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Make It Easy for Your Visitors To Interact

By Scottie Claiborne

Imagine a salesperson trying to get you to buy a car. He tells you all about the benefits and features of the car and you are sold. You want to buy! "I'll take it," you tell him. Great! He then sends you to the secretary, who sends you to an inside salesperson, who says he'll go find the manager, and you are left to wander around on your own.

What happened? Don't they want your money? Why do they work so hard to sell you, but then make a mystery out of the purchase process? It doesn't make sense. However, many websites inadvertently make the same mistake.

You Need Clear Calls to Action

Calls to action are typically "buy now," "subscribe," and "download" links -- the things you want the people who are visiting your site to do. They are the keys to unlocking the actions you want visitors to take. It's amazing how many sites hide links and buttons; it's almost as if they don't want you to find them!

Even the sites that do a good job of putting the action links in obvious places sometimes make the mistake of expecting too much of visitors. "More info" and "details" links are often missing, and the user is expected to click on the picture or product title. You'd be surprised how many potential customers give up and move to the next site.

An Example: Land's End

Land's End is a retailer known for their descriptive marketing copy. They describe the joys of reinforced taped collars in such a way that you just know you are getting the very best of the best when you buy a golf shirt.

However, their online shopping process is terrible. I'm going to save their navigation issues for another time, and focus on how you actually buy something once you've found it. This sample page for kids' moccasins gives us a picture, a brief summary of the benefits, then a list below with colors and available sizes listed next to each color. Lower on the page we see a sample of the copy that Land's End is famous for...but no purchase button.

We can get assistance by phone (and I imagine that is how most people end up placing their orders) and we see the privacy link...but it doesn't tell us HOW to buy a pair of these shoes. The button under the price is actually a size chart and not a purchase button.

If we read everything on the page (and most people won't bother) we find this at the top of the color and size chart:

INSTRUCTIONS: Click color for larger view. Click size to select item.

Click the size to buy the item? Yes, that's how it works. This is okay for Land's End because they are primarily a catalog/mail order business, but I think they'd be shocked at the savings they would reap in customer service support if they made it a little easier to buy online. People expect to select their size and color, then click an "Add to Cart" or "Buy" button. Why? The majority of e-commerce sites are set up that way -- it's become the norm.

Your links may be obvious to you, but not to everyone else.

I run a few niche directories and was surprised to realize that I made this mistake myself recently. The advertisers in the directory were finding that those browsing the directory didn't seem to realize that when they saw a business listing, they could click on the business name and be taken to the advertiser's website. The advertisers were getting lots of phone calls from their listing, but not much website traffic. Obviously, they would prefer that potential customers visit their site first to have basic questions answered!

As it turned out, the brightly colored, bold text with a hover color applied that I was using for the business names was not clearly a link to many people. My assumption that if people were savvy enough to be using search to find a business, they were smart enough to recognize the typical attributes of a link was simply wrong.

Once we added instructions to the page ("Click the business name to view the company's website") as well as their URL hyperlinked at the end of each listing, clickthroughs have more than doubled.

CLICK HERE Is Still Useful

I don't care what anyone else says, "click here" is a very useful instruction. When in doubt, it's a good idea to just tell people flat out what you want them to do.

Click here to subscribe, it's free!
To buy now, click here.
For more information, click here.

Don't hide your links by coloring them the same color as the text. If you don't like underlines, consider adding an underline as a hover effect so that there's no doubt that the text is a link.

Increasing Interaction

Include your call to action in 2-3 places on a page if possible -- a graphic button at the top and bottom of the page as well as a text link in the body of the description ensure that wherever your visitor's eye wanders, they will know how to complete the transaction.

Could you increase your sales, subscriptions, or memberships by something as simple as moving the buttons and links to more obvious spots, putting them in several places, and/or changing their appearance? Yes, it's very possible!

You are probably too close to your site to see the issues, though. Run a few user tests with people who haven't really used your site before to see where they stumble. Shoot for 5-7 people and be careful not to coach them -- just observe them trying to process a transaction. Better yet, make some changes on a test page and gauge their reaction to the new and old pages. What you learn could make a significant impact on your site's performance, so it's worth a few hours of your time!

This article originally appeared in the High Rankings newsletter.

Scottie Claiborne is the owner of Right Click Web Services, a firm specializing in usability, search engine optimization, and internet marketing.
Copyright © 2003 by Right Click Web Services. All rights reserved under U.S. and international law.

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