The Four Website Layers that Influence Conversion
Most web businesses focus solely on technology and design when
building their websites. By adding some content, they launch the
website satisfied and poised to sell their value proposition.
Unfortunately, their customers aren't satisfied.
Businesses must move beyond a seller's perspective to achieve high-performance. Generating business value happens by creating a customer experience driven from the buyer's perspective.
Building a high performance website means moving beyond technology
and design to maximizing usability best practices and influence.
Website Usability
Usability guides the placement and direction of content within the design and technology.
Its focuses on creating convenience for the visitor's interaction.
Powerful usability enables a frictionless customer experience where
intuition versus thinking drives the visitor's movements.
Usability creates a well-designed website with intuitive and
instructive navigation, clear call-to-actions, articulate value
propositions, credibility-building communications, convenient order
process - all elements that create fluidity in the visitor's movements
towards their goal achievement.
Customer Influence
Influence is where seller guides buyer down a deliberate sales process.
A usable website generates average sales; an influential and usable
website can skyrocket sales. An influential website is like a
consultative sales person providing information, helping to evaluate
alternatives, adding reassurances, feeding the emotional appeal, and
skillfully pulling the visitor towards the purchase not always "now"
but assuredly at a point in the future.
Influence is the website comparable to the customer experience
created by a neighborhood grocery store owner. Personalization,
suggestive selling, relevancy, trust, assurance, sincerity, helpfulness
- are the objectives of influence.
Influence is not manipulation. It is not the stereotypical used car
salesperson tactics of cheap talk and deceptive ploys. Powerful
influence is about intimately understanding the visitor's needs to
provide them the right information at the right time. It moves them
clearly and easily through their buying process.
Usability and influence are buyer-driven because what is usable and
what influences a purchasing decision is entirely controlled by the
buyer. And just like you can't manage what you don't measure; you also
can't influence what you don't understand - the visitor's intent.
Website Design
Design is the façade around the technology. It adds curb
appeal to the website and directs the visitor's eye towards a desired
experience path. Great design directs a visitor's actions through the
effective use of colors, graphics and lines.
The design is initially recognized by the visitor in forming their
first impressions about our web business. Design is like a person's
clothes or dress style; it doesn't provide substance but it forms our
willingness to interact, to commit time, and to frame the possibility
of fulfillment.
And like people's clothing style, we naturally associate stereotypes to a design to speed our decision process.
Whether fairly perceived or not, design plays a crucial role in
setting expectations. With the average visitor spending 10 seconds or
less determining our website's relevancy with their goals, our designs
either connect or expel them.
Ultimately design plays a supporting role to usability. Great design drives great usability.
Technology
Technology is a website's foundation that must work seamlessly supporting the customer experience. Visitors shouldn't notice the technology and typically only do when it is broken.
Technology is like a car's engine; most drivers don't know or care
how it works, it's just a vehicle to get them from point A. to point B.
But it quickly grows frustrating when it slows down, breaks down or
falls apart.
Evermore Marketings' process driven approach can help your business achieve synchronization among all layers of your website and ensure your online success.
Click here to get started with your free, no obligation quote today.
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