Except for one thing. The thank you page.

Seems pretty obvious, right? Lots of marketers overlook it – you’ve already made the sale (or download, or whatever), and in this age of data-driven marketing, it seems like traffic and conversions are all anyone (read: your boss) cares about. But remember all those things you learned in marketing school: it’s cheaper to keep existing customers than get new ones, the best time to upsell is at purchase… These people already trust you with their email address, credit card, and so on. Take advantage of that and keep them engaged!

Using the thank you page to your advantage.

You have a few options for what you could put on the thank you page, and what you choose will depend on your business goals and sales model.

Before we get to the optional stuff, your thank you page should always include:

• Something that says “thank you”.
• Transaction details – confirmation number, shipping tracking, etc.
• Any next steps that they need to take for their transaction – they need to print their receipt, etc.
• Clear information about what’s going to happen next – they’ll get a receipt by email, etc.

Now for the fun stuff. To re-engage this customer, you could:

• Provide resources related to the one they’ve just downloaded (another white paper, a related case study, a product brochure, etc.).
• Cross-sell other products related to the one they’ve just purchased (a la Amazon).
• Give them a coupon or other incentive for their next purchase.
• Give them an opportunity to create an account (if you let them go through the conversion process as a “guest”).
• Offer other ways to engage with your company (newsletter signup, contact information).
• Encourage social sharing (“Tell your friends/colleagues about this deal/white paper”) or social engagement with your company (“Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter”).
• Get feedback with a customer satisfaction survey.
• Display some highly-targeted ads for other products or partner companies.

How do you thank your customers?

What are you doing on your thank you pages to keep your customers engaged? Do you have any favourites from other companies that you’d like to share? Tell us below!

Red shirt, no real purpose = death.

Granted, in Star Trek, including an alien battle makes the episode more exciting. But the story line is developed by the main characters, not that ensign you see for 6 seconds before he gets killed. The aliens didn’t have time to deal with insignificant, pointless Away Team members.

Think about sinking resources and screen real estate into a part of your site that’s got no real purpose. Your visitors don’t need distractions like that flashy red button over there that doesn’t have any impact on the story you’re trying to tell.

Data and human emotions just do not mesh.

Data always struggled trying to understand human emotions. Even with an emotion chip, he still couldn’t quite grasp them properly.

Analytics are great – they tell you what visitors did on your site, how long they did it for, where they came from, where they went, how much money they spent… but they don’t tell you why visitors did something. There is no substitute (emotion chip, etc.) for true human emotions. You need to talk to real people to find out what they’re experiencing on your site.

I’m a doctor, Jim, not a…

Poor Bones. Kirk just kept throwing stuff at him that he wasn’t familiar with. You need to take the time to understand your visitors, so that you’re presenting them with information and tasks that they can understand and complete without getting frustrated with you.

Our neural pathways have become accustomed to your sensory input patterns.

Ok, I’m taking this one out of context a bit (in case you’re wondering, this is Riker commenting on the crew’s friendship with Data), but the point here is that there are lots of tools out there now that let you monitor one specific visitor’s behaviors, and then present them with content that is uniquely applicable to them. By building up that database of their inputs, you can effectively target your message to them.

In that particular moment, I was reconfiguring the warp field parameters, analyzing the collected works of Charles Dickens, calculating the maximum pressure I could safely apply to your lips, considering a new food supplement for Spot…

Data was extremely good at multitasking, even when “romantically” engaged with Jenna. Understanding what else is going on while your visitors are engaged with you through ethnography or similar types of research can give you an idea of how much attention visitors are really giving to you.

Believing oneself to be perfect is often the sign of a delusional mind.

No matter what you think, there is always room for improvement. Getting into A/B and multivariate testing is pretty easy these days, so I suggest you give it a try. Take all of the work you’ve now done to understand your visitors and use it to start tweaking your designs to optimize conversions. If you need some ideas on what to test or how to optimize parts of your site, check out user experience best practices, form best practices, landing page testing ideas, call to action best practices, and some of our other online experience articles.

Act, and you shall have dinner; wait, and you shall be dinner.

This Klingon proverb summarizes the current digital marketing landscape pretty well. It’s not enough to throw up any old website any more – you have to understand your customers and what their needs and pains are, and act on giving them what they need to solve their problems. And you have to be constantly monitoring this and adapting to their changing needs. Sit still, and you risk giving up business to your competitors who aren’t sitting still.

Make it so.

So get out there, boldly go where none of your competitors have gone before, and start getting to know your buyer better. It’ll pay off.

Engage.

Still not sure what you should to understand your buyers or to optimize your website? We can help.

Credit – Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I’ve borrowed several examples from Luke Wroblewski, one of the web’s most authoritative voices on web form design. If you’re looking for a really in depth look at forms, check out his book.

Do you really need that information?

This is probably one of the most common problems out there: you want 12 pieces of information from your visitor, and they’re only willing to give you two. This comes down to having a thorough internal discussion about which fields you absolutely require and which could be removed.

Typically, once you get beyond three or four fields, conversion rates start to drop off. Of course, this is dependent on the offer – if it’s a great contest, an expensive white paper that you’ve sponsored free downloads of, or a product warranty, chances are visitors are going to be more likely to give you their information.

This is where testing comes into play. If you can make do with less data about your visitor, run a test with a shorter form and see how it does.

Another option here is progressive profiling. If you have a CRM system that ties into your web forms, it likely has some sort of progressive profiling feature built in. When a visitor comes to your site and converts multiple times (e.g., downloading several white papers), they’re presented with different fields on each form. This lets you collect, say, 10 pieces of information while only asking your visitor for 4 at any given time.

Label position

There’s been a fair amount of research looking at the optimal placement of labels within a form so that they facilitate scanning, understanding, and form completion.

When the data being collected is familiar (e.g., a contact form), labels should be stacked vertically on top of fields. This makes it quick and easy for the visitor to scan down the entire form. The disadvantage here is that it makes the form take up more vertical space.

When the data being collected is unfamiliar or complex, labels should be placed to the left of the field, and should be left-aligned. This helps visitors scan down the list of labels so that they can see exactly what they will be providing. Left-aligning the labels can create a bigger distance between the label and the field, but this is preferable to right-aligning them, which is more difficult to read.

Web Form Label Alignment, borrowed from Luke Wroblewski

Field lengths

Ensure that the length of field is appropriate for the type of data. For example, a zip code field only needs to be 5 characters wide. This can help the visitor understand what type of information you’re looking for. However, keep the visual design of the entire form in mind as well – it probably won’t help the visitor if you have 9 different fields that are all different widths scattered all over the page.

Required vs. optional fields

• Indication of required fields is most useful when there are lots of fields but few are required – use an asterisk.
• Indication of optional fields is most useful when few fields are optional – use “(optional)” beside the label.
• Neither is useful when all fields are required, although this should be noted somewhere.
• Ensure that instructions about required/optional fields are easily noticed – they should be in the visual path of the user, not in tiny little text at the bottom of the page.

Grouping fields

Grouping related fields together gives the visitor the opportunity to scan the groups and get a high level sense of what is required; however, only use the minimum number of visual elements necessary to communicate useful relationships.

Grouping of fields in web forms, borrowed from Luke Wroblewski. The form on the left has way more visual elements than necessary to form meaningful groupings, thus inhibiting scanning.

Actions

The visual presentation of the actions should match their importance. Avoid secondary actions (e.g., “Reset”) if possible, and if not, ensure a visual distinction between primary and secondary actions.

Web Form Actions, borrowed from Luke Wroblewski

Also make sure that you’re using good calls to action.

Data input

Don’t make the visitor figure out appropriate formatting for a field (telephone numbers are especially notorious). Either provide a hint, break the field into the appropriate format, or do server-side processing to interpret the data.

Web Form Data Input, borrowed from Luke Wroblewski

It’s also nice if you can do the hard work behind the scenes. For example, if you can figure out the state based on the visitor’s zip code, that might be nice. Another great example is credit card numbers: MasterCards all start with the same set of numbers, which aren’t the same as the numbers that Visas start with. So when a visitor gives you a credit card number that starts with “5191″, you know it’s a MasterCard without the visitor having to explicitly say so.

Help and tips

• Useful when asking for unfamiliar data, when the user may question why the data is being collected, or there are recommended ways of providing the data.
• Don’t overuse them!
• If you have a lot of help/tips on a form, consider exposing them only when the visitor reaches that field (e.g., tooltips) or clicks on a help icon.

Smart dependencies

If there are field dependencies (e.g., the options in a shipping option selection menu depends on the zip code entered), ensure that they update appropriately.

Tabbing

Account for tabbing between fields when designing your form. Lots of web users do this now.

If you’re designing a multi-column form, make sure that the tab progression makes sense. For example, if you have first name and last name beside each other at the top of two columns, probably you want the visitor to fill in their first name, press tab, and then fill in their last name. You don’t want them to fill in their first name, press tab, and go down to the field below.

This also comes into play when a visitor is happily tabbing through a form, and then all of a sudden the three fields for the telephone number auto-advance when they fill in the required number of digits. It can then be extremely frustrating to try and get back into the previous field to try and fix any errors made.

Feedback

• Provide direct feedback as data is entered – use inline validation to verify input and suggest valid input if errors are found.
• Show errors at the top of the page and at the place where the error occurred. Make sure that they are visually distinct. Provide error messages that help the visitor understand what went wrong and how to fix it.
• Use progress indicators to show that something is happening. Disable the submit button after the visitor has clicked it to avoid duplicate submissions.

Now go out there and make some awesome forms!

Not sure if your forms are working for you or not? Check out our usability services to see how we can help you with usability testing, A/B or multivariate testing, and user experience research.

Questions and comments are always welcome.

Ian Everdell is a Usability Consultant at Mediative.

Most of these examples come from contests I’ve recently entered. That’s really their only saving grace – the fact that I’m willing to put a lot of energy into filling the form out because there’s the potential that I could get something awesome.

We like to call this the “vending machine in the desert” phenomenon. If there’s only one vending machine for thousands of sandy, sandy miles, I’m going to do whatever it takes to get a cold drink out of it. But if there are 17 vending machines side by side (read: you and your competitors all offering a white paper), I’m going to go with whatever’s easiest.

Um, what should I put in here?

This Air Miles contest form is pretty simple – one field. I like it. But, um, what do I type in there? I tried my email address several times – not only did it not work, it didn’t show any text at all! After I accidentally hit some numbers, I figured out that the field only accepted numbers as entry… but I still didn’t know what to put in there.

Only when I submitted the form without typing anything in did it tell me in the error message that I needed to enter my Air Miles collector number. This never even occurred to me because this was a WestJet contest. But clearly I should have been able to figure that out on my own with no label on the form field.

Oh, you mean I have to fill out that field too?

If you take a look at this entry form for a JetBlue contest, surely you’ll agree with me that it looks like you either have to fill out your Last Name and TrueBlue number or your email address. And we’d be wrong.

Apparently, you have to fill out your Last Name and either your TrueBlue number or your email address. The problem here is that the designer hasn’t used good Gestalt psychology to group related items (in this case the TrueBlue number and email address fields) together.

Hang on, which of these fields is required?

You’re probably used to seeing asterisks beside fields that you have to fill out, right? Me too. So when I was zipping through this Travelocity contest entry form, I did a double take when I saw the asterisk beside the Apt/Suite field. Now, I live in an apartment, but normally I put the number in the regular address field.

Did you notice the tiny little “*Optional” in the bottom left corner below the CAPTCHA? No? Me neither. But that’s the instruction that fields with asterisks are optional. If you really really want to mess with conventions and switch the asterisk to optional fields, at least put that somewhere where I’ll notice it – in my visual path (not only is it not on my visual path as I scan through the form, but it’s actually below an image that’s going to act as a visual barrier too).

As an added annoyance, the phone number field also requires specific formatting (##########), but fails to mention that until you do it wrong.

Help? What’s wrong here?

If an error can’t be avoided, at least give me some information that will help me fix it. Apparently IBM is too good for that though.

I was creating an account for some software at work, filled out the form correctly (as far as I could tell). And got this error message: “We’re sorry. The information provided is not valid. Please try again.”

Any chance you could tell me what isn’t valid? I’m pretty sure that I know my name, address, phone number, etc. better than you do, IBM. So obviously I’ve made a formatting mistake or something somewhere. But since I couldn’t figure it out, I gave up.

How do you make sure your forms don’t suck?

Start by making sure you’re not making the same mistakes these guys are:

• Confusing or missing labels
• Grouping form elements in a way that doesn’t make sense
• Not clearly indication what’s required and what’s not
• Displaying useless error messages

I promise that I’ll follow up with a form best practices blog post.

If you have form questions, I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment below and I’ll reply. If it’s an especially awesome form comment or question, I might even write you your own post.

If you have examples of forms that sucks, tell us about them in the comments below. The more examples we have of what not to do, the better we’ll be at doing it right.

I sure hope that you included a URL in your ad.

Whether you like it or not, potential customers who watch/read your ad will go looking for you online. Are you making it easy for them to do that?

In a research study that we recently did for one of our clients, we showed participants a TV commercial. In an overlay at the bottom of the frame, each participant saw one of three things:

• The company name (no call to action)
• A phone number
• A vanity URL

After watching the commercial, we asked each participant what they’d do to follow up (they were allowed to pick more than one activity).

Visiting the website and searching for the company were the top two activities, regardless of the call to action.

Hang on a second, you say. According to that chart, participants were more likely to visit the website when there was no call to action. Good point.

Except that when we asked them what website they’d visit, they told us the wrong one. The client was using a vanity URL that the participants couldn’t remember or guess – instead, they guessed at a URL that would have ended up taking them to the site’s homepage, where there was no information relevant to the commercial. If they’re looking for you online, wouldn’t you like them to find the information they’re looking for?

This led us to recommend that the client:

• Use URLs and a phone number in their commercials
• Use folders in their URLs (www.company.com/promo) rather than vanity URLs (www.buyfromcompany.com)
• Reinforce the call to action by including “call 1-800-555-1234 or visit company.com/promo” in the commercial voice over

So now that we’ve established that your potential customers are going to try and find you online, let’s take a look at how many of you are actually making that easy for them to do.

A recent study from Nominet looked at the use of URLs in print and TV advertising in the UK. The UK is pretty sophisticated when it comes to online stuff.

Only two thirds of print and TV advertising had a URL. When you break that apart, 83% of newspaper advertising had a URL, while only 61% of TV advertising did. In an analysis that looked at £40 million worth of advertising, that means that tens of millions of British pounds of advertising maybe aren’t being used as effectively as they could be.

Are you throwing money away by not including a URL in your advertising?

Do you use URLs in your offline advertising? Why or why not? Let us know what you think by commenting below.

• Headline
• Content
• Calls to action
• Form length
• Images
• Colors
• Layout

… and so on. But here are 5 things that maybe you haven’t thought of testing.

1. Make all of your form fields optional

Sales and marketing folk always want to get the best possible leads, so they tend to ask for lots of information on landing pages. Making all of your form fields optional might sound scary, but could actually work out for the better.

Which Test Won shows us an example of a form that left all fields optional. Compared to a form that required the first name, last name, email, and state to be filled out, the all-optional form resulted in a 31% increase in form submissions, and also eliminated the 20% of leads that submitted fake data (e.g., joe@fakeemail.com).

There is a potential trade off here – you might get fewer actual leads from a test like this. However, is that a reasonable trade off for getting leads that actually give you the information you want? Keep in mind, too, that if you’re using CRM software to track leads on your site, getting them to fill out one field on this form could make it easier to get more information about them at a later date.

2. Make multimedia autoplay on page load

I know, you’re all sitting there with your mouths agape at what I just suggested. Generally, letting audio and/or video autoplay when the page loads is considered a poor user experience. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try it – that’s the great thing about A/B or multivariate testing, especially when it’s just hitting one small segment of your site traffic.

Carefully consider how this multimedia plays into the overall “design” of your landing page. Is it the one and only piece of content on the page? Does it contain important messaging? Or is it just a testimonial or something like that?

3. Give your prospects a teaser

Nobody really likes giving things away for free, and that includes your prospects. Without really knowing the quality of what they’re getting when they submit your form, they might be more reluctant to give you their information.

So bite the bullet and give something away for free. If you’re offering an ebook, give them the first chapter to download right on the landing page. To get the rest of the book (because it’s that awesome), they have to submit the form.

There’s a catch here – make sure it’s easy for them to get back to the landing page once they’ve finished with the free part. Include a link at the end of the first chapter PDF that takes them right back there.

4. Change the direction people in your images are looking

Where other people are looking is a very strong cue for us humans about where we too should look.

When you compare the ads for SunSilk shown here, most people prefer the bottom one, with the pretty lady looking straight ahead. However, the eye tracking heatmap shows that when she looks at the product, so do the people looking at the ad.

You can try something similar on your landing pages. Instead of your standard, smiling, looking-straight-ahead stock image people (who really should be replaced by people your prospects can relate to anyway), try a picture of someone looking toward your call to action.

You can also try directing your prospects’ attention toward important things by using other visual cues, like arrows, whitespace, or perceived motion.

5. Test your thank you page too

This might seem like a no-brainer, but lots of marketers don’t think about this. Your thank you/follow up/”encore” page is a fantastic opportunity to continue to engage your new lead.

Try testing out additional offers, cross-selling other products, or encouraging social sharing.

There is no wrong answer when it comes to testing

If you have an idea that you think might affect conversion rates, test it! What works for one marketer, product, offer, or company might not work for another. Optimization is an ongoing process, and you should always be trying out new things.

If you’re looking for more information about creating landing pages that really work for you, check out our recent webinar, Landing Page Optimization: Matching Content to Intent.

Methodology

We did two things to collect some user feedback: a 20-person lab study with eye tracking, and an online survey.

For the survey, we got about 150 responses from our newsletter, Twitter, email, and other social sharing of the invite. Questions were basic use and preference questions about Instant, and there were instructions in there for respondents who hadn’t previously tried Instant to turn it on and try it out.

For the lab study, we had participants complete a dozen different search tasks. All of the participants did tasks on regular Google first and then on Google Instant, so that we could establish a baseline of behavior. The task set included navigational, informational, and transactional searches.

The heatmaps that you’ll see below are based on counting the number of times participants in the lab study looked at a particular part of the page. They do not indicate the amount of time participants spent looking at the page – doing this with Instant is beyond the scope of preliminary results.

Keep in mind, too, that the eye tracking shown below is from a small sample. For most of the heatmaps, results are aggregated across a set of tasks. This also means that there may be some eye tracking “heat” that doesn’t really make sense based on the image of the SERP behind it – because we were working with live Google results and because we’re aggregating results across tasks, the image is just representative of the task set, rather than the specific SERP a participant saw.

Instant’s Impact on Organic Attention

A big concern about Instant is that results father down the page will get less attention.

Most of you will be familiar with the Google Golden Triangle – typical searchers look at a “consideration set” of the first three or four results, scanning them in an “F pattern”. If they don’t find something in those first few results, we also typically see a second triangle with another consideration set farther down the page.

Looking at the aggregated behavior during the tasks on regular Google, we see that the golden triangle is still alive and well.

If we look at the same thing on Google Instant (eye movements aggregated across all tasks), aside from a slight downward shift because of the search predictions, we see that the golden triangle persists.

If we break up the results by the type of search – navigational, informational, or transactional – we see similar stuff. From a qualitative perspective, the overall eye movements are relatively similar between regular Google and Google Instant.

Instant’s Impact on Paid Attention

Another concern with Instant is that side sponsored paid ads will essentially go ignored by searchers.

Looking at the eye tracking data (again aggregated across tasks) for all of the SERPs that have side sponsored ads, it doesn’t look like there’s much of a difference in attention.

However, this is a small sample, and the actual statistics behind the heatmap indicate that there may be some truth to the fear that side sponsored ads will receive less attention: the number of participants who looked at the side sponsored ads when using Google Instant was somewhat less than for regular Google. We’re going to have to take a deeper look at this to say anything conclusive.

Instant’s Impact on Searcher Behavior

Google has claimed that Instant will save searchers 2-5 seconds per search. The general public has also voiced concerns that the use of search predictions and the Instant results will shorten query length and put more emphasis on head terms.

We asked survey respondents what they thought of Google Instant. In general, there was a mixed response, with some people loving it, some hating it, and many somewhere in between. Interestingly, all of the respondents who said they hated it had previously tried it (rather than turning it on for the first time during the survey), and based on when they responded to the survey were likely industry people or had some knowledge of search. The more “naive” respondents appeared to like Instant more.

We also asked if they thought Instant changed the way they searched. About 1/3 of the respondents thought that it did, with their reasons typically revolving around more relevant results, faster searching, and less typing – seemingly in agreement with the industry predictions.

When we look at the stats on queries typed in the study, we see that:

• % of query typed: decreased in 25% of the tasks, no change in the others
• query length: increased in 17% of the tasks, no change in the others
• time to click: decreased in 33% of the tasks, increased in 8% of the tasks

So it looks like Instant might be making search faster, but there’s no across-the-board change as of yet.

Conclusions

So is Instant having the big impact on searcher behavior that was predicted? Hard to say at this point. Give it a few months, and I think that we’ll see people who use Instant consistently will exhibit different behavior from people who stick with regular Google, but at this point, it’s too new to definitely say that Instant is revolutionizing the way we search.

In the last couple of days, both Yahoo! and Bing have announced changes to the way they present search results as well. Yahoo! takes a stab at presenting a richer experience when you search for entertainment-related information, and Bing has used the power of HTML5, Windows 7, and IE9 to make the search experience more desktop-like. Let’s look at Yahoo! first.

Yahoo! the Entertainer

Announced in a blog post yesterday, Yahoo! is “making one of [their] most significant updates to Yahoo! Search to provide new experiences” this fall.

The interface changes they showed yesterday revolve around “information-rich topics” like music, news, and other entertainment-related searches. At the top of the search results page, you’ll see rich content giving you easy access to images, movies, news, events, and even tweets. You’ll also be able to view slideshows of images and news stories right on the SERP.

Information-rich entertainment and news results in the updated Yahoo! search interface.

Bing to the Future

Taking advantage of HTML5, an updated browser engine in IE9, and the capabilities of Windows 7, Bing announced their new, “more beautiful” search experience on Wednesday. And I’ll admit, it looks pretty slick.

The first thing you notice is that the full-size image that lives behind the Bing search box can be a fully animated video or a zoomable image, thanks to the power of HTML5. Once you get to the SERP, they’ve made a number of enhancements that make the experience feel more desktop-like:

• When you scroll down the page, the left rail and top navigation (quick tabs) get pinned to the screen – no more scrolling back up to the top of the page if you want to access related searches, search history, or the vertical searches.
• When you use the quick tabs, HTML5 allows seamless, animated transitions, rather than a “jarring” page reload
• Image and video previews that are “bigger, bolder, and easier to trigger”

Windows 7 has also allowed the Bing team to add a “jump list” of common tasks, like shopping, flights, and news, to the IE9 window preview in the Windows taskbar. With a single click, you can go from your taskbar to these common tasks (seems appropriate for a “taskbar”, right?).

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What do you think?

Good? Bad? Were you mesmerized by the ocean background in the Bing video like I was?

Both engines claim that they’re making these changes based on lots of research and user feedback.

So give us your feedback – let us know in the comments below what you think of these changes Yahoo! and Bing are making to the search experience.

You might be suffering from poor user experience on your site. This could stem from any number of things, including:

• Content that doesn’t address your potential customers’ needs and pains, doesn’t speak in their language, or doesn’t show how your offering can benefit them
• Information architecture (a fancy name for the way your content is organized) that makes it tough for a potential customer to find what they’re looking for
• Design & layout that makes it hard to find, read, or share the information on the site
• Calls to action that are missing, confusing, or inappropriate
• Forms that are too long or error-prone
• Landing pages that are not optimized for conversion

How do I fix my bad site?

If you suspect that your site might be suffering from one or more of the issues above, there are a few things you can do. I’m going to focus on a couple here: landing page optimization, and website usability testing.

Landing page optimization

Landing pages are the bridge between a search result or a paid ad and your site. It is important that the page that a potential customer lands on after clicking matches the messaging and design they have seen before clicking, whether that relates to a download or free trial you’re providing, the benefits of your product, or some other offer the customer can’t resist.

It is also important that the landing page is directed and free from other distracting elements. It should flow logically and quickly from headline to content to call to action.

Landing page optimization is the process of making changes to your landing page in order to eke out the most conversions possible. Typically, optimization includes running A/B testing (or multivariate testing) using a testing platform like Google Website Optimizer, LiveBall, Marketo, or Unbounce. These platforms let you create multiple versions of your landing page that are served up randomly to visitors. As the tests run, you get to see which versions of your landing page result in more conversions – it could be the one with the red button instead of green, the headline that mentions your product’s price, or the content that uses a bulleted list instead of a paragraph.

It’s important not to get mired down in minutiae – not everyone has the resources to test 41 different shades of blue. One of my favourite pieces of landing page advice comes from the folks at ion interactive: with landing page optimization, you have to “innovate and iterate”. Innovate by making some drastic changes, like a completely different template. Then iterate by progressively testing different elements on that page, like the call to action, headline, content, images, and so on.

By strengthening the connection between the search result/ad and your site, you can help to coax those conversions you’re not getting right now.

Website usability testing

So you’re driving good traffic and you’ve optimized your landing pages, now you’ve got to make sure that your website is also performing optimally. There are lots of ways to do that, including A/B and multivariate testing like you did on landing pages, online satisfaction surveys, and digging through your analytics. But to get good results quickly, you can also do some website usability testing: getting real users to perform real tasks on your site, monitoring their performance and feedback, and making changes accordingly.

Website usability testing typically involves one-on-one interaction between a moderator and a user. The user is asked to perform representative tasks and provide feedback about the interface, problems they encounter, and so on. Metrics that can be measured include:

• Time on task
• Task completion rate
• Errors made
• Number of times help was provided
• User satisfaction

The verbal and/or written feedback that is provided by the user during and after the testing can be quite valuable for getting deeper insight into the thought processes, behaviors, and emotions of the users of your site.

New tools are also allowing website usability testing to be carried out remotely. There are a number of benefits to remote usability testing, the most important of which is that the user can participate from their “natural environment” with all of the regular distractions, the hardware they’re used to, and the annoyance of finding a parking spot at a testing facility. It also reduces travel time and expenses for the moderator (and client), eliminates geographical separation issues, and leaves the testing schedule much more flexible.

I think I’ve got a bad site… what should I do now?

Test. Then test some more. Whether it’s landing page testing and optimization, website usability testing, or something else, there is no substitute for trying out different things and seeing how your potential customers react. To rework the famous quote:

If you build it, test it, and optimize it, they will convert.

To help combat these distractions, you need a call to action. Ultimately, you want visitors to your site to download that whitepaper, sign up for that webinar, or contact you for a trial. Everything on your site (or at least on a specific page) should be coaching people to take that action.

Not having a call to action is confusing

I was just looking at the Forrester Groundswell Awards. One of Enquiro’s clients, Kinaxis, is in contention for an award and I wanted to vote for them (Enquiro helped them win a B2B social media award earlier this year, too).

However, I got to the voting page, read through the description, and then didn’t know how to vote. There was no indication on the page that voting was possible – the only action I could take was, seemingly, to write a review about the award submission.

I was confused.

Then, through serendipitous clicking (not something you want your potential customers to be doing, really), I discovered that I could click on the stars to give the submission a “rating”, which I presume counts as a vote. I didn’t have to write a review, although the proximity of the “Add a Review” button to the rating made me think I did.

What could they do better?

There are, in my mind, a couple of quick fixes that could help Forrester convince visitors to vote for award submissions:

The moral of the story

If you have a desired action you want someone to take on your site, follow my ACTION principles:

• Active – use active words that will get the visitor to do something. “Get your free trial”, “Download the whitepaper”, “Sign up here”.
• Consistent – use the same call to action with the same formatting in the same location on every page it’s applicable. Web users love predictability.
• Tough to Resist – make them an offer they can’t refuse. If you’re asking for them to fill out 17 form fields of information, you better be giving them something awesome.
• Immediate – create urgency. “Get yours before it’s gone”, “Sign up today and get a free widget”,”Vote now before the polls close”.
• Obvious – make it stand out. Web users don’t read, they scan, so burying it in text isn’t going to work.
• Noticeable – if you have a scrolling page, you generally want to make sure that your call to action can be seen no matter where the visitor is on the page. If you have to repeat it a couple of times, that’s ok.

Do your calls to action follow the ACTION principles?