You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and this statement is particularly applicable to the world of website optimization.
First impressions are crucial because:
- Users decide in less than 10 seconds whether to stay or leave(1).
- The longer it takes for them to decide, the worse your conversion rate.
In other words – the faster a user makes a decision to keep browsing, the higher your overall conversion rate.
New Free Tool – We’ve built a free tool to help you measure your site’s first impression:
1) Click here to open our measurement tool.
2) Type in the website URL you want to test.
3) Type in the amount of time to test your first impression (we recommend 2 seconds).
To maximize your first impression and hook a user in that first 5 seconds, here are three areas to focus on:
- Clarity of purpose – ensure that you have a headline that is bold, crystal clear, and reinforces the user’s expectations about your site.
- Trust – highlight any awards you’ve won, user testimonials, your BBB rating, or even something as simple as a Verisign or McAfee Secure logo.
- Action – tell the user exactly what action to take next.
To apply these tips, design these elements in a clean and crisp manner around your user’s average screen resolution (usually 1024×768 is a safe bet).
Once you’ve done that use our testing tool to double check that you can read / understand those three elements in just a few seconds and you’ll be on your way to increasing your website conversion rate.
We use these tools and more to build the highest converting websites on the planet – click here to contact us for a free consultation to see if our service is right for you. We’ll write you a check for $10,000 if we can’t increase your website’s conversion rate by at least 15%!
References:
(1) Users have a 10 second tolerance for messaging: https://www.useit.com/alertbox/interaction-elasticity.html
