Small Changes Yield Big Results

I’ve done this all of my career and I’ve noticed one truism from all of the new projects, initiatives, or changes that we’ve made to any of the sites that I’ve worked:

If you work with a Web site, you don’t have to do a complete redesign every time you want to improve performance. (Note: In some instances, you should certainly consider a full-scale redesign.)

Look for these ‘items’ on your Web site and make sure they are optimized for your audience:

—Do you need ads on every page? It is probably not necessary or recommended that you place advertising on key ‘conversion’ pages on your site (think checkout, lead capture, sign in, e-mail to a friend pages). These pages are all key ‘engagement’ pages that should contain as few distractions as possible. You should do everything you can to minimize distractions on these key pages.

—Are your call to action buttons clear, eye-catching, and convincing? Each page of your site should have a purpose. Think about what you want your visitor to accomplish on that page. If you are trying to capture leads, you should make everything on that page focus the consumer on clicking the ‘Send me information’ button.

—Test, test, test – I encourage you to continually experiment with your key Web pages on your site. Don’t forget, however, that if you don’t measure, you have no way to know if these changes yielded positive or negative results. One of the great things about the Web is the simple and easy ‘test and learn’ approach you can take. If something is not improving performance, you can modify it ‘in a snap’.

Keep these tips in mind as you work to improve results for your company’s Web site.

BTW: Amazon.com is testing new layouts, treatments, and persuasive actions ALL of the time on their site.

Until next time,

Dan Naden