about getting visitors to perform a desired result.

• Identify your objectives and develop a powerful strategy.

You need to know what you've trying to persuade your visitors to do. Your ultimate conversion goal will either be to make a sale (purchase something), or generate a lead (phone call, email, request quote).

Your strategy will determine the core purpose of your website.

Someone who has just arrived at your website is probably not ready to complete your overall objective. They have questions and fears that should be answered and addresssed by your website.

The about us page is the best place to address fears. This might include a mission statement, a code of conduct or recruitment policies, a picture of your team in their best, and anything else that says "we are a professional organisation".

A services page, or similar, will be good for identifying every little thing you do. Include a contact form for those things that are not on the list. You can always refer them onto someone who can do that thing. You should offer incentive to fill out the form and provide little excuse for them not to contact you. This might include providing a way to be contacted urgently.

Map your site

Include a site-map that gives a 'zoomed out' overview of the entire site.

Conversion pathway

Your conversion pathway is the steps/pages a visitor of your site.

To determine your conversion pathway you need to identify which questions are most important for a new visitor. The top four questions should become the 4 most important pages on your website that you should 70 - 80% of your time and budget on. These pages act as a funnel, which all other pages should lead in from in some way.

For example the following might be a conversion pathway for generating a lead on a plumbing website: Home -> About Us -> Services -> Request Quote

TMT your pathway

Macro conversion is your overall goal of generating a sale or lead. Micro conversion is the conversion objective of the page/step you are currently on.

Once you have your pathway, you can implement it and begin testing, measuring and tweaking it. Come up with 3-5 "wireframes", or layouts for a page, test and measure how each one changes the performance of your website.

Trust / Credibility

Trust and credibility is a crucial factor for making sales/leads. It is more important online than offline, because you essentially only have words and images to convey trust.

The Neilson Norman group published some research that identified why customers make the decisions they do when preferring one website over another. These are the top reasons ZEALD.com analysed in that research:

1. Must be fast loading: 8 - 10 seconds on a 56k modem is the limit people are prepared to wait. This is relative to Internet connection speed, eg broadband users would have a shorter patience span. The #1 cause of slow websites is poorly optimised images.
2. Must be user friendly (easy to use):
   • If your website differs from standards, people will find the site unfamiliar and difficult to use. Eg: positioning of menus is usually top, or left of the page.
   • 99.9% of visitors come to a website to solve some problem. Don't make it hard for them to do so.
   • Splash pages destroy business results
   • Quirky also destroys business results
   • Make it simple and TMT
3. Must have professional design: reflect the brand but not at the expense of usability

Elements of trust and credibility

• Testimonials - happy customers raving about your business
  
  • Must be detailed, eg include: name, picture, company, ...
  • Specific, eg the staff member they interacted with, what product/service they got
  • Link to their website
• Certifications - ratings or certifications of your business that are important to the customer
• Terms of trade
• Returns policy - eg what happens if goods are damaged etc
• Logos of partners
• Media - press you've had
• Contact us - include physical address and a land line number
• About Us - the best tool to humanise an organisation
  • Go the extra mile and let your customers really get to know who you are. People are more comfortable dealing with someone they know more.
  • Picture of team
  • Profiles of staff - more is better (ZEALD.com has 2 page profiles). Some small piece of information that helps a customer relate might be the key to winning their business.
• Presales - give away skills/info/tools/worksheets for free
  • Builds credibility as an industry expert
  • Establishes you as an expert in your field
  • Relates to both persuasion and promotion

Spark Interest

Research shows that 3 seconds is the average time taken for an individual to decide whether to stay on a page, or leave it.

The #1 tool for sparking interest is headlines. A headline will either be a:

• Question - this should be followed by a hook that answers the question. Eg: "is your website generating results?, read on about the benefits of ..."
• Statement

Customers don't want features, they want benefits. It is important to word content in terms of the benefits you can bring them, rather than a list of features you offer.

TMT 8-10 different headlines that incorporate benefits.

Develop persuasive momentum

• Words
  • Long text consistently out performs short punchy text in the online world.
  • We can't percieve a visitor's preference, so use long text by default, but structure it in such a way that people can skim it easily.
  • Use one page of text
  • Split into sections that start with a powerful headline
  • Visitors will typically read up and down your page, rather than all of it from top to bottom
• Images
  • The more the merrier
  • Closeups / action shots of your product or service
  • They show benefits as well as features

Complete the conversion process

At each step in your conversion process should include a call to action, which is the step you want them to perform next. This should feel like the most natrual thing for a customer to do when they are on a page.