How to Build Websites that Sell: The Scientific Approach to Websites

Next time you’re thinking about designing a site (note: design is not just how it looks, but how it works), start with figuring out what user flows you are trying to create through the website. In order to do this you need to know two things: 1. Your business objectives. It’s the action you want visitors to take on the site. 2. User objectives, the

Sometimes you want them to join the email list on their first visit, but ultimately you want to sell them a product. In those cases, you should map stacked user flows: the first one that is completed by joining the email list, and the second one that starts AFTER the first flow has been completed.

Match users needs with your business objectives Your goal is to map users paths—flows that take users from their entry pages through conversion funnels—toward the final action (signup, purchase etc). The final action needs to provide value both to the user

Your personas should dictate every word and every image on your site. Your website layout, navigation and general user flow should come from personas.

Schwan’s (home delivered food service) has one of the highest conversion rates among e-commerce sites, and when you go to their site you can sense that it’s based on their juicy images.

Serious gains in conversions don’t come from psychological trickery, but from analyzing what your customers really need, the language that resonates with them and how they want to buy it. It’s about relevancy and perceived value of the total offer.

The longer version should give so much information that the user will not have a single question left. If they read the whole thing and still have questions or doubts, then you have a problem.

Whenever you test variations against the control, you need to have a hypothesis as to what might work. Now when you observe variations win or lose, you will be able to identify which elements really make a difference. When a test fails, you need to evaluate the hypotheses, look at the heat map / click map data to assess user behavior on the site, p

Behavioral design is where psychology and technology meet—a systematic way to influence a desired behavior, one step at a time.