Five Key Principles of Conversion-Focused Website Design

Transcription

1 Five Key Principles of Conversion-Focused Website Design 2015 G5, MF0313

2 Introduction Did you know that 97 percent of consumers use search engines to research products and resources? 1 Now more than ever, the Internet is consumers first stop when conducting research before making a purchase decision. According to a study by Yahoo! and Universal McCann, more than two-thirds of respondents said that they trust the Internet for researching their purchases. Compare that to 43 percent who said that they trust magazines, and only 35 percent who claimed to trust TV. 2 But it doesn t have to be that way. G5 has found that when you create a truly engaging online experience for consumers, a full 20 percent of your move-ins can originate online. 3 Your top priority is to engage prospective consumers in their online property search. You need to position your site so that it attracts the most qualified visitors, and you need to offer an engaging online experience that inspires those visitors to take action and become a lead and eventually, a move-in. 97 percent of consumers use search engines to research products and services. 02 Clearly, when consumers want to get the full story, they go online. The following outlines the five key principles of great website design. Read on... The reason is simple: the Internet enables consumers to do their own research based on a seemingly endless supply of data. They can source and vet their own information. They feel a greater sense of control over their own buying decisions. These trends are true across the board, whether someone is buying a book or choosing an moving. 1. Turner Research 2. Ad Age, More Shoppers Trust the Internet Than TV, May G5 client research

3 The Lead to Move-in Opportunity Creating an engaging experience. A website isn t simply a print ad that happens to be attached to a URL. It s an interactive ecosystem that can help you locate prospects, give them relevant information on a property, and deliver them to your door as highly qualified leads. So what s the risk of ignoring your online presence or not optimizing your website design to create an engaging experience? Considerable. A site that engages prospects by embracing the fundamentals of good website design can deliver an exponential increase in leads. A site that disappoints can mean fewer leads, fewer move-ins, and suboptimal returns on your marketing spend. High quality traffic should translate into leads. The percentage of this conversion depends on a couple of things: the quality of your website and the ability of your property-level employees to convert those quality leads into move-ins. In general, these are the metrics you should be seeing from your website: 10-20% of your website visitors should convert to high-quality leads ILS Internet Listing Service 2-5% of leads should convert into move-ins If you have 2,000 visitors to your website, that would translate to quality leads and move-ins These numbers assume that you have it all together you have a great online presence driving high-quality visitors, you re capturing those visitors with strategic website design and functionality, and you have a solid property-level team helping to convert those leads into move-ins. Traditional Print, Yellow Pages, etc. Optimized Website High-performing & maintained COST-PER- LEAD $25 $50-$100 $4 COST-PER- LEASE $350-$1000 $2,500+ $175 When compared to traditional marketing efforts like print ads and Yellow Pages, a high-performing, engaging website can slash your cost-per-lead, not to mention your cost-per-move-in. A print ad can cost as much as $2,500 per move-in, but a highperformance website can cut that number by more than 90 percent. The conclusion is clear: if your website isn t engaging your prospects, you re paying more per lead and per move-in than you should be. You re also giving the competition an opportunity to scoop up valuable leads. 03

4 Designing a Site that Engages Visitors You must align your site with proven design principles. If your site looks poorly designed unclear or are obvious: prospects can interact with a site complex navigation, distracting backgrounds, regardless of the device they re using instead hard to read prospects are likely to assume of having to choose between viewing the whole that your properties just as poor. page illegibly or a small part of it. Improved It truly pays to engage with an expert who can usability decreases bounce rates and increases align the look-and-feel of your site with proven conversions. design principles. Here are several design best 2. Use a location-based strategy practices to point you in the right direction: Prospects searching for properties can vary 1. Use Responsive Design greatly depending on the regional demographic When standard websites are viewed on mobile profile of your property. That s why a locationbased strategy is so critical. If you know that devices, important content like pictures, pricing, testimonials, and contact information can get your suburban property draws more families, cut off. Chances are high that your prospect the images you show in your photo gallery for is going to hit the back button and search for that location should appeal to that audience. a property website that delivers the critical Your content may speak to the safety of the information they need to move forward with the neighborhood, the property s proximity to decision-making process. schools and parks, and family-oriented events hosted at the community. If your property is near Responsive design is a design philosophy that a university or in an urban center, your photos uses best-practice web standards to address the extreme amount of diversity in web devices. It s a blend of CSS, CSS3, and JavaScript (web coding languages used to develop the look and format of web pages) to create fluid sites that can expand, contract, rearrange or remove content based upon the user s screen size. Instead of developing different sites for devices with different screen sizes, one site automatically adjusts to display optimally on everything from a 27-inch desktop monitor to a three-and-ahalf-inch iphone display. The usability benefits and content should appeal more to the young, single crowd. In short, know your audience and make sure the design of your location websites are speaking to them. When it comes to property locations, one size doesn t always fit all. 3. Make it simple Any visitor arriving at your site should be able to determine almost instantly what your site is about. Highlight important content. Keep navigation simple. Information should be organized in a way that makes it easy and quick for prospects to find what they re looking for. When visitors get lost in a complex website, they ll lose interest and go elsewhere. Multiple studies have shown that most people don t read websites word-for-word. According (continued on page 5) 04

5 Designing a Site that Engages Visitors (continued) to research by the Nielsen Norman Group, Consult with an experienced developer who users tend to process Web pages in an F can make your site as speedy as possible no pattern often reading top left to right first, longer than 2.5 seconds. The investment will then scanning the first few words of subsequent be worth it, especially when you consider the lines. 5 Organize and present your content so business you might otherwise lose. that prospects get the information they need Here are a few basic guidelines to discuss with right at the top of the page. Anything below your Web developer: that is likely to get buried. Graphics. Don t overload your page with 4. Design for speed unnecessary graphics. Focus on the images No matter the demographic or geography of that have the most impact, and render your prospects, Web connection speeds are those images in a size and format that won t getting faster and prospects expectations impede page performance. are keeping pace. In a recent study conducted Caching. If a prospect visits your site more by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Akamai than once, he or she shouldn t need to wait Technologies, the average online shopper for it to load all over again. Make sure that expects a Web page to load in just two seconds. your pages are cacheable so that repeat After three seconds, 40 percent of shoppers visitors don t get frustrated. report that they will look for another site. 6 Compression. In some cases, you can It s not just your visitors that expect your website compress HTML pages, which will be a to load fast. Search engines expect it, too. In huge boost to users still on a low-bandwidth 2011, Google made page load speed a ranking connection. factor so if your website takes more than two The bottom line: users want to engage with seconds to load, it could push your website a website, not a page loading icon. Invest down in search results. the resources necessary to make your online presence as nimble and responsive as possible and hook those prospects right away. 5. Test, test, test Usability is a word that Web designers use often, and it simply refers to how easy your website is for visitors to use. Can they find what they re looking for quickly? Do they know what you re offering right away? Or are they frustrated by the experience of interacting with your site? As usability consultant and author of Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems, Steve Krug observes, testing one user is 100 percent better than testing none. He also suggests that one morning per month is all you need for usability testing and that tests don t need to be overly formal. 7 At the very least, ask a few of your colleagues to spend some quality time poking around your pages. Don t allow your prospects to discover website glitches before you do. Make sure that every link works, and make sure that every page makes clear and simple sense Eyetracking Web Usability, December Forrester Consulting, ecommerce Web Site Performance Today: An Updated Look at Consumer Reaction to a Poor Online Shopping Experience, August Don t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, August 2005

6 Transform Those Visitors into Leads Engage your online visitors. Now that you ve created a fast, intuitive website to Make your calls-to-action specific and easy engage online visitors, it s time to take them to the to follow. As always, keep it simple: clearly next step. Here are a few best practices for capturing state how you would prefer your online visitors the maximum number of leads: to proceed, and make it painless for them Limit the calls-to-action. A call-to-action to do so. Enable click-to-call functionality for is what you want the visitor to do next mobile users. And always keep in mind that the schedule a visit, leave their information, or just faster you get the prospect off the computer give you a call. Keep in mind that too many and into your property, the closer you are to a options can inhibit some people s abilities to signed move-in. make a decision (scientists call this the tyranny Make your forms simple. Only ask for the of choice ). 8 We recommend no more than minimum amount of information that you four calls-to-action; otherwise you re likely to absolutely need to contact each prospect. overwhelm your visitors. We also recommend Again, four is a good number as a rule of that you place those calls-to-action strategically thumb. And only require two fields, if possible. on the page, so that they re prominently placed Keep in mind that for every field you add to a above the fold is always best. form, you could lose 25 percent of your leads. Clearly state how you would prefer your online visitors to proceed, and make it painless for them to do so Barry Schwartz, The Tyranny of Choice, Scientific American Mind, December 2004

7 Summary Your first impression. Your website isn t simply a placeholder with a phone number. In many cases, it s the first point of contact for prospects, and your property s first impression. You must design an online experience that actively connects with prospects, transforming them from casual shoppers into fully engaged consumers. By embracing the principles of strategic website design with a particular focus on simplicity, usability, and speed you can deliver an online experience that perfectly reflects the essence of your property. That will bring a higher number of qualified prospects into your office and help you transform more leads into move-ins. You must design an online experience that actively connects with prospects, transforming them from casual shoppers into fully engaged consumers. 07

8 Next Steps Are you ready to create a more engaging online experience for online prospects? Choose an expert partner with deep experience in creating richly interactive websites. Better yet, find a partner who knows how to drive engagement specifically for the property management sector. At G5, we know how to: Reduce dependency on Internet Listing Services Generate more qualified leads with a higher conversion rate Stay agile and up-to-date with digital marketing changes Find out more about the G5 Marketing Cloud TM. Request your demo at. 08 G5 is the leading provider of digital marketing effectiveness in the property management sector. In today s increasingly mobile and social world, reaching and converting prospects is more complex than ever before. G5 simplifies the complexity of digital marketing with an innovative cloud-based platform that creates, measures, and optimizes the entire customer experience from awareness to advocacy for a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing approaches. The G5 Marketing Cloud delivers best-in-class experiences across search, sites, and social, as well as tools that measure and optimize results. Founded in 2005, G5 was recently named one of the fastest growing private US companies by Inc. magazine (4th year), one of North America s fastest growing technology companies by Deloitte (5th consecutive year), and one of Oregon s fastest growing private companies by Portland Business Journal (4th year). The Bend, Oregon-based company is backed by private equity investor Volition Capital. To learn how to maximize digital marketing effectiveness, please visit www.