I was sure I’ve ranted about this before, but after noticing the sign below again the other day I was motivated to get the keyboard out!
This is the advertising spiel that’s rolled out on posters and petrol pumps but loads of media agencies when they haven’t got anyone to advertise in their space… and it drives me nuts!
Do your clients look at a poster in Tesco? Or at the petrol pumps in Esso?
Well, maybe.
But, it depends.
Not if they’re more likely to shop in Aldi and get their petrol from a supermarket forecourt.
A leading entrepreneur and UX expert puts it better than me…
“Your customers are not you. They donât look like you, they donât think like you, they donât do the things that you do, they donât share your expectations, assumptions, and aspirations. If they did, they wouldnât be your customers; theyâd be your competitors”
Mike Kuniavsky
The point is, that you are not your customer. It’s a mantra that we’ve been chanting for years and why the first step of any project of ours is to try and figure out just who is the customer of each of our clients. Only then can you really work out how to engage with them.
4 ways clever business owners watch their websitesâ visitors
Google Analytics is the ever-present Personal Investigator for your website:
Secretly watching whoâs watching you!
Peering through the looking glass of the web.
Recording what people see, where they go and how often.
Watching usersâ behaviour, so you can manipulate their path to where YOU want them to go.
Whatâs more, many websites already have it set up (if not, itâs a cinch to do), so why not use it: unlock the data that is already there and understand where to focus your resources â boosting your business to greater strengths.
Are you brave enough to look?
This spookily clever software enables you to creek open the back door of your website, take a peek inside, and view for yourself whatâs really going on.
But what happens if you find that your landing pages are repelling your customers? Or if your pricing is scaring your users away?
What would you do about it?
Dare you see where your audience is going?
Dare you see your flaws and vulnerabilities enough to change them and gain better insights into how you can make things better?
If you canât measure something, you canât understand it. If you canât understand it, you canât control it. If you canât control it, you canât improve it.
â H. James Harrington
âBut my website is amazingâ
Maybe your website is devilishly amazing; your product or services are thrilling to eye popping proportions, your marketing strategies are more magical than a wizards wand and your imagery and content is on point.
But can you honestly say youâre getting the sales or sign-ups you want or need?
Youâll be surprised by how simple the answer to this conundrum could be. Getting to that place however requires a bit of digging â digging down into your data.
In god we trust, all others bring data
-W. Edwards Deming
The crystal ball that is Google Analytics will point you towards the areas you need to explore further. In particular, this stalker-like software will allow you to discover:
1. How did users get to your site?
How many of your users are are brand spanking new customers, and which ones are returning?
Google analytics will allow you to see how many people are responding to your marketing efforts â which of your activities are driving visitors and which are just a waste of time. Even better, it will tell you which marketing channels are actually delivering the real paying customers â are all those Facebook visitors just browsers? Letting you focus on the work thatâs actually making you money.
It will also tell you what time your customers generally come to your site. This could help you assess when you should focus on putting out your social media marketing advert, when to put offers out, or just make sure that youâve got someone keeping an eye on customer service enquiries at this time.
2. What are users doing on your site?
Follow your customers like a bloody thirsty zombie. Find out what visitors to your site are doing â what pages theyâre looking at and what buttons theyâre clicking. Google Analytics allows you to see where they went, and how long they spent there, where they went on to, and when they left.
Are your customers entering your site looking for something specific and then being drawn to something else? Is there some sort of confusion evident? Are your users travelling through your site in the manner you actually want them to?
3. How well is your site working?
Track the number of people that achieve your goals. Create easy to read funnels that show you how users progress through your website, making it simple to figure out whatâs working â and what isnât.
Shine a flashlight on your customers individual behaviour, finding out how much they spent, what they bought, how long it took for them to complete their purchase/sign up â and see how changes you make to your website affect peopleâs behaviour. Maybe a free postage and packing promotion will fundamentally transform your businessâ dynamics.
4. What made your users leave?
Just like a big round rubber ball, sometimes users bounce right off your site at the first page they see. A high bounce rate is scary! But, armed with knowing the parts of your site that need fixing, things could turn around fast. Weave a spiders web that lures users in and makes sure they stick.
Use Google Analytics to spot problem pages â those with high bounce rates, or that block progress through the site and help understand what the issue could be.
If youâve got a website and arenât using Google Analytics, youâre definitely missing a trick.
Find out how you can use this free software to connect to your customers, and how to interpret the data. Get in touch right now, or you could join our Google Analytics training course for only ÂŁ25 (usually ÂŁ90).
No Tricks. Just Treats! Spookily great websites and consultation by Curious.
Copyblogger has put this nice infographic together that we thought was worth sharing.
Creating a powerful landing page can transform your conversion rates from a fraction of a percentage into a completely different league (weâve delivered improvements of thousands of percent in some cases).
Take a look at some of the traps you could be falling into with your landing pagesâŠ
Have you made changes to your landing pages that have transformed your conversion rates? Share your story below.
As you browse through the majority of websites on the Internet, they have quite a typical format: the name of the website at the top of the page; the navigation in a strip underneath; and then, below that, a full width block containing a series of images that take turns appearing on the screen:
These âcarouselsâ, âimageslidersâ, or ârotating bannersâ of images have become so popular that clients now expect them to appear on their new website, often specifically asking for them.Theyâre perceived to be what a website âshouldâ have.
But why? What is it about carousels that has made them so ubiquitous? More importantly, why do so many people use them when theyâve been shown not to work?
Why are carousels so popular?
Certainly it seems that many businesses think that they are the most appropriate thing they can put on their site. A large percentage of the clients we work with state in the early stages of the project âAnd Iâd like one of those image sliders at the top of the home pageâ.
Why they want one is a tough question to answer. Most likely is that a few high-profile, cool websites built them and that, from there, the feature has then been copied and copied â principally because theyâre an easy solution as to what to put at the top of your webpage, and if youâre the web designer, theyâre pretty easy to knock out.
Royal Mailâs website â with carousel
The reality is that agreeing what should go on your home page is tough.
Many businessesâ websites have to represent a diverse range of stakeholders interests and having a block of content at the top of the page that alternates a number of different message means everyone has their fair share of real estate. Canât be bad right?
Well. thereâs evidence that suggests that all these websites selecting a carousel arenât making a smart choice at all.
Why should you bin the carousel?
As youâd hope for a feature thatâs used so widely on the Internet, there has been a lot of testing carried out to see how users interact with them and whether they are a good use of what is prime real estate.
Tests show âimage slidersâ donât work
Jakob Neilson is probably the most famous usability expert on the planet. He carried out a test asking users whether Siemens had any special offers for washing machines on their website:
Youâd have though it a simple question as, in 98-point font, thereâs a clear message that customers can get cash back on a new appliance.
But, what you canât see from the still screenshot above, is that every five seconds the main accordion-stye panel shifts to reveal a different message.
Users spent some time studying the page, but swiftly scrolled down past the moving banner without noticing the ad â and concluded there were no special offers.
Weâre programmed to tune out
Neilsonâs test highlights the concept of banner blindness: People are so used to webpages being plastered with moving ads, flashing and shouting for attention, that we tune them out â focussing instead on the meat of the page. This concept seems to apply to carousels as well.
A study by a developer at the University of Notre Dame tracked five different websites that included image sliders, monitoring how people interacted with the page and capturing the clicks made on each element.
On the ND.edu site, she found that only 1% of visitors to the page clicked on the one of the carousel images â and of those clicks, 84% were made on the first image shown.
This pattern of behaviour was replicated on the other four sites she looked at, with even the highest percentage of clicks by visitors on the carousel being just 2.3%.
Conversion optimisation experts across the web have found the same results again and again: People donât read the multiple messages contained in carousels and canât recall them:
âWe have tested rotating offers many times and have found it to be a poor way of presenting home page contentâ
So, whatâs the point of having a carousel taking up the most valuable real estate on your page, if only 1% of people are going to click on it â especially if 84% would click on the first image anyway?
Why not just pick the most relevant message and stick with it?
If this wasnât enough, rotating banners cause headaches for users tooâŠ
Bad for accessibility
Where carousels automatically advance, having content automatically appearing and disappear can create problems for people using screen readers to read the page. The transitions can cause a loss of focus which forces the user back to the top of the page.
Also the controls for a carousel are generally either dots or arrows, which are hard to navigate for someone that canât see the screen.
No controls for Debenhamsâ image slider are apparent
The cognitive load and distraction caused by moving carousels can also make reading sites that include them difficult for some users with cognitive and learning disabilities.
Still want to use a Carousel?
If youâre still not convinced, Tim Ash of Conversion Optimisation specialists SiteTuners, sets out six more very valid reasons why you should avoid carousels:
A slower site: Moving banners generally include a number of images or animation that generally mean larger file sizes than other content. Website speed is critical (a page that takes longer than 2 seconds to load will have lost 40% of itâs traffic) so why use functionality that worsens user satisfaction
Inconsistent messaging and look & feel: The mix of different messages in a carousel, and the large proportion of the screen size devoted to them can mean that it can seem the look and feel of your website changes every few seconds
Laziness: Youâre effectively saying âI donât know whatâs important, lets stick it all up there and hopeâ. The main content on your home page should seek to be relevant to the majority of your audience and engage them â encouraging them to look at the rest of your site. By showing a large number of sequential messages, youâre blindly throwing darts at a dartboard and hoping one will stick
Users are impatient: Forcing them to consume a slideshow stops them actually finding what theyâre looking for â wasting their time
Motion-triggered reassessment: Carouselâs movement interrupts our attention, stopping us from giving other parts of the page the attention they deserve
It takes up valuable space: Weâve already seen that few people interact with carousels. If thatâs the case, the content thatâs actually going to be noticed is just getting pushed down the page â out of easy sight
Timâs conclusion?
âRotating banners are absolutely evil and should be removed immediatelyâ
So, what should you put on your homepage?
If youâre creating a new site, be careful donât just blindly stick in a carousel just because everyone else is doing it.
Instead, think about what the important message on your homepage should be â and consider the most appropriate way of communicating that message to your users.
Sure, thereâll be other things you want to push, but if youâve got your key content at the top of the page, thereâll be plenty of space underneath to talk about other things â and despite what some experts say, as long as you get the basics right, people do scroll.
âI, ahem, have a carouselâ
If youâre reading this and have a carousel on your site, hopefully this has got you thinking that maybe itâs not doing you much in the way of a favour.
Well, youâve got a great opportunity to find out for sure, so why not run a test: See how the way usersâ behaviour changes when you switch out your image slider and replace it with one single important message.
All you need to do is install some AB testing software (itâs pretty straightforward and weâd be happy to help if youâre not sure where to start), and track your conversion rates for both types of content. Weâd love to know your results, so please drop us a line, or reply in the comments below.
Finally, if after all this, you still decide to implement a carousel, thatâs fine. Its your decision after all!
We do strongly suggest however, that you give users control of the image changes. If you use a slider that changes automatically, make sure you provide a pause button, and set it so that the changes pause if the user hovers their mouse over the slide.
Itâs always great to hear what other people have found. Do carousels carry a particular appeal to you? Have they delivered for your website? Let us know belowâŠ
![9 Landing Page Goofs that Make You Lose Business [Infographic]](http://copyblogger.com/cdn-origin/images/650/copyblogger-landing-page-goofs-infographic.png "9 Landing Page Goofs that Make You Lose Business [Infographic]")
