He suggested to buy links “for a while… until it stops working”, or reading between the lines… until you get caught. Several in the audience called him on this and his defense for this advice was that he needed to do “something” for his clients to justify his monthly consulting fee and not just sit there and say he can’t do anything further to improve the client’s ranking.

Google has deemed buying text links as bad. It seems to me that advising clients and Affiliate Summit attendees to do so seems very short sighted.

Some common distractions I see during the checkout process are:

• Mailing list sign-ups
• Flashing banners and Ad Sense
• Search boxes
• Even your clickable logo is risky!

The only links you should have on your checkout pages are ones that support and encourage the sale. For example, links to your shipping and return policies and your About Us page promotes trust and answers questions. If you do link to these pages, make those links pop a new window. That way there’s a good chance they’ll come back to complete the transaction. It also eliminates the chance of a page-refresh blanking out some or all of the shopping cart info.

Racehorse trainers use blinders to focus the horse on the one goal… to win. The horse will still run a fast race without them and maybe even win. However, in a very competitive situation like a race, the tiny advantage that blinders add makes it worthwhile to use them. The same applies to your customers. There’s no need to have all those distracting options competing for your customers’ attentions. Place blinders on your customers so they stay focused on the goal - the end of the transaction.

What distractions can you eliminate from your checkout process?

Tip 1: Make it really obvious what you want the customer to do next. The button you want customers to push should scream “CLICK ME!!… RIGHT HERE CLICK ME!!  Don’t click those other inferior buttons”  It should be a big, fat, can’t miss it button.

Tip 2: Eliminate what’s not essential. 
Only give the customer the essential tools needed to complete the transaction.  If other supplemental information/actions are needed (ex: recalculate), make them very low key buttons, or even non-blue text links. Do they really need to SAVE CART or CONTINUE SHOPPING? Don’t you think a customer who wants to continue shopping is just going to do it? Save Cart?  If your cart doesn’t automatically save, well then…   RESET / CLEAR? Are you kidding me?  Have you ever said “Holy cow, I really messed up this form, I want to totally start over” No, right?  So why is it there?  Do you want to shoot yourself in the foot?  Do you want to give your customers even the remotest possibility of blowing up their cart? 

Just a few minutes ago I finished making an online purchase.  On every one of the four steps of the checkout the CANCEL button was right next to the CONTINUE button.  People read by the shape of words and are guided initially by color.  CANCEL looks an awful lot like CONTINUE.  Each of those steps the merchant is playing Russian roulette with the order.

Tip 3:  Say what you mean.
Right next to RESET you’ll often see her brother, SUBMIT’ (they’re congenital twins, ya know). The only place that it might be okay to use this button is on a very particular niche ecommerce site but for 99.999% of all other sites, make the button say what it’s going to do and what will happen next Don’t submit to laziness and allow that button to have the default saying.  Have your button say something like “Pay for your order” “Register Me” or “Sign me up for _____”.

Here are some good examples of buttons that get attention, the click, the sale.

Amazon is often a good site to turn to as a reference on how to do things right.  Take a look at their shopping cart. Even with all that noisy information on the page, it’s still dead obvious what you need to do to finish the purchase. Notice something else too: the button is next to the order summary… right where the customer is most likely focused!  They even have the same button at the bottom of the page, under the fold -smart!

Buttons are so simple, yet so important. Don’t make the customer think.Give loud and clear direction what you want him or her to do with distinctive color, shape and wording and you’ll see your sales increase.