Does Your Website Have a Squeezy Top
Posted on May 28th, 2008by Michael Gray in Business Issues
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Does Your website have a squeezy top? Is it designed and laid out with the ruthless goal of facilitating conversions, or is it series of compromises that barely accomplishes it’s true goal.
Find someone in your organization who isn’t part of the web development process, people in accounting, bookkeeping or HR usually make excellent test subjects. Put them down at a computer on your website, and ask them to purchase your most popular item or fill out your most used lead generation form. Can they get there from the home page? Does it take them more than 2 clicks? Are your lead generation forms cumbersome with dozens of questions or even worse multiple pages? How many pages is your checkout? Have you tried adding or subtracting one, do you know how it affects conversions?
More often than not websites end up not being designed to accomplish the main goal, such as facilitating transactions or gathering information for a sales follow up, but instead end up a compromises to appease the ego’s of corporate infrastructure. Case and point here’s an excellent article from Online Spin Marketers: Beware Of Blogging Simply For SEO. Want to make a comment on the article you’ve got to slog through a 3 step registration process … yeah good luck with that … way to discourage interaction with your readers.
This process of mucking things up is usually gradual, someone adds something here, some one else wants something over there, and eventually you end up with an unusable unmovable blob uselessness, kinda like a wide receiver or running back who’s fattened up during the off season eating nachos and cheese whiz. So spend some time and re-evaluate your core functions and looks for ways to streamline them, do it regularly, trim ruthlessly and keep only what you need to survive.
So where did the squeezy top reference in the post title come from? While I was on vacation last week we changed hotels mid week. One hotel had squeezy top shampoo bottles, the other had screw top. I’m sure the cost difference from one to the other is trivial on per bottle level but over a years worth of guests the screw cap shampoo bottle’s will probably result in some cost savings. However for the customers using them there’s a benefit to the squeezy top bottle’s. If you’re saving costs and inconveniencing your customers make sure it’s for something trivial, like washing your hair, and not for core functions like completing a transaction.
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May 28th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Inquiring minds want to know, Michael, what in the world is a squeezy top shampoo bottle?
May 29th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Very good points there, Michael.
One thing for sure, my high school teacher can’t even find the contact page when it was on the header.
May 31st, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Awesome point. Keeping the page simple is so important. I look to UseIt.com for design cues more than anything else…
Thanks and keep up the awesome work.
Brad
June 1st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I’ve heard three links is the maximum to get where you’re going on a web page, but you write “2″. Is this the new standard?
June 1st, 2008 at 4:57 pm
@Telablue: for your most important product if you have more than 2 something is wrong, for everything else 3 should be fine
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:13 am
So, true. I can’t tell you how many times I go to a blog and they lack simple call to actions driving traffic to conversion forms, or worse yet, they miss out on the basics like a contact button/form and simple contact info on the home page. How on earth do these people think anyone will be able to contact them? What a colossal waste of time spent blogging when it will never drive conversions. I personally recommend using click heat map analytics on homepages so you can see exactly where people are clicking and make sure your call to actions are working.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
You make me a little uncomfy when you use terms like “squeezy.”