Web Design: Winning Awards vs. Driving Sales
January 28, 2010 – 9:51 am
So where do I begin?
First, let me explain the image above. It’s a web heat map. What’s a web heat map, you ask? Wikipedia describes a web heat map as a representation “..used for displaying areas of a Web page most frequently scanned by visitors.”
The above heat map from Google describes from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance), the best place to display ads. “Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.”
source: Google Adsense
I read an article in Website Magazine called Keep Your Graphic Designer on a Short Leash.
The focus of the article is that the best visual designs don’t always close the most sales.
I work with an awesome team of designers, not to mention a big group of creative friends. I appreciate and understand the importance of good design. So, before I get barraged with comments about the importance of good design, let me just say that I understand it. Design is important. Got it.
But, there are also components of web page design, that, while potentially detracting from the visual appeal, may actually increase conversion rates.
There are many factors that influence a buying decision – brand reputation, product features, price, etc. Even basic things like page load time all have a factor in someone clicking the big red “buy” button.
My point of the post is to stress the importance of A/B testing and iterative improvements. Simple tweaks can have a huge impact on sales. In the article from Website Magazine referenced above, the design that was less visually appealing in the eyes of most people actually performed 84% better.
Direct mail experts have always stressed the importance of a control group and running tests with various offers, body copy, headlines, imagery, fonts – you name it.
But for some reason, some of the principles of direct marketing have gotten lost in the excitement around implementing the latest technology on a web page.
Flash, video, Facebook integration & the latest shiny widget are all great – but not if they have a negative impact on sales. You can’t afford to continually innovate if conversion rates are sacrificed for another award on the shelf.
The technology to test various web page designs isn’t rocket science and is readily available. At the most basic level, almost anyone could try running a different design for a few weeks to see if there’s an increase in conversion rates.
I’m also not saying that driving sales is the most important factor if brand equity is sacrificed. Branding is a long term commitment and short term spikes in sales can be detrimental to brand equity if you water down your image in the process.
Summary: balance. Design. User experience. Technology. And there, at the intersection, you’ll find the optimal conversion rate.
Ready? Discuss…
Technorati Tags: web, design, conversion
3 Responses to “Web Design: Winning Awards vs. Driving Sales”
I think the point would really have been driven home if only you chose to include a Venn diagram. :)
Seriously though, I think I’m on board with you. I will chime in from the creative/design side of things and reinforce your point by saying that the best interactive designer will be aware of the insights that are uncovered via testing and best practices and use that knowledge to create a solution that is both creative AND effective.
Design is problem solving at its core. It is NOT art. Any designer that argues otherwise is not at the top of his game. Design can inject artistry into the solution to the problem, but it cannot solve a problem with artistic decoration alone.
So, as an argument, I would not say that you have to sacrifice one or the other. You can have awards AND conversions when you really apply collaborative knowledge to the problem at hand.
By Jeremy Fuksa: Creative Generalist on Jan 28, 2010
Man, it was hard to even read this whole thing before commenting. I think you are generalizing a bit here. The variety of sites and functions out there is so wide that I don’t think you can say the conversion rate and the need to sell are the ultimate goal.
If you are talking about an ecommerce site, then I think some of your comments apply. Research on page activity is nice. It is one factor in a list of many. Designers often have the job of taking lemons and making lemonade. Creating a perfect UX dream of a site just might not get it done if the content sucks. Sometimes a little magic has to happen to keep anyone on the site longer than 2 seconds.
My major disagreement with you is that the majority of sites are NOT ecommerce and therefore do not go into template best practices only bucket. Each site has it’s own goals and hopefully it is not how many hits can we get on twitter and facebook with this thing.
So, my point is that all information is relevant but it is the designers job to take it all in and spit back out something compelling and functional. It is NOT their job to take other peoples ideas and make them pretty. Please stop reading articles that suggest any designer should be on a leash. You do work with amazing designers. They are not reading articles about how to ignore everyone and do whatever you want.
play nice guys.
By LEXI on Jan 28, 2010
@ Jeremy: Agreed. Great design + conversion = awards. To reiterate my summary: balance. Design. User experience. Technology. And there, at the intersection, you’ll find the optimal conversion rate.
@ Lexi: Appreciate the feedback. I should have explained my take on conversion. In the world of ecommerce, conversion = sales. In the world of non-commerce related sites, conversion could be defined as users following the optimal path to accomplish a specific objective. It may be lead generation. Or purely entertainment. Even in the case of a site that focuses on brand awareness, the goal is to increase the value of the brand in the mind of visitors. So yes, balance is the key to it all.
By Dustin Jacobsen on Jan 28, 2010