Website Testing Opportunity #1: Place Assurances next to Point-of-Actions

Over the coming months I’ll be exploring some ideas of things to test on your website. If you really want to achieve the best return on your website, making small changes and testing the outcome is the most cost effective way of increasing conversions.

Let’s look at one of the most important user actions you can improve, getting someone to click through to the next stage of a goal conversion. We call this the Point of Action, this magic button is the key to your website’s success. Everyone needs a reason to perform an action, many would already have one such as a user wanting to buy your product based on a friend’s recommendation so that’s an easy conversion. But what about those who are not entirely sure, those that need a little persuasion?

Simply changing the text on a button can improve conversions, but for the most part it involves building trust and telling the user that clicking through is a safe and worthwhile option.

This is best done by placing assurances near to the point of action. Here are a few examples of what you should look to include:

• Return Policy
• Third Party Security Seal
• Money Back Guarantee
• Product/Service Review
• Testimonial
• Product/Service Benefit
• Privacy Policy and Use of Data

You can even optimise each of these individually with copy changes, colour changes and sizing. But for this test, you should only put one or two of your strongest assurance near to the point of action.

Let’s take a look at some live examples.

Hosted website provider, Squarespace offer an important common assurance for any service based product, they won’t store your credit card details until you are ready to buy the service:

Kitchenware retailer, Lakeland place product reviews directly under the Add to basket action. Lakeland sell many unique and new products that most people would have not seen before, previous buyer’s opinions are a good way to assure new customers in this case:

Insurance provider, Directline lists answers to common questions directly below their Get a quote action. Many of their visitors may have had concerns about their policy coverage and quality:

Email marketing service provider, VerticalResponse put a customer testimonial right next to its Sign up action:

Online cycle shop, Wiggle display a large security logo and payment options next to the shopping basket feature on each product page:

Summary

These examples are of quite well established online businesses, so for a new or small business it is even more important that the first test you do should include assurances next to the point of actions.  Getting people to your website is one task, getting them to convert is a completely different one. Don’t ignore conversion rate optimisation,  put yourself in your customers shoes and ask yourself “Should I buy from this website?”

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