Corey Husfeldt
Capture The Attention Of Your Audience
Welcome to our second edition of the MyCommerce “tips and tricks” newsletter. This three-part series will include proven best practices and techniques on a range of topics to help your business maximize your revenue. Today’s edition is focused on three best practices to capture the attention of your audience so you can keep them focused.
Item 1: Home Page Merchandising
When visiting a website that is focused on selling products online, take note of where your eyes are drawn when you first enter the site. Do your eyes go to a certain area on the page? Or are your eyes all over the webpage instead of being focused to a specific area? One of the best ways to draw focus on your page is via home page merchandising. You can specifically organize your webpage with a banner that stands out with a clear path to buy your product. Since people read left to right, a home page banner should be placed at the top-left of the page. In addition to the importance of home page placement, all home page banners should provide the following information with an assumption that the customer has the intent to buy:
- Product name
- Product image
- 2-3 bullet points describing the product
- Original price of the product with a strike through and current discount price
- ‘Buy Now’ button should go directly to the cart
- Link to a ‘More Info’ page should go to the product detail page. A clear and obvious ‘Buy Now’ button should be on the product detail page which takes the shopper directly to the cart. The total number of clicks for this flow should only be two.
You should use home page merchandising via a home page banner to promote:
- A new product
- Best-selling product(s)
- Promotions/Sales of products
By using this valuable real estate on your website to promote your products, you will provide an easy path to the cart for your customers. Remember, the more people you get to the cart, the higher your cart conversion rate will be.
Item 2: Above The Fold
What a customer can view on your home page when they first arrive will depend on the screen resolution they are viewing your website on. You want to make sure your home page has everything customers want to see without having to scroll. Here is a list of content you want to make sure is visible for the majority of the people:
- Most important content about the product
- Product images
- Product information (bullet points)
- ‘Buy Now’ buttons (should have them in multiple locations per product)
- New products
- Top selling products
In addition to the placement of the content you want to make sure everything on your website is properly spaced out. While you don’t want too much white space, you also do not want to have everything crammed into the ‘above the fold’ area. A cluttered website will be hard to focus on.
Item 3: Too Much Text
To be true to this best practice, we are going to make this short and sweet. When creating the content for you website it is important not to be text heavy. People may only skim the text to get a quick overview, but not get the details you want to portray. Try to keep the text for a description, product detail page, emails, etc. straight to the point. Provide as much information as possible without displaying too much text.
- Use bullet points to illustrate the key points as they are easier to read and provide the necessary details
- On product detail pages, use tabs to separate the content to make it appear less text heavy
- In emails, add referring links to go to additional pages if more information may be needed
These are the three best practices to capture the attention of your audience yet keep them focused on the end result – purchasing your product. Do you have any other best practices that you would like to share? We look forwarding to hearing what works best for you!
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