Questus' in-house usability expert explains that every page of your website needs to act like a home page in order to convert audiences.
Marketing managers and online agencies know how critical the home page is. It's common internet wisdom. Where else can you so clearly state the purpose of your site? Most great web designers spent the last few years generating home pages that looked good, passed the five-second test, respected the three-clicks rule, and established brand legitimacy. That's what converted users into customers. End of story, right?
Wrong. Now the trend is about driving traffic to your home page with a top organic listing on the major search engines. If you can follow the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guidelines, your efforts will pay off. Ranking in the Top 10 listing on a search engine like Google can have a tremendous impact on the amount of traffic you get. According to internet marketing specialist Jim Boykin, there's now quantifiable proof that the number one spot on a Top 10 list gets 350 percent more clicks than second place, which gets 140 percent more clicks than third place... and the numbers keep falling from there. But what if these high-profile searches land the user on a tertiary product page at your site, or somewhere deep inside your information architecture? To a user, those split-second judgments are still the norm. For you, the stakes are even higher.
Take the example of a recent dynamic usability test conducted by Questus. We mocked-up a Google search results page for "iPods," and the respondents behaved as expected: scanning headlines, looking for URLs they recognized, focusing on above-the-fold results. We designed this test to drive users to our client's site with compelling headlines like "iPods on Sale," and that part worked. But once we had them clicking through the site to reach the iPod page, the users struggled, and ultimately failed, to understand the client's entire value proposition.
As we aimed to resolve this issue using the most direct visual treatment, and without completely redesigning the site (which is the nature of a dynamic usability test), it dawned on us that the problem wasn't specific to our client. Every site has this issue, and every user has the same expectations. No matter where the user enters your site, the message must be loud and clear: who you are and what you offer.
Web design is an iterative process. We iterated. We tested, and we iterated and tested again. While witnessing users firsthand as they interacted with the site, we got a clearer sense of decisions that must be made and lines that must be drawn. This is the nature of the challenge, and mistakes are part of the process. We learn from our mistakes, and then, where applicable, deploy that learning again and again. As much as I know that web designers HATE "rules of design," these are the two critical elements that MUST be incorporated into any effective e-commerce site:
- Your logo as an anchor to the true home page
- A global toolbar that persists throughout the site
That's where our client went wrong. Their product detail page that promised "iPods on Sale" failed to deliver when it blocked that valuable content with a giant nationwide map to request the user's zip code without being clear about why they should give it up. But by communicating the value proposition of who the client is and why the user should share any personal data, and by doing that in the masthead and toolbar, the client wins an important split-second battle. The user now understands why they're giving up the information in pursuit of that dirt-cheap iPod. The revised tertiary product page clearly claims that our client will identify the iPod locally, as well as the online merchants who are offering the same gadget on sale. It doesn't do this with flashy tag lines or cluttered real estate. The user understands the client's purpose and is willing to trust them. The page has done its job and established the brand's core value proposition, while providing the user what they asked for.
Ultimately, a good website will encourage users to explore page after well-designed page. But more often than not, search engine traffic will be highly targeted, highly qualified, and intent on hitting the keyword regardless of all that elegant architecture. By treating every page of your site as the "home page" and being consistent with the "who you are and what you offer" value proposition, you're well on your way to providing an effective, successful ecommerce experience.
Christine Young is director of qualitative research at Questus. Read full bio.