Usability vs. conversion rates
Usability, user friendliness, interactive design… as we say in Denmark (direct translation); “A lovely child has many names”. In Deducta we have seen and analyzed many very “ugly” and not userfriendly websites with the highest conversion rates and sometimes its hard to understand how this is possible.
Well of course there most be a reason and usually we have to look into other aspects than what we normally do. The usual way to document the conversion rate (s) are web statistics combined with back-end figures and CRM data. Fx can a very high conversion rate be explained with a large number of customers visiting the site (returning users) who have great knowlegde about the site and therefore knows exactly where to go. Other reasons can be simple products to low prices or just market trends.
I have read many books about usability and probably all the rules to make user friendly websites. With all respect – isn’t usability something about making your website sell? Once I had a workshop with a leading company in Denmark (can’t mention any names – sorry) and one of the attendees was a designer who knew all the rules about usability. The problem for discussion was why the conversion rate was so low when they had build the website based on usability tests (think a loud) and all the known rules for usability. They had (have) a great product and almost a monopol on the Danish market. The group was very confused about this and couldn’t find the answer for the solution.
The website had a great design and the navigation used web standards – top menu with a left sided navigation. The primary MWR was to search and find the “product”. At first – no problems were to find, but after about 10 minutes it suddenly became very obvious to define the problem.
Using usability rules they had placed the search area just below the top menu and the MWR button on the right side of this – the problem was that next to the MWR button there was a red coloured banner which made it almost impossible to see the MWR button. The main reason for this was the limitiation in their templates – they couldn’t move the banner away from the MWR.
We had a long talk about how we could solve the problem and the solution was not to change the templates – it was simply to expensive.
Instead we suggested to change the colour on the MWR button, make it a bit larger and move it just a few pixels to the left and this way – away from the banner. This of course would brake all usability rules, because the users eye then had to change directions 2 times.
Anyway, the customer agreed to try it – it took about 1 hour from a technical point and around 10-20 minutes to design the new button….. the result was an increased conversion rate with 20 %. Now that’s what I call a Quick Win.
My point is of course not to forget all about the known usability rules and in most cases the best choice is to follow them. But making a business effective website isn’t all about usability because there can be so many other factors and sometimes it is necessary to bend the rules. Use common sense, experience and don’t be afraid to try things out. A-B testing is a great tool to increase your conversion rate and remember – it doesn’t matter what your website’s primary goal are – it has to sell!
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