Thursday, June 07, 2007

View Your Website Through The Eyes of Your Customers




We have all heard of the saying that web page content is king and its true to say that having quality and new content on your web pages does help you achieve better rankings in the search engines. However, its better to go a step further by making sure you optimise page content and imagery to tie into how your website visitors actually scan your web pages for information.

Increase conversions by putting content or images in the places where the visitors are most likely to see it. Visitors’ eyes normally work from the left side of the page to the centre, following a predictable pattern. Meeting your clients browsing expectations by placing information where they expect to see it will turn them into ‘buyers’ as opposed to ‘browsers’.

For example, below is an image that highlights how most visitors to a website view a specific page when browsing. As you can see, the areas that are in yellow and red are the key areas that they may notice, while the blue colours are the sections that the human eye tends to ignore.

Eye Tracking Image

This is interesting in itself and should highlight the need for you test your website to find out if the important information is where your potential customers will find it.

Google Website Optimiser

Help is at hand with a new product from Google that aims to help you increase conversion rate and improve the overall visitor experience. The Google Website Optimizer allows you to test different versions of your site content so that you may determine what will best attract users and lead them to buy on your site.

You will need a Google AdWords account to use the Google webpage optimiser but the actual tracking software scripts are available free from Google.

So to summarise, by testing different versions of your site content, you can determine what will best attract users and lead them to buy from your site. Something for all of us to consider.

The image used in this article was supplied by Marketing Sherpa with Eyetools, Ecommerce Eye Tool Year 2, Internal Search & Navigation Study – January 2007

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