If your website is not converting sales like you think it should, the answer may lie in it’s clickpaths.
When we design websites, it’s a lot like building a trail through the woods. Only instead of footpaths, we’re creating clickpaths to help guide your visitors through the forest of your site to their desired destination.
Clickpaths Increase Usability
It’s important to note that clickpaths are for your potential customer’s benefit. When they find what they are looking for, you will make a buyer out of them. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, you’ve lost a sale. Clearly marked paths increase a site’s usability. With increased usability comes higher conversion and less abandonment.
Clickpaths Don’t Apply to Websites Alone
The concept of clickpaths should be applied to all of your offline and online marketing efforts, including email marketing, social marketing and banner campaigns.
To see clickpaths in action, here’s an example that happened to me recently.
I got an email promoting year end savings for Netbooks. The email subject line said: “Awesome Year End Closeout on All Dell Netbooks!” This is the trailhead I want to follow because I’m led to believe it will take me to a Dell Netbook at a great discount. Since I’ve been wanting one for a while, I immediately opened the email. But there was not a single Netbook listed or shown and this path suddenly became a dead-end for me.
Unless I want to pull out the machete and start carving my own trail to the closeout netbooks, this sale will be lost.
Each time you throw out a piece of communication via email, postcard, or website, you are putting signs in the ground leading the way to a clickpath. Make sure your paths are easy to navigate and that they guide your user all the way to their final destination.
About the author: Jeune Ortiz is VP of Marketing and Creative Director at future-ink. With more than 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing, Jeune brings extensive knowledge and creativity to each website and internet marketing solution to grow your business.
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