Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Our site always look amateurish, but we had good navigition, and useability, and was fast loading.
Well we hired a web design firm, and they did a complete analyis on our market and on our competition web designs.
They created the templates, and I spent the next several weeks implementing the changes.
The results was a profesional looking site, that had excelent usability, was fast loading, and had the visual appeal for our target audience.
Well it has been one week, and our sales have remain flat at under 1% conversion.
I am getting a little nervous, as I was hopeing and was told that 2% conversion was well within our crasp.
Does it take time for sales to increase after a major site redesign, as customers get used to the new look and feel.
Has anybody had the same experince, and can tell me how long before sales plateau at the new level.
I find it hard to believe that customers don't care about how the site looks and only care about useability, but if sales don't increase soon, then that is going to be a statement of fact.
… “The results was a professional looking site, that had excellent usability,”
I also learned a hard lesson, in judging my own sites… What looked easy to use for me, wasn’t easy for others.
Give it some time, Also ask others for feedback
Sorry but as far as I'm concerned, and particularly regarding effective ROI, it already is.
Maybe it is just that people are so uninterested in the site design that they have complete focus on the content.
Maybe people like to see "mom and pop" shops because they believe they will receive superior customer service.
Maybe it's just the lack of hype that makes people trust on a subconscious level.
Maybe the website is replacing the human salesperson to a great extent. The slicked-back hair, nice suit, and huge toothy smile doesn't automatically sell people anymore. People tend to look for the experienced, no BS answer.
People want something that performs. Hype doesn't cut it anymore.
Whatever this ugly thing is, it works. Talk to rcjordan about it.
RCJORDAN, with all your double negatives, I don't
know what side of the fence you are on.
[edited by: lgn at 8:03 pm (utc) on July 10, 2003]
<added>
And it's usually far cheaper to set up and maintain.
I am really going to rub it in, when I see the bank manager the next time, if it was all for noavail.
I only problem is, if the company you hired is not doing SEO, or if your not advertising you site in a different way then you are not going to get a better ROI. You might want to rethink how to invest your money on advertising.
just my thoughts!
We sell virtually all our product to women, and
market reports indicate that women are more tuned
to 'a nice looking and well designed site'
Men don't care how things look, (unless they are women), and more concerned about getting
the job done quickly and at lowest price.
For example, what percentage of porn sites are graphically well design. On these sites, content is king.
I think the only way you may be able to expect an increase in custom is if it's easier to get to the target page the user is after, ie...navigability.
In terms of looks, how many sites that you liked the look of can you recall? I'll wager it's only a handful if that!...How many did you buy from?
My thinking has changed over the years after realising that the sites I tend to spend more time at are low on eye-candy and high on what I went there to find.
Overwhelmingly I've found that these types of sites are not created by web-designers, and those that are, great! I spend about 5 secs maybe looking at the candy before getting stuck into what I want - If the site is very good to look at, then it can actually detract from the content IMO.
Remember boo.com?! ;¬)
And beyond that let me recommend another "investment" -- Jakon Nielsen's study on e-commerce sites. It costs a lot for "just a book" but it's based on very thorough real-life testing and not just opinions and generalizations. Everytime I pick it up, something else I can do comes to mind, and usually for more than one site at a time!
Using his criteria -- well, the Nielsen Norman Group's criteria -- the best ecommerce sites on the web (e.g. Amazon) are only getting about 78% of elements right. So there's plenty we can all do.
For me, one of the best elements in the book is the quotes from his testing panel members about the various factors. These are just ordinary people who test the site and their comments really get to me, because they're so plain old true, no jargon or BS.
If so, I would recommend that you take a look at emails from when the old design was up and running and those from when the new design was implemented and compare to see what users are saying. Were any old problems cleared up? Are new ones emerging in the emails?
I find this to be pretty useful when trying to gauge the impact of design changes on a 50,000 foot level.
For example, if users are mistrustful of the new site, you won't hear things like, "Change it back to the ugly amateurish design! It's too slick for my tastes!" But you might hear things like, "Who are you? How long have you been in business? Do you guarantee your products? Have you had any BBB complaints?"
Compare the general theme of email questions before/after and see if there's a pattern.
Whether or not ugly works or not, I can't imagine that visual impact of the site affected your sales dramatically one way or the other.
I think your site's usability (whether it is attractive or unattractive) is better measure of why your visitors aren't buying.
Obviously someone isn't going to offer up their credit card numbers to a site that looks like it was made by a h4><0r or Nigerian Commission to Commit Internet Fraud. But in most circumstances, I believe in essence people will buy from any site the seems legit - whether or not their the templates were created in MS Word by your boss's neighbor's poolboy or a design firm.
Have you analyzed your site's visitor logs? How did you decide that you are getting low conversion because of your site's design? Maybe your getting alot of UK visitors that want 220 volt blue widgets and your site only has blue widgets for 110.
just a thought.
And as already said, IMHO one week is (depending on traffic) too short to completely evaluate the ROI of a change to your site.
Let's face it, if you were in the real world, and you saw a beaten-down bookstore with an old sign and clouded windows, vs. an open, inviting, bright, shiny new store - which would you go to?
Put it another way - there were lots of old beaten-down bookstores and used book stores out there. Can't beat used for the price break. So why has Barnes and Noble done so well recently? Same with hardware stores - every town has or had some crazy ancient hardware store lined so full of things no one but the owner can find things if he even so deems to do so for you - and yet Home Depot built the exact opposite kind of store, and is now a blue chip stock?
All that being said, conversion rate problems could come from:
a) redesigned shopping cart NOT being as easy as it looked?
b) not enough "trust" elements - easy to find price/contact info.
c) NO REAL PEOPLE listed - your store should make it clear that there's real people behind it. Especially if its slicker than not, strangely enough.
d) dude, summer vacation! Was it last week that you launched? We (foolishly) did so with a gift store back in '98. 4th of July opening sale! DUUHHH, everyone was out at the beach or watching fireworks! We hardly got any traffic 'til the 3rd week...
It could be that your previous site was fine in terms of usability (if not design) - in which case conversion rate will remain the same. With an updated look it simply means that your clients recognise you as keeping pace with things, which is good (client retention). You may have already reached the optimium conversion for your market.
Overtime things should get better as new people finding your site are likely to stay/become customers - as your site will pass the vital first-few-seconds-judgement when they see it for the first time (people assume professionally looking sites, are professional trustworthy businesses). Putting creditcard logos and and associated bodies logos on also helps.
However the best thing to do is to check what customers think of your site - do a Qualitative Analysis. This simply means getting a few customers in (one at a time) and asking them to do a specific task on your site (you take notes about what they do). Get them to speak aloud if possible. Its important to monitor exactly what they do and not, I repeat not, tell them what they Should be doing (though its hard not to!). This may highlight some basic problems that were overlooked, or confirm that everything is fine. If you don't want to get customers in then get a family member (or staff) to sit down and do it. Its the single best form of feedback and yet most website owners (including your competitors) can't be bothered to do it.
I think ugly sites don't sell better because they are ugly. However ugly sites will often contain more content than "nice looking sites"...and sites with more content often sell better. Ugly sites are often done by the person who sells the product. He or she enters ALL relevant data, in their "selling to the client" mode. Large sites working from databases have a problem. Staff can only enter what the original database developers intended for them to enter, and staff are asked to enter the info in a "matter of fact" way (not really "selling language").
If your site contains the same content and you continue to focus on content then a redesign shouldn't do any damage to your conversion rate.
