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Saturday, January 17, 2009

How Simple Usability Fixes on Your Site Can Immediately Impact Sales

When shopping or browsing a website, many people can get frustrated, lost, or even confused. As marketers, we are often so close to the site that we don’t realize what’s going on with our target audience, which is why reviewing your analytics daily is such an important task. But there are also little fixes you can make to your site to keep visitors happily shopping. Here are the first five we’re going to discuss this month:

Usability Tip #1: Put Contact Information Above the Fold
Don’t send your audience searching for ways to communicate with you. Make sure your phone number and contact info are in plain view, above the fold and preferably in the top areas of your site where visitors will look first.

Usability Tip #2: The More Content, the Better When Trying to Convert
If you have an e-commerce site, putting a great deal of content on your product pages is an important practice. Why? While some visitors like to scan and pick up tidbits quickly, other types of visitors will carefully read all you have to offer. Plus, adding more content to these pages increases your relevancy in SEO rankings.

Usability Tip #3: Show Breadcrumbs Everywhere
Just telling a visitor where they are on your site can help decrease frustration and prevent visitors from abandoning your site altogether. Adding breadcrumbs is a quick and easy fix for your IT department, and even has SEO benefits.

Usability Tip #4: Don’t Use Too Much Red
You’ve probably heard it a million times, but don’t overuse the color red on your site. Subliminally, red means stop, and has a host of other negative connotations. Keep the red to a minimum while playing up more happy colors.

Usability Tip #5: Let Buttons Speak for Themselves
Your calls to actions on the site are so critically important, why would you hide them or keep them small? Let them live large, especially if they are as crucial as the Add to Cart button. You don’t want visitors to wonder where it’s hiding.

Next month we will visit five new quick and easy usability fixes you can make that can immediately impact your site stickiness and revenue.

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