Persuasive design is about allowing your visitors to easily navigate your website, and encourage them to locate the “Confirm Order” page.

I have included four (4) preliminary strategies to incorporate, when focusing on converting your visitors into revenues.

 Many online consumers prefer to conduct their online shopping with the help of a Search Box.  This practice mirrors a sales associate at the brick and mortar store.  I recommend that you incorporate a dependable Search function into your website, and consider keyword “mapping”.  This will help those visitors who conduct a search for a word, which is directly related to a product. For example: “frying” and “deep fryer”.   In these instances, although the search term is not found in the product title, you can be certain that all related products will display.

Make Product Narratives and Images as Descriptive as Possible.  This yields two benefits:

1) never assume that the consumer knows as much as you do; and

2) The Search Engines love great content.

Remove Unnecessary Links From the Order Process.  All links, such as “Home” and search boxes are removed.  Focus on providing the consumer with readily available information about the item they are purchasing.  Include this on the shopping cart page, or by linking pop-up information.  To eliminate distractions, avoid linking back to the item’s original page.

Avoid A Long Checkout Process.  Consumers don’t like to wait in line.  Not at a brick and mortar store and not online.  Eliminate multiple pages and only ask the consumer for information that is really necessary.Giving consumers an opportunity to re-think their original purchase, gives them time to put it back on the shelf.

By streamlining the shopping process, you create a more enjoyable shopping experience for consumers.  Imagine how pleased you would be if you walked into a store, found what you wanted instantly and looked to find no one in line at the cash.  You were in and out in five minutes, with a great deal and a smile.  Try to recreate this ideal shopping experience for your website visitors.

Corporate Web Development

Tags: Conversions, converting shoppers, encourage sales, persuasive design, website content

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Conversions, Website Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.