In web design, one word can make a big difference

Good web design is increasingly important for businesses trying to compete at a time when the Internet is the most consumed media in Australia. However, merely having a website isn’t enough these days. A good website is one that can be found easily in search, provides the visitor with relevant information and must has effective traffic conversion strategies in place.

So how much time have you spent thinking about the wording of your navigation? Or the location of a crucial button or link? You’d be amazed at the difference in results you can achieve with subtle changes.

We have been running Traffic Visualisation Analytics, such as heat-mapping, on several sites to monitor the results from changes to layout and wording. It has been a revelation. We have been able to see where people are clicking on the tested sites and where they came from. Then after making small changes we can compare results.

On this particular site we found that visitors weren’t clicking through as much as we’d like to one of the most important pages in the navigation, “products”. So after a week of monitoring we changed the name of that page in the navigation to “services”.

The results were immediate and stunning. We achieved a 72% increase in clicks-through to the target page in one week. That’s a massive improvement from changing just one word on the site. Those increased clicks-through led to more inquiries for our “services” so it has immediately paid dividends.

On several other sites we are testing button locations for key prompts. These tests are also proving to be extremely illuminating. By visually observing the trail of clicks on a website you can quickly get a feel for what’s working and what’s not working. you can also quickly identify the pages that might need boosting.

For any business with a strong need for goal conversion, visual analytics is strongly recommended. One or two changes could make a big difference to your bottom line.

We have now begun introducing Traffic Visualisation Analytics such as heat-mapping to selected clients. Let us know if you’d like to find out how it could help your organisation.