Plan to Have Testimonials

Jan 282009
 

eventSell a service or product on your website? Having a testimonial is a good idea, and the more the better. This party planning site has taken it to the max. They have testimonials on every page.

Credibility

Having a few testimonials can do a great deal for a sites credibility. Two key locations to have testimonials are on the home page/landing page, and the final selling page. On the home page they can draw a visitor into the site more, and when closing the deal they can give the customer the feeling that they are making a wise decision.

Turn One Page Visitors Into Two or More Page Visitors

Imagine if you were planning a casino night for your fellow employees, and your search results land you here: Fun Casino Nights. Immediately you would see what you were looking for, seeing  the pictures they took of previous events, and customer testimonials telling you how great they were. Think your on the right page? At that point I would imagine you would then begin looking for way to buy, cost information, or simply more details. Three simple pictures, and a couple of customer quotes, and you have kept the visitor from closing your site, and moving on.

Making it Work All Over

This party planning site has really taken it to the max by having testimonials on every page. I don’t blame them. Most of their pages are descriptions of services, and complimenting them all the same way is a good idea.

Mouse Work and Navigation

Nov 202008
 

You might guess by the title of this post that it is about using your mouse and navigation. It is, but really, it’s about barfing on your customer. I didn’t think barf in a title was a very good idea. I was in sales a long time, and barfing on your customer simply meant, you overloaded them with too many things to consider. The same thing happens all of the time to websites, and it can get to the point that it can even confuse the person in charge of the site.

igeneric

With permission from the site owner, I have been allowed to use iGeneric as an example. Their site is not quite ready yet. They are still in the process of uploading thousands of scripts to their site, and some final layout testing. IGeneric is going to be a large UK Software Directory. It will also include a large PHP web scripts directory. They will have premium and free scripts, and will have something for most types of programming scripts besides PHP.

So what is up with their site, and what does barfing on a customer have to do with it?

twomenusNavigation

First you need to look at their navigation from the home page. With close inspection you will notice that they have two main menus. This could easily be reduced to just one. With some closer inspection, here are some examples.

  • Menu #1 has Login link, though right underneath to the right is a login form. This menu is only availbable on the home page so they could delete that.
  • Menu #1 User Panel link takes you to a login page so this could be eliminated until at least the user has logged in.
  • Menu #2 has a logout link though I am not logged in.
  • Menu #2 has a Categories link though all the categories are listed right below.
  • Non popular items like “Support” are already listed in the footer menu, and could be deleted.

Adding a little more finesse those two menus could easily be condensed to just one. It will create less confusion to the visitors, and will also bring their premium content, the scripts, closer to the top making it easier for visitors to find. One menu, less confusion, the customers shirt will now remain clean.

Mouse Work

The final thing is the mouse work. First let me ask you this. Would you rather click ten times to find something with your mouse, or would you rather click five times, and scroll five times to find the same thing? Just clicking ten times is faster, and studies have found that just clicking is what most people would rather do. So in the case of this site, creating sub-categories might be the way to go. Their category listing is pretty huge, and knowing how people often categorize things (not how we expect it), it may be difficult to find what you are looking for. Having more broad categories can at least eliminate some obvious choices. It will also eliminate the dreaded scroll. So in this case, a little reorganizing and adding some sub-categories could drastically improve user performance.

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