What’s it about?

If you know the eleven biggest Conversion Killer on Landingpages, you can boost efficiently your conversionrate according to the Pareto principle. In this ebook these eleven Conversion Killers are described and substantiated with case studies, screenshots, user tests and eye-tracking studies.

Contents

1. No reference to advertising
2. Homepage as landingpage
3. No originator
4. No clear Call-to-Action
5. No visible selling propositions
6. Unnecessary use of CAPTCHAs
7. Cross-Selling and advertising above the Fold
8. Bad performance
9. CI-conform Buttons
10. Missing promotions on homepage
11. Wrong positioning of relevant information

A first look

Where to download it

You can download the ebook from “Konversionskraft” for free.
Go to Download-Page

The halo effect

B.J. Fogg mentioned in his book “Persuasive Technology” that psychologists do not agree on why attractiveness is so important in persuasion, but a plausible explenation is that attractiveness produces a “halo effect”.
The halo effect is a cognitive bias whereby certain characteristics create a positive or negative impression, which influence further perception and decissions.
So just an unconscious impression influence our further decission.

What does it all has to do with my website?

Furthermore B.J. Fogg writes: “Similarly, physically attractive computing products are potentially more persuasive than unattractive products. If an interface, device, or onscreen character is physically attractive [...], it may benefit from the halo effect; users may assume the product is also intelligent, capable, and credible.”
Or how Paul Watzlawick would say: “You cannot not cummunicate.” The design of your website leave a mark and influence your users’ further decissions.

First impressions are formed in 50 milliseconds

Researchers led by Dr. Gitte Lindgaard at Carleton University in Ontario took a closer look to the halo effect and found out that it only needs 50 milliseconds for people to decide how much they like a web page. In this time people aren’t able to see any details to make a statement about the informational content. So it’s very unlikely that there is any cognition involved.

Conclusion

So what does this mean for your website? Even if your website provides a high usability and relevant content, the first impression of your website can fail to impress a user, if it is negative.
So a professional, good looking design is important for a positive impression and the basis for optimizing your conversion rates.

Further Reading

• First Impressions Count in Website Design
• Neuro Web Design
• Persuasive Technology

The workshop

The workshop was divided into 6 parts:

1. Basic principles of Neuropsychology
2. Trust
3. Social elements
4. Boosters & blockades
5. Room for decision
6. Handling objections & account methods

For nearly every part Arno Bublitz prepared some exercises. This was very helpful, because you could directly learn how to use the theory.
Most of the theory I already knew because I’ve already read the books Neuro Web Design by Susan M. Weinschenk and Persuasive Technology by B.J. Fogg.
I think both books are a good base for Persuasive Design. Furthermore Arno Bublitz mentioned two other books, Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Spent by Geoffrey Miller.
After all it wasn’t bad that I already knew most of the theory. I think to internalize the theory with exercises is the main purpose of a workshop. And this is what Arno Bublitz achieved.

Organisation

I can’t end this article without mentioning the good organisation by Karen Lindemann. The location, drinks and food were very good. There was enough time to talk with other attendees in the breaks. Everybody got his own documentation of the workshop.

Conclusion

I can just approve the UX Workshops by Karen Lindemann. It was such a pleasure. Normally the workshops take place every year, but it depends on the request. You can find the workshop dates and topics on this site: http://uxworkshops.com/

How to use YouTube currently

At this time you can use YouTube to host your product videos. There are advantages and disadvanteges to host them on YouTube or to host them on your own webspace or other hosters. I don’t want to discuss these in this article but a big advanatage of YouTube is that it can drive more traffic to your site through Google Search. Between the usual search results you can find some video results.

The problem is to get the user from the YouTube Video result to your eCommerce site.
Currently you can just implement a logo or text directly in your video but not a link. You can just set a link in the video description below the video.

How to use YouTube in future

You can use pop-ups in the video and link them just to other YouTube Videos. French Connection has made an arrangement to use these pop-ups to link directly to the product in the online store.
French Connection make a nice use of it. In the videos they answer questions which possibly are real troubles of customers in a “How to…” manner. For example a stylist explains “How to wow people at work” and shows an outfit which would fit for that occasion. After that you see a model wearing that outfit and there are direct links to buy the items in the online store.

Conclusion

If this function will become accessible for everyone there are more advantages to host videos on YouTube.

1. You can direct your customers better to your online store
2. On your site you can use it to cross-sell products by showing related products in a product video.
3. You can make a better use of your YouTube Channel to sell things like French Connection with its YouTique

What is your opinion? Is it a good feature for eCommerce?

Speakers

First we get to know about persuasive design by Kath Straub – Chief Scientist for Human Factors International. After the first practical session Peter van der Putten – Worldwide Director Decisioning Solutions at Pegasystems – showed us how to become more authentic. The more people talks to customers the more difficult it is to be authentic.
The third speaker Nicolas Mohr – Consultant at SapientNitro – explained us how to use analytics right and don’t just use it as a better counter. The higher complexity of analytics the higher is the business value. But to compare A/B Tests with sandpaper isn’t correct I think. You can find out much more than just details. You can also use it to test completely different designs and to find out how your users tick.
At least Paul Hughes impressed us with his brilliant presentation style to draw live while he talks about design thinking. I had already the pleasure to hear him at the 2nd DfC in Amsterdam. Also there was some repetition for me, it was a pleasure to hear him again.

Organisation

The organisation was good. The location was really nice and had a nice atmosphere. The choice for the speakers was good and all in all it was a nice event.
There are just two small points of critique. The sound system wasn’t that good. So it was sometimes hard to follow the speakers. And to sit on an ale-bench isn’t that comfortable. ;)

Conclusion

As I already said Design for Conversion Cologne was a great conference. But at the end the connection to “converting visitors into customers” was not as visible as at the 2nd Design for Conversion in Amsterdam.
But the concept is so interesting and it is exciting to work with other people on a real case, so that I can just advise everybody to visit the next DfC.

Further Informations

Official Website “Design for Conversion”

Speakers

In the first session Raquel Hirsch showed us the pitfalls of CRO and why you need a passion for it and why you always have to test. Sometimes you need an emotional hero shot and sometimes it distracts the user.
Steven Pavlovich explained us why to make an A/A-Test and Joachim Graf clarified that the Conversion Rate is no pissing contest but a benchmark how much potential an ECommerce site has. At the end of the session we could see a case study by Patricia Hader from Intel.

In the second session we could see more cases about CRO, conversion directed design, client blogs and conversion optimized text by Claus Eulgem, Patrick Schneider, Thorsten Wilhem / Elske Ludewig and Heike Häfele.

The third session was about advanced Conversion Rate Optimization Tactics by Kai Radanitsch, Frank Reese, Gabriel Beck and Stefanie Rätz. Gabriel Beck’s presentation about “How to unmask Conversion Rate killers” was one of the best of the day with good feedback on twitter.

The fourth session was one of the most fascinating sessions about Neuromarketing. Group Nymphenburg, Matthias Henrici and Dr. Jan Herstell showed us some insights in our brain.

The subject of the last session was IA, Design and CRO. The session was started by a really good presentation by John Ekman about mistakes in email marketing. After that James Kalbach told us how we should interact with consumers. Then I showed some inspirationial shops before Jos Meijerhof closed the conference with his advice that Landing Page Optimisation isn’t always the right solution.

Organisation

The Organisation was very good. Nearly everything worked well. Wireless Lan was fast, food was one of the best ever eaten at a conference, there was always enough to drink and eat so you can feel very comfortable and the location was very nice with enough room to deepen discussions.
Just a few presentations overruned time so that the last panel of experts didn’t take place.
Thanks to André Morys and his team for the great event and the chance to speak on this event.

Audience

The Audience was nice. I met some nice new people or some people I just knew from twitter.
#cc10 was number two topic on the Twitter Trends for Germany and nearly got an Swarm Badge on Foursquare.

Conclusion

The Conversion Camp was a really good Conference and I know what I’ll do on the 1st and 2nd of September 2011. ;)

Other Recaps

Torsten Hubert
Usabilty-Blog
Hendrik Lennarz
Explido
Patrick Schneider
Werner Aschenbrenner
Gabriel Beck
Astrid Staats
Tomas Renner Jones
Nick Weisser
John Ekman
Maik Bruns