Thousands of people may be visiting your site every day, but if you don’t convince them that they should be using your product, subscribing to your service, or registering in some way, then your web app’s homepage is simply not doing its job.
Successful web apps use similar formats when it comes to user interaction on their homepage. For instance, most feature an explanatory strapline that tells you what the service does, many show you screenshots of their service, and they all entice you to sign up or register with a prominently placed button. But is it really that simple?
If you design a site with this simple checklist of ‘must-haves’ in hand, is the resulting site guaranteed to turn your visitors into users? What are the elements of a home page that make it really effective at transforming visitors into users? And how does the design itself contribute to this?
Most designers agree that not only do you have to have brilliant navigation, impeccably-crafted copy and a great sales message, but you also have to have that something extra in the design that will speak volumes to your potential users.
We invited some leading designers to look at a selection of high-profile apps to examine how they’re attempting to turn visitors into users through user experience design.
Building Trust is key
First up, Blinksale and Freshbooks, which both offer services that will help the small online business get bills out quicker or easier. Blinksale’s strapline is ‘The easiest way to send invoices online’, whilst Freshbooks is ‘The fastest way to invoice your clients’ - essentially they are competing for the same users.
We asked two designers, Andy Rutledge from Design View and John Zeratsky from Feedburner to give us their thoughts on these two different approaches. Both saw benefits and disadvantages to the way these sites had worked their layout, content and design.
For John, “Blinksale’s home page clearly and attractively outlines the benefits of the application and makes me really want to get started. But unfortunately, it’s not 100 per cent obvious how I get started. The big “Sign-up for your free Blinksale account” was below the fold (for me at least) and did not look like a link.
“FreshBooks is the exact opposite of Blinksale. Their home page is not as good at getting me to want to sign up, but it’s very obvious where I need to click to do so. It’s impossible to miss the blue “Try it for Free” that appears above the fold and very prominently on the page.”
It’s all about trust, says Andy: to turn visitors into users your homepage needs to make them feel the way they will feel when they use your service - happy, satisfied, excited. And this kind of trust begins with how the information is presented on your site:
“Blinksale’s main page embodies the confirmation of its promotional statement, which it claims is ‘the easiest way to send invoices online.’ The page design and content offering is based on simplicity. The product claims to be easy and the page is, in fact, easy to consume and digest. This inspires trust.
“FreshBook’s main page design and layout is clean-looking. The content, however, seems to get in the way of this clarity. It seems that there’s too much to read and too many different types of content on the page. The promotional claim centers around ‘fast,’ but the content is a bit pedantic.”
The Shop Window Approach
In the web metrics space we looked at Mint and the recently launched CrazyEgg. What’s immediately noticeable is that both sites think its important to let their clients know how the application works by prominently featuring screen shots of their application in action on the home page.
Ryan Shelton, designer from Mutado and of DropSend), believes that using big design statements to direct your users to a call for action is key for converting visitors to users. “The central row of images on CrazyEgg that give you a quick overview of the features on offer work well, especially since you have the option of opening a larger image without leaving the homepage. Although Mint gives me more information about its features, I find that reading a lot of text isn’t as appealing as the simplicity of looking at screenshots.
“Both sites make it easy to sign up with clear and obvious call to action buttons. Mint is upfront about the cost and the orange splash draws my eye directly to it. The fact that Crazyegg had a free option meant that I signed up and gave it a go right away. The ’sign up now’ on the CrazyEgg homepage is constrained to the size of the button but I think they could have made the entire ’sign up now for free’ module a button (and applied this ‘big button’ language to the feature buttons too).”
There’s a good example of displaying your wares in a ’shop window’ stylee over at photo-printing apps, Shutterfly and Zazzle. Although the services are offering slightly different products they share the fact that both services result in tangible objects. These are fully displayed in large colourful images on the homepage that you can almost reach out and touch. The images make you want the products.
When The Homepage Doesn’t Matter
In these days of RSS and APIs, where content is often viewed separately from its source, how important is the design of your homepage? Will your users even make it there? Or will they slip in the backdoor through a followed link?
Ryan Singer, designer at 37signals believes that in many instances, homepages don’t matter - at least when your content does the job of turning visitors into users for you as it does on sites such as YouTube.com.
“I don’t visit YouTube and click around. But I see blog posts with cool videos all the time. I don’t think of YouTube as a site. What draws me in is a blog post, IM or email. Then, when you end up watching a video on YouTube’s site, you realize there are more cool videos there, and might start clicking around. In this way the root of each visit is a permalink, a particular video, a certain experience - not the home page. The video is the epicenter of the permalink, and the permalink is the epicenter of the whole site. Everything revolves around the videos you love, not the farm that feeds them.
“Based on this view, the home page is secondary to the permalinks. The home page should show me permalinks I’ve recently visited, recommendations based on those, and so forth. It should provide history and continuity of experience.”
So remember - if a big part of your success is going to depend on links, RSS feeds or blogs, you need to make every single page on your site just as effective at generating those all important new sign-ups: getting the positioning, colour, language, shape and prominence of every element on your homepage right is just the beginning.
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Great article, and I would agree that many people continually come in a ‘back door’. I actually hate digg.com and youtube.com’s search capabilities. I can’t ever find anything - even with keywords. However, I am able to find what I need by viewing the RSS or a link from anothers blog.
I believe that every page needs to capture the essence of WHO you are…and how they can do certain activities (whether thats contact, search, etc).
As a designer, I find this type of practical analytical article very helpful. I found an immediate applicaiton for the knowledge in a project I have currently under construction. Thanks very much.
Ahh, the battle between simplicity and overpowered content is a never ending battle for the user-concious web developer…
Management wants to scream “BUY! BUY! BUY!!!” and the developer is saying “Do we really need 3 blinking red buttons?”
Ahhh… I can’t help but feel the tingle of resentment towards some of our clients as I read this column!
Very good article.
As a web designer for a major online IT provider, I (and the rest of our creative department) am constantly stuck between the product marketing department who are always asking for more exclamation points, bolder and brighter colors, and “starbursts” in their advertising - and the creative management who is always trying to reason with the product marketers. In the end, the marketing department get’s their way because they’re the one’s who get the funding for the advertising.
What an evil world we live in!
It’s REALLY cool to get that kind of feedback.
Designing a home page is incredibly challenging no matter what kind of site you have…At the end of the day the only thing that matters is how well you page converts people to your desired action (i.e. subscribes). Judging from your response, Blinksale seems to deliver more on the “What’s in it for me?” factor…that is a really important. Kudos to them. Unfortunately subjective analysis is only “so” good and we’ve all seen successful websites that are just plain ugly. Look at MySpace…it ain’t pretty, but a whole whack of people use it.
[…] Designers look at a bunch of web apps and decide what does/doesn’t work when it comes to getting people to sign up. More Posted by tahoestyle Filed in web design […]
Hey, great article. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can improve the conversion level at >a href=”http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/”>PHP Link Directory, and I’m going to look this over carefully, and see what I can do.
Thanks a lot!
Extremely insightful!
I think that the truly gifted designers are able to tackle management’s “what’s everyone else doing we want to do that” mentality and provide solutions that are clear, understandable and attractive.
The Crazy Egg website was our design and it’s nice to hear you reaffirm that our goals were met. We usually take a ’show don’t tell’ approach, which is precisely the idea behind that design. It’s especially important when you are selling a new type of product, or something that is approaching a familiar problem in a new way.
A lot of the new online services are exactly that, new! They don’t have a lot of history behind them, and it’s very important people ‘get’ what they offer right away. It’s also important they get what makes you different from other offerings, which may sound like the same thing, but they are two different stories a designer needs to tell.
I completely agree with your sentiments on Blinksale as well. Blinksale does a good job of showing, rather than telling. Freshbooks is the opposite, relying more on detailed text and the visitors willingness to read it.
[…] I have been reading some very interesting articles on generating more interest and participation for one’s site. I am not particularly interested in traffic for revenue issues, but rather for the discourse and exposure to other ideas that many times come along with it. I greatly encourage you to bring up any thoughts you may have on how you think this site could be improved, on the content that is currently being created and any general strategies you think may be helpful. To put everything in perspective, I know the greatest improvement I can make is to increase the quality and quantity of content. I know there no are easy shortcuts to good traffic. What I am hoping is rather than expect my traffic to explode, is to help some of those surfers stay on the site a little longer and perhaps find something else they may enjoy. […]
Joshua Porter had a great article about how the home page is becoming less and less important… it’s entitled Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content. You also might want to check out David Wertheimer’s article Don’t Forget to Architect the Home Page.
i’m sorry but how do you “help project manage” something? wtf???
[…] Designers look at a bunch of web apps and decide what does/doesn’t work when it comes to getting people to sign up.read more | digg story […]
[…] Turning visitors into users […]
[…] Designers look at a bunch of web apps and decide what does/doesn’t work when it comes to getting people to sign up.read more | digg story […]
Speaking of “big buttons”, I like the “only $295!” button… :)
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First, great article!
Second, there is an old saying: If you try to appeal to everyone, you risk appealing to no one.
I think that is the issue confronting most sites, both from an internal and external perspective - trying to make the “offer” big, obvious, and compelling for users while at the same time keeping the internal folks happy.
My company struggled with this problem for years, and the resulting home page had something for everyone (including too much stuff to keep all the internal folks happy). After much time watching our customers work, we learned that what they really wanted was to be able to find products as quickly as possible (DUH, huh?). So, we implemented a natural language search and revamped the layout of our homepage such that 2/3rds of it is dedicated to browse.
The site is far from perfect today; we consider it a work in progress.
Earlier this week, I found this webapp interesting to get more customers: http://www.interactionchat.com/
I would have to agree another great article.
In the websites that I have been involved in generally they are aimed at specific people, cheese enthusiasts (don’t ask!), GCSE etc students so the design is that much easier (well almost).
The current website I’m working www.ahoythere.com is the exact opposite, the end user could be anyone 18+ (the sites for customers looking for service providers (accountants, web designers! etc) so the design was harder to go with. We didn’t want to go with a directory/corporate look because the sites aimed at being an alternative to those kind of sites. We went with a pretty bold design and we battled to reduce the depth of some of the text but you can’t have always have it your own way!
Now the sites live it’s all about taking in user feedback (feel free) to ensure the site moves forward in a positive manner.
[…] Turning visitors into users (tags: design webdesign usability business web) […]
I found this article to hit the nail perfectly on teh head with regards to what I am currently looking into more and more from a design & accessibility point of view - conversion! Making visitors signup in the easiest possible way, but also knowing WHAT they are signing up to.
Excellent article.
[…] Getting visitors to your site is one challenge in itself. Adsense, blogging and other creative advertising and viral options can get an insane amount of visitors to your site but where do they go from there? What about getting users? Surely your pool of users is only a subset of your visitors so how do you lessen that gap? This is the million dollar question and while there is no silver bullet, the guys over at Vitamin have a great analysis of Turning Visitors into Users. […]
Great article, I will certainly take these ideas into consideration for future design.
[…] If you are interested in learning about converting the casual visitor into a subscriber/customer, this is a great article: http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/turning-visitors-into-users […]
When I saw the title of the article, it brought to mind the bane of the ‘casual user’ - the registration form. I have been considering using (for an upcoming project) the easiest, most brain dead, no-excuses form imaginable: a single field for the users email (and a submit button). The background process could send the user an email that contains a computer-generated password (temporary) and a link that would automatically log them in. (I would also give the user a way to complete the process without email, in case of filtering or if they don’t have email access at the moment.)
The more complicated the registration form, the more the resistance to signing up. However simple your form is, just make sure that you get their email and permission to send them something. Everything else - name, zip code, whatever - can come later.
[…] read more | digg story […]
Hey R Flower, like the sounds of your reg form idea!
Realy great stuff , good article, I will take care of these idea’s for future design work.
Thanks
Great article. I am participating in clickbank. Hope I can implement this and generate more money for myself.
Thanks
Aditya
[…] En gros quelques tips pour améliorer la visibilité des homepages afin d’accroître le nombre d’inscriptions à votre service. […]
[…] Gillian Carson has written a great article about how to turn visitors into users. Thousands of people may be visiting your site every day, but if you don’t convince them that they should be using your product, subscribing to your service, or registering in some way, then your web app’s homepage is simply not doing its job. In these days of RSS and APIs, where content is often viewed separately from its source, how important is the design of your homepage? Will your users even make it there? Or will they slip in the backdoor through a followed link? […]
Que font les internautes sur votre site?…
C’est la question que se posent ou devraient se poser de nombreux éditeurs de sites. Mais comment faire? si les outils de statistiques traditionnel retracent plus ou moins bien l’audience des différentes pages, d’entrée, de sortie, les seuls moyens …
[…] At The Day Job, we’ve had WebTrends for several years, and recently upgraded to the latest version. It’s been indispensable in the decision making processes for both our external websites and our vast intranet. It hasn’t taken much for our internal clients to latch onto this new ability to review their content and application usage. For KWD, I’ve never had quite the range of statistics to offer at a price that’s right for my thrifty customers. Our web host provides an open source statistics page, but it’s… eh, it’s really not that business-focused or useful. The other day, I set up Google Analytics for several of my sites, and I’m already anxious to set it up for my other clients. Of course anyone who’s used both might say there’s no comparison, but for small businesses, Analytics is an absolute breakthrough. It has nowhere near the complexity of WebTrends, but it’s a free service that blows away most of the pay services I’ve seen. Mint seems pretty basic (which isn’t necessarily bad) and doesn’t utilize graphical representation and the CrazyEgg demo gave Firefox a stop script warning, it was so memory-intensive. The real difference that puts Analytics in the same league as WebTrends is the breakdown of the statistics based on different interests (Marketing, Webmaster, etc.). Also, being able to set goals and track conversion from viewer to user to paying user can be incredibly valuable. Gillian Carson’s recent Vitamin article gives more detail on optimizing your website to maximize conversion. While WebTrends is definitely a useful tool (especially for intranets), I think Google Analytics is setting a new standard for external website analysis for small to medium-sized businesses. I will be interested to see how Google refines this application in the future. […]
The article is really amazing. I’t’s great solution to get more users. I believe that many designers will find this article very important and wll use it with success. These 36 lively comments will make a good start.
Not to miss out on simplicity with less clutter. The best example is google, which highlights clearly what the function is. That is another way to get users. A refreshing change from the usual fill-every-space-available with ads.
Submitted article at http://www.howtohut.com/howto_turn_visitors_to_users_of_your_website
Very useful tips on website construction this article contains. But handle with care you have to. Because crazyegg.com returns 503 Error on subscription. And does not work its service seems.
______________
Lucas learned from gurus.
indatext.com - text guru
Nice piece of information to help getting people to use your products. I’m sure it will be really helpful for the business or marketing personnel.
Hello!
It is very clever articles. And there are a lot of interesting comments!
As a matter of fact many web site owners could increase the number of their serviceses users, but they don’t notice that not all things on their web sites are self-evident.
Thank you very much!
“As a matter of fact many web site owners could increase the number of their serviceses users, but they don’t notice that not all things on their web sites are self-evident.”
That’s why it is fundamental to get someone who has never visited your site to help out in the testing procedure in my opinion.
[…] read more | digg story […]
[…] Thinkvitamin.com: Turning visitors into users Ein paar Tipps wie man aus Website-Besuchern Kunden macht. […]
It is very true about your pages being not so important. My articles earns me more money through adsense than my home page (it is roughly in the ratio of 1:20 for home page to article pages). For feeds, I like the idea of Feedburner’s ability to burn just the summary and allow a user to come to the site to read the article in full.
hi,
very helpful article about design
i agree with ryan sygner of 37signals. the content pages are the most important, any hour spent on designing a content page is going to bring more results than any hour spent on the homepage
also for the design of your homepage, don’t go overboard with fancy colours and graphics. i have found out after weeks of testing that users do not read them, an effect that i call ad-blind; and read the text. i have explained what my website is about in plain simple english but still users and friends email me to say they didn’t understand what the website is about.
Great article! Getting your message across quickly to visitors is key and you need to be able to do this on every page of the site (for people coming in through deep links). I’m a big fan of the ’shop window’ approach, if visitors understand what your offering is and it fits with what they’ve been looking for then you’re highly likely to turn them into a user.
Very interesting article and example sites reviewed in it.
Great article. Especially the part about over fold for blinksale and freshbooks.
I’m surprised there wasn’t some mention of image optimization, and how the page load speed affects return visits.
I’m loving the no-home page concept, where the activity, the action of the site obviates the need for the pitch. done to a tee on http://www.flynote.com
Great article. Its true that converting visitors to users/customers is hard especially when there is much information floating around that will either confuse the user of the various marketing ploy being offered to them.
Visitors are much intelligent now than before so this is getting very very hard.
Thanks for the nice inputs though. I will try to implement what you have here.
[…] An article on how-to turn visitors into users. Has a heavy slant on e-commerce sites instead of personal sites. skettino […]
Great article however I find myself still not very clear exactly what to do to be sre that the site design in user friendly and attracts people to hi the contact us or buy now button.
I manage http://www.travel-culture.com I have always been trying several ways to get people to stay on web site and click on contact or reserve button, I think I have no been very successful can some one please have a look at the site and tell me what I am doing wrong? I will apriciate it.
Very useful information. Will implement right now.
as photographer and art director i say really good article and the comments to are so helpfull
so what you people think now after reading this article? do i get or not people signing in to my new site!!! hehe
www.ivisual.com
Ciao
V ;-)
This is a test
testing
Great article Gilian. I’m doing research on turning visitors into users. Keep up the good work. Robert Brealey.
P.S. “I’ve discovered an amazing new system which makes it easy to start making money online. To see how it works, just click here now:”
www.AnyoneCanProfit.com
business design usability web2.0 webdesign…
[…]Vitamin Features » Turning visitors into users[…]…
Turning Visitors Into Users…
[…]Most designers agree that not only do you have to have brilliant navigation, impeccably-crafted copy and a great sales message, but you also have to have that something extra in the design that will speak volumes to your potential users.
…
wow nice to read…
will need to learn how to get the trust :)
[…] Vitamin Features » Turning visitors into users […]
This is a great lil gem of an article. Nice work!
[…] In an article entitled “Turning visitors into users,” Gillian Carson asserts: Thousands of people may be visiting your site every day, but if you don’t convince them that they should be using your product, subscribing to your service, or registering in some way, then your web app’s homepage is simply not doing its job. […]
Thanks for an interesting article. There is so much great free advice on the internet, if only you know where to look! I will certainly be coming back here again to pick up more hot tips to improve my websites. I am putting together a collection of free webmaster tips and tools at http://www.websitesfreeway.co.uk. I am also building a directory of computer and internet related websites, where you can get a free reciprocal link. So feel free to submit any relevant websites to the directory at Websites Freeway.
[…] turning visitors into users August 31st, 2006 Designers look at a bunch of web apps and decide what does/doesn’t work when it comes to getting people to sign up. read more | digg story Filed under: Tech | […]
I dont see any constructive point in the article.
Definitely a good reference I’ll be keeping a tab on as a web developer. Thanks!
[…] turning visitors into users […]
Excellent. I love the analysis … it puts the design into much better perspective. These are common sense tips that are so often forgotten in the bells and whistles of design and programming development. Thank you for the post.
[…] read more | digg story […]
Great read. Need this kind of help to get more signups on my website. many thanks
[…] Vitamin Features » Turning visitors into users […]
Gillian,
Thanks for the superb article! I love how you compared websites side by side and interviewed other designers to get multiple perspectives.
I am interested to see what you would think about Top 5 Web Application Home Page Mistakes that I wrote before I read your article. It looks at turning visitors into users from a different angle and details how it’s done or not done successfully. Thanks!!
vzvzvz
I am learning about the homepage business and trying out Iweb and I find out your articles very interesting, please if anyone have a hint how to get to the top page soon will appreciated. Thank you all
Nathan I totally agree with you. It’s hard to find a balance because the client is always right (well they think they are anyway) and I have found that web design is so opinionated and becomes hard to move forward when they can’t make a decision or get too many people involved and give useless feedback. This results to frustration and you end up hating the client at times, suppose all depends what kind of person they are as well.