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

A 2009 survey of 2,000 online British adults found that 50 percent of those who regularly shop online said that if their preferred payment method is not available, they will cancel the purchase.

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

hope and fear. This dimension is characterized by anticipation of an outcome. Hope is the anticipation of something good happening. Fear is the anticipation of something bad, often the anticipation of loss.

RightNow Technologies increased their conversions 4x by building a persona focused site.

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.

What makes a good value proposition: Clarity! It’s easy to understand. It communicates the concrete results a customer will get from purchasing and using your products and/or services. It says how it’s different or better than the competitor’s offer. It avoids hype (like ‘never seen before amazing miracle product’), superlatives (‘best’) and busine

Context matters. Don’t

adage for outdoor billboard design—it’s ready when there’s nothing left to remove. In a way this also applies for websites.

you can usually turn “failed” experiments into wins. I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work. —Thomas Alva Edison, inventor The real goal of A/B tests is not a lift in conversions (that’s a nice side effect), but learning something about your target audience.

Everything starts with defining the specific desired behavior—in our case it’s what we want the user to do, our conversion goal. It might be getting people to buy our product,