Maximizing conversion

Menus, graphics, buttons, colors of anchor text, navigational structure – a website is made up of many design elements and each plays a crucia role in converting your website visitors into taking the action you want them to, be it making a donation or participating in some online activism.

Every decision you make - from the colour of the submit button, to the position on the page of the donate button - will have an affect on your site's online conversion.

The importance of split testing

We can hazard a guess about these things, but in the end we don't know for sure what will work best until we test one theory against the other - known as split testing.

Web designers should plan the split test soon after the launch of the website. The rate of conversion on a website can be immediately improved if the testing is done thoroughly, taking each of the design elements into consideration one at a time.

The most significant elements are:

The Color of Buttons

Different button colors have different click-through rates. Some split tests revealed that large brightly-colored buttons have the highest click-through rates. Other split tests got better results from small grey buttons.

Test different colors of your ‘submit button' to see what works best for your web visitors.

Images

They can be the most emotive part of your website and play a critical role in conversion. Test different images, and test no images at all to discover what works best for your website.

Color of Anchor Text

Usually, anchor text is blue. If you use confusing colours for your anchor text it could affect your conversion rate. Test them.

Headlines & Subheadings

People scan online copy, which means the headlines and subheading may be the only parts they read at first. Work out what size and what words work the best. In many cases of split-testing, the conversion rate increased as soon as the headings were optimized.

Navigational Structure

An optimized navigational structure helps to convert more users. It should be easy to use and lead users to the areas of conversion, such as the donor page.

Google Website Optimizer helps you identify which variations are the most effective, and it's free!