Are Your Websites Usable? Improve Your LP.
- Thread starter zimok
- Start date
Heatmaps are definitely worthwhile, you just can't predict what a user will do. I was trialing a few pages with clicktale this past month which could replay back what a user was doing on the site, it's just like your standing behind them watching and it's interesting to see how people wander around. The free version will only playback a limited # of sessions captured each day and also only show two pages during the surfing experience but you could see the value of this if you had an ecom site.
Awesome resource. Thanks a bunch for that. Normally I would read Smashing Magazine every few days but have slacked off ass of late. That's a great site. And, does anyone have a free source to that handbook that has been mentioned several times in this thread, the: Landing Page Handbook, How to Raise Conversions - Data and Design Guidelines? It sounds like a valuable read...
Clicktale is a great source a guy in the programming section a while back recommended it and I was so grateful to him for pointing it out to everyone!)
Another great source is the literature from parking companies. I saw a fantastic presentation (I want to say by the guys at BuyDomains.com). Anyway, parking companies test the hell out of stuff because if a guy/gal has like 1000+ domains increasing CTR by even like 5% could mean thousands in extra $$ - maybe even millions.
I am too tired (lazy) to look for the link but I remembered (and try to use) one of their points:
Basically they tested the "grouping" effect of links. Example
- Item 1
- Item 2
- Item 3
- Item 4
- Item 5
- Item 6
etc....they found that if you group too many items together the user gets "overwhelmed" and just ignores the entire list. I think the max wa 6 links all to gether before the user disregards...What they did was test various no.s of links together to find out the ideal number - I was so impressed by this type of analysis.
The guy from 3 way links (Jonathan G.....forget is full name he does alot of products) also did some testing and till this day I very, very, very often use #003366 in links, which is a darker blue than the typical blue colored links. He claims that after much testing this is the best converting color for adsense links. According to his study it could be as much as 3 to 6% higher than the "default" color blue link that everyone esle uses (This whole issue of blue as a link color is great....)
A guy did a study of twitter CTR and showed that he got almost a double CTR with anchoring with CLICK HERE vs. a more keyword friendly term in the anchor - so he had to exchange seo value per performance....perhaps something like Find XYZ - CLICK HERE (combining the keyword along with the psychological trigger "click here" might work as well...)
Anyway else happen upon something useful?
PS
I wish someone would do a real study of "ugly sites" vs. "pretty" sites in terms of WHAT IS MOST PROFITABLE. I honestly believe that since alot of us stare at sites all the time we don't see what the average person does.
I made the deadly mistake one time last year of authorizing changes on a site - which was ugly as hell - to something much more "professional", "attractive", etc. in my mind.
Well god knows I'll never do that again AS THE MARKET TAUGHT ME A LESSON!!
Bounce rates increased and earning plummeted! When I changed it back to the ugly looking site things returned to normal.....
Rick Schwartz (my domain God, lol) often talks about how he keeps his sites "ugly" so that he can deliver surfers to advertisers as quickly as possible....it's work for him so hell, who knows?
I wish someone would do a real study of "ugly sites" vs. "pretty" sites in terms of WHAT IS MOST PROFITABLE. I honestly believe that since alot of us stare at sites all the time we don't see what the average person does.
I made the deadly mistake one time last year of authorizing changes on a site - which was ugly as hell - to something much more "professional", "attractive", etc. in my mind.
Well god knows I'll never do that again AS THE MARKET TAUGHT ME A LESSON!!
Bounce rates increased and earning plummeted! When I changed it back to the ugly looking site things returned to normal.....
Rick Schwartz (my domain God, lol) often talks about how he keeps his sites "ugly" so that he can deliver surfers to advertisers as quickly as possible....it's work for him so hell, who knows?