Netflix began in 1997 as a competitor to Blockbuster. Now, it has as many users as the entire population of Canada, UK, and Japan combined.
Last year, 10 out of the top 15 most streamed programs in the world were produced by Netflix. It’s is still the king of streaming.
If you’re not following form design best practices, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
While forms aren’t the sexiest part of conversion optimization, they tend to be the closest to the money—the macro-conversions. Spending a little time optimizing forms can be some of the most important optimization work you can do.
Of course, best practices don’t work the same on all sites. It’s contextual. But generally, implementing form design tactics that work more often than not is a good way to get started.
You put tons of time into creating your product, experimenting with acquisition channels, and honing your messaging.
Yet here I am, about to tell you that consumers are often swayed by such subtle nudges as the order in which you present your products, or the “serial position effect.”
The easier your website is to use, the more people use it. An essential part of “easy to use” is intuitiveness. Intuitive design means that when a user sees it, they know exactly what to do.
Your website design is more important for conversions than you think. You can implement every conversion-boosting tactic in the world, but if your web design looks like crap, it won’t do you much good.
I’m sure you’ve come across dozens, if not hundreds, of image carousels or sliders (also called “rotating offers”). You might even like them. But the truth is that they’re conversion killers.
A study by Google had two key findings:
Moreover, “highly prototypical” sites—those with layouts commonly associated with sites of their category—that also had a simple website design were rated the most beautiful.
In other words, the study found that the simpler the design, the better.
Back in 1984, Dr. Robert B. Cialdini wrote a book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. This posited six principles of persuasion and explained how to use them. Since then, it’s been widely hailed as a seminal book on marketing—something everyone in conversion optimization should read.
In 2016, he published another key book, called Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade. This added a seventh principle of persuasion to the list, and provided new inspiration to a whole new generation of marketers. Robert Cialdini’s influence on the field of marketing has been immeasurable.
User flow is the path a user follows through your website interface to complete a task—make a reservation, purchase a product, subscribe to something. It’s also called a user journey.
And it has a massive impact on conversions.
To maximize your conversions, you have to get the user flow right on your site. Do it by building a user flow that matches user’s needs.
Customer journey mapping is a widely used and impactful technique that can help you improve your product, marketing, UX, and merchandising decisions.
However, like other UX research techniques (including user personas), there’s some vagueness and obscurity around how to actually create user journey maps.