Conveying a Sense of Purpose on your Website

The Ultimate Conversion Webpage Review webinar series reviewed several websites to show where owners go wrong in their conversion optimization efforts. Conversion is the marketing technique of converting casual visitors, or traffic, into paying customer. Although traffic is the lifeblood of any website, empty traffic can be useless in sustaining any online business.

In this webinar, A/B testing software” href=”https://www.convert.com/” target=”_blank”>Convert teamed up with Creative Thirst‘s Bobby Hewitt to review a number of things many websites do wrong which ends up hurting their conversion rates. While CRO or Conversion Rate Optimization is one of the best ways to increase profits, not knowing how to use it can actually keep you from making the most of your business. For the complete webinar series, you can watch its entirety here.

The next site that was reviewed was a florist website. Upon running the site in Google translator, the tagline just underneath the top of the page says, ‘The Fastest Flower, Florist Flower Basket’. Now, is that convincing enough to persuade someone to buy from them? Are they really the fastest as they have claimed? And if so, is that prominent enough or make sense for one to proceed with the purchase? If the ideal prospect is in a bind then probably it is, assuming the fastest florist is what they are after.

Time is Money

If you’re in a bind and need the gift like today – a last minute dash – does that mean you are going to get your product really fast? If that’s really an important enough reason to be the tagline, then perhaps it’s important enough to have as the main buyer proposition. In such a case, what should really come across in any of the rotating banners on the top of the page is the expected shipping time. That should not miss in there.

[Tweet “About 46% of potential customers are lost because the landing page does not deliver”]

Given that the message is not clear, you are forced to browse through the site and hope something of that sort will pop up. This is not a great concept since people don’t actually buy that type of particular product – flowers – browsing in such fashion. It can be difficult to find what you are looking for on search engines, and it can be even more difficult to find what you are looking for inside of a website. When most people cannot find what they want right away, they are likely to bail.

Visibility and Organization is Key

Looking around, what’s probably missing is a particular purpose. It would be great to have any kind of important event visible enough – birthdays, anniversaries etc. This florist had that in mind but ended doing it all wrong: it’s just hidden somewhere on the page. The page has different categories somewhere at the top, listing out different birthdays, different main events, but there is one issue though: there is no provision to browse by category.

The categories are hidden at the top and what could really benefit them is by taking those categories and moving them a bit lower, and test the conversion from there. Another thing that would probably optimize conversion is taking the categories from a ‘browse and see what you like’ to a ‘You’re looking for birthday gifts? Here are all the birthday gifts’, ‘You are looking for anniversary flowers? Here are all the anniversary flowers’, something along those lines, and so on.

According to Meghan Lockwood’s 6 Parts of Your Marketing You Should Always Be Optimizing,

Online, the value proposition is generally the first sentence that your visitor will scan — on your website, social profiles, and other collateral — as well as what they glean when reading anything else you push out. It’s important that with just one sentence, you can address why your company, products, and/or service are great. It makes sense to test this sentence to make sure you’re conveying the right message

Presentation Matters

The key here is how they presented their products. Any marketer will know that it is not just about what you are offering, but also how it is offered. That is why design and displays make such a difference in marketing and advertising. When designing or testing a page you should ask these questions first:

• Does your call-to-action stand out?
• Are the certain elements that jump out too much and should not?
• Will a visitor trust your page and want to explore your website more?

These questions can help you create a visually appealing webpage that will account to increased conversions. And again, revisiting the first issue on speed of delivery. The main reason to buy that fastest flower basket or get it fast is because you are in a bind, goes without saying. So having a strong buying proposition should be a priority, and a visible one at that. You can check the webinar here.