Make it Easy for Your Website Visitors to Take Action by Removing Obstacles

Your website has an ultimate goal whether it’s collecting more leads, making more sales, or disseminating high-quality content to visitors. And in order to reach your goals, you’re relying on your visitors to take specific actions.But your visitors need to be guided to take those actions. And if you’re struggling with conversions, it may just be because your visitors don’t know what to do. Here are some tips to turn that around.

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Understand Human Nature

Your website visitors may be faceless, nameless numbers to you; however, on the other side of the computer screen, they’re people with families, hobbies, and jobs. This makes them human and prone to confusion and frustration when navigating websites.Because the web never began with a set of standards for navigation, the user experience for each website is going to be structured a little differently. In the beginning, nobody really knew what would provide the best user experience until we all started building websites and testing out various elements in design.Thankfully, now we know quite a bit more about what contributes to a good user experience. But action doesn’t occur on its own.

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People Need to be Trained Into Taking Action

Have you ever wondered why almost all links in the 1990s used anchor text that said, “click here?”That’s because not everyone knew that blue underlined text was the standard signal for a link. We were still training ourselves how to navigate web pages at a very basic level.It took years of repeatedly seeing blue underlined “click here” text for us to get to the point where “click here” became obsolete and links didn’t need to be blue or underlined anymore.Even though we’ve passed the basic learning curve, we’re still left with millions of web pages that require visitors to do things differently from one site to the next. So, understanding that it’s human nature to need direct guidance is the best place to start.

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Make the Action Available to Take Immediately

Regardless of what specific action you want your visitors to take, you need to make that action so easy that it’s practically their only option – and most of that is accomplished by removing any barriers that might prevent or delay that action from being taken.For example, if you want your visitors to watch a video, then you shouldn’t put a popup on that page. If you want to make it even easier, put the video on autoplay so your visitors don’t even have to click to start watching.If you’re a business that provides people with quotes on a job before they commit to the purchase, you can put the request form in your sidebar so it displays next to your content, thereby eliminating the need for visitors to “click here” to get a quote.

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Avoid Jargon no Matter How Good it Sounds

You’ve probably read internet marketing articles that tell you if your visitors aren’t converting to leads or sales, it’s because your buttons are the wrong color, your email capture form is in the wrong spot, or you’re targeting the wrong demographic.Of course, these factors have the potential to impact your conversion rate. However, what if you’re not converting because you’re confusing your visitors with jargon?According to Yahoo News, it happens all the time, like when London’s largest bus company, Go Ahead London, put out an ad for a position that read, “passenger assistant wanted who is a good face to face communicator with customer-facing experience and a natural flair for going the extra mile.”All those phrases sound good but the ad doesn’t tell you what the actual job is. Even the Plain English Campaign said the company would have been better off using the simple headline, “bus conductor wanted.”Is your content getting through to your visitors the way you intend? Just because it sounds good doesn’t mean it’s understandable. Use simple language with your visitors.

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Industry Jargon Creates the Most Confusion

One thing’s for sure – your visitors will not always understand the intricacies and details of your business, so you’ll want to avoid using industry jargon in your copy and especially in your navigation. Just make your links clear and use terms you know your visitors will understand.

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Uncover Obstacles to Make them Disappear

In the web industry, internet marketing especially, there are plenty of tips that place primary importance on colors, images, typography, and your call to action. And while these are extremely important, if your website presents obstacles to your visitors, you could do everything right and still not see conversions. But, if you follow the tips outlined in this article, you’ll stand a much greater chance at identifying and removing those obstacles.