7 Software Website Design Pitfalls / Tips
I was recently on the phone with a vendor who didn't respect the importance of website design and the impact it has on sales. Not being a "web design" guy myself, I can understand this mentality. I'd probably be in the same boat if it wasn't for my work experiences over the last couple years. So let me take a moment to stress how crucial your website design is in regard to your ability to convert web visitors into leads.
First, think from the perspective of your target visitor - someone researching their software options who lands at your website. In fact, I highly recommend conducting user studies to see whether your website visitors are doing what you want them to do. Read Steve Krug's book, Don't Make Me Think. It will be a couple hours well spent.
Second, clearly articulate your goal for each visitor. The primary goal will be the same for most software vendors - to convert that visitor to a lead, or more accurately, to convince that person to contact you, or have them provide you with their contact details. A secondary goal is usually to make it easier for salespeople to get collateral in the hands of prospects.
Finally, understand that you have only a couple seconds to entice a visitor to stay at your website and look around.
Here are my top 7 design tips:
1) Design a visually appealing and professional looking website. Good use of colors, good grammar, lots of freely available content, pictures of people - all these are good things.
2) Highlight a free offer on every single page. (Emphasis on "highlight.") Then connect this free offer to a very short form where the visitor needs to enter just a few fields (name, email, phone) to receive the free offer.
3) Include screenshots, testimonials, success stories, case studies, and any other supporting documentation and do so in an intuitive, easy-to-navigate fashion.
4) Have a Contact Us link prominently displayed in the upper right hand corner as well as foot er of every page.
5) List your contact details on your Contact Us page only. (Makes it easier to track visitor success in your web analytic tools.)
6) Include content geared toward teaching the prospect about the benefits of the kind of software you offer in case they are still determining if they want to even make a software purchase.
7) List all of the different market segments (typically broken down by industry and company size) that you target and allow the visitor to click on their segment, which would allow them to view benefits specifically for them.
OK, so some of these are less design tips and more content tips. Actually, the best advice I can give is to constantly test your site, fix it and test again. Website design is an interative process and the goal is to constantly improve your conversion rates. And it's incredible how much of an impact the little things - buttons, graphics, text, position - can have on your desired results.
First, think from the perspective of your target visitor - someone researching their software options who lands at your website. In fact, I highly recommend conducting user studies to see whether your website visitors are doing what you want them to do. Read Steve Krug's book, Don't Make Me Think. It will be a couple hours well spent.
Second, clearly articulate your goal for each visitor. The primary goal will be the same for most software vendors - to convert that visitor to a lead, or more accurately, to convince that person to contact you, or have them provide you with their contact details. A secondary goal is usually to make it easier for salespeople to get collateral in the hands of prospects.
Finally, understand that you have only a couple seconds to entice a visitor to stay at your website and look around.
Here are my top 7 design tips:
1) Design a visually appealing and professional looking website. Good use of colors, good grammar, lots of freely available content, pictures of people - all these are good things.
2) Highlight a free offer on every single page. (Emphasis on "highlight.") Then connect this free offer to a very short form where the visitor needs to enter just a few fields (name, email, phone) to receive the free offer.
3) Include screenshots, testimonials, success stories, case studies, and any other supporting documentation and do so in an intuitive, easy-to-navigate fashion.
4) Have a Contact Us link prominently displayed in the upper right hand corner as well as foot er of every page.
5) List your contact details on your Contact Us page only. (Makes it easier to track visitor success in your web analytic tools.)
6) Include content geared toward teaching the prospect about the benefits of the kind of software you offer in case they are still determining if they want to even make a software purchase.
7) List all of the different market segments (typically broken down by industry and company size) that you target and allow the visitor to click on their segment, which would allow them to view benefits specifically for them.
OK, so some of these are less design tips and more content tips. Actually, the best advice I can give is to constantly test your site, fix it and test again. Website design is an interative process and the goal is to constantly improve your conversion rates. And it's incredible how much of an impact the little things - buttons, graphics, text, position - can have on your desired results.
2 Comments:
Nice post, thanks for the really valuable tips.
Another point to be made. If your web site is hard to navigate and use, how could the software your selling be any more intuitive or easy to use?
If you can't get the easy stuff like HTML to work correctly...
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